Fonds MS-2-442, Box 1-3 - A.J. William Myers fonds

Alexander John William Myers was born in Lake Verde, Prince Edward Island, on 17 December 1877 to Margaret Sarah (Moore) and Charles Myers. He received his early education in P.E.I. where he attended the West Kent School and Prince of Wales College. He graduated from the later in 1899 and then taught school in Flat River before beginning post-secondary studies. He attended Dalhousie University (B.A. 1902, M.A. 1904), Pine Hill College in Halifax and Knox College in Toronto (B.D. 1907), and Columbia University (Ph.D. 1912).

Myers was a pastor and educator who wrote over twenty-five books and innumerable articles, primarily on the subject of religious education. From 1912 to 1917 he was Educational Secretary of the Board of Sabbath Schools and Young People’s Societies of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. During this time he travelled to theological colleges across Canada to lecture on religious education. For the following 25 years, he was head of the Department of Religious Education at the Hartford Seminary Foundation in Hartford, Connecticut. Myers also served as a minister in Black River New Brunswick from 1905-1909, and various communities in Ontario when he returned to Canada in 1942, including Belleville, Scarborough, and Toronto. He retired in 1947.

In 1912 Myers married his first wife, Mae Ethel Dickenson, in Toronto. They had been together for over thirty-five years when she died in 1948. In 1952 Myers married fellow islander Helen Penelope Ramsay. On 2 December 1975 Myers died in Toronto.