A Canadian Visionary

Henry Wentworth Monk was born in 1827 on a farm along the Ottawa River in the community of March, Upper Canada (present-day Kanata), on land that had been awarded to his father, Captain John Benning Monk, by the British government in recognition of military service during the Napoleonic Wars. Monk’s godfather, Hamnett Pinhey of March, a governor of the Blue Coat School, or Christ’s Hospital, in London, arranged for Monk to attend the strict Protestant school from age seven to fifteen. This experience left Monk with a strong identification with the exiled.

Returning to March in 1842, he no longer fit into rural pioneer life. He tried studying for the Anglican ministry, but became disillusioned after a year by the strict adherence to church doctrine and lack of interest in searching for “the truth.” Raised on the Old Testament, he was fascinated by prophesies regarding the return of the Jews to Palestine. Over the next five years, while working on the farm, he studied...