Alexander Graham Dunlop, 1814-1892, was the son of John Dunlop, the Temperance reformer, of Gairbraid, Dumbartonshire, Scotland. His uncle William Dunlop, known as "The Tiger" to the literary world, worked with John Galt developing the Canada Company’s land in southwestern Ontario. When he visited North America in 1845, Alexander Dunlop made his way from the West Indies to New Orleans, and from there up the Mississippi, and the Illinois, to Chicago, thence across the Great Lakes, calling at Milwaukee, Mackinaw, and Detroit, before crossing into Canada in search of his "good old Tiger Uncle" at Goderich. Dunlop’s tour in the Canadas included visits to Toronto, Kingston, Montreal, Quebec, Queenston, Hamilton, and – of course – Niagara Falls. He stayed in New York, Philadelphia and Washington (where he met President and Mrs. Polk) before sailing back to Britain in 1845.

Alexander Dunlop, who added ’Graham’ to his name later in his life, was a veteran traveller before he undertook (for reasons of physical and emotional health) this trip to the United States and Canada. On every tour, even one that he took as a youth with his father, Dunlop kept a journal. In the present journal, here reproduced form the original manuscript for the first time, Dunlop writes his fresh and vivid assessment of the people and places coming under his critical eye during his four-month stay.

David Sinclair was born and educated in Toronto. He was a librarian at Victoria College, University of Toronto, and taught Canadian literature at the same College. He published essays on bibliography and literary history and was the editor of Nineteenth-Century Narrative Poems (1972).

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Germaine Warkentin is a professor emerita of the Department of English at Victoria College, University of Toronto.

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