This is the biography of William Critchlow Harris, who was an architect noted mainly for his ecclesiastical and domestic projects in Maritime Canada. He was born near Liverpool, England to Welsh parents but moved to Prince Edward Island with his family as a young child.

After he died in 1913 his brother Robert, the celebrated portrait painter, wrote his sister Sarah, "What a number of churches he designed, and how fine many of them are! That was work he really liked, that’s one comfort." Although William Harris designed many dwelling houses and public buildings, his chief distinction as an architect was as a designer of churches. Of the twenty constructed, or rebuilt, to his plans in Prince Edward Island sixteen remain. The Prince Edward Island landscape would not be the same without them.

Robert Tuck was born in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia and before following his family into the Anglican priesthood he reported for the Halifax Chronicle and taught at King's School. He settled in Charlottetown, PEI in 1992 where he occupies a canon's stall at St. Peter's Cathedral. Since then, he has curated exhibitions at the Confederation Centre of the Arts on a variety of Island topics, including the subject of his first book with Dundurn, Gothic Dreams: The Life and Times of William Critchlow, 1845-1913.

Robert Tuck's profile page