Salem Bland was born in 1859 in Lachute, Quebec, and was ordained a minister first in the Methodist Church and subsequently in the United Church of Canada. He was considered to be one of the most powerful preachers and platform orators in his day. In the later part of his life he began a notable career as a wide-ranging journalist for the Toronto Daily Sat. He died, the grand old man of the Social Gospel and reform, in 1950.