Stephen Leacock was born in Swanmore, Hamshire, England in 1869. Emigrating to Canada in 1867, the Leacock family settled on a farm a few miles south of Lake Simcoe near the village of Sutton, Ontario. Leacock graduated from Upper Canada College in 1887 and Strathroy Collegiate Institute in 1888. He worked as a high school teacher in several schools and became housemaster of Upper Canada College. He obtained an honours B.A. from the University of Toronto in 1891 and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1903. Leacock married Beatrix (Trix) Hamilton, an aspiring actress, in 1900. He began lecturing at McGill University in the early 1900s and was appointed as the William Dow Professor of Political Economy and Chair of the Department of Economics and Political Science in 1908. He remained in this position until he retired in 1936. Leacock, along with eleven colleagues, founded the Unversity Club of Montreal. Throughout his life he enjoyed considerable success as an author. His first and most profitable book was Elements of Political Science (1906). He became famous throughout Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom for both his public lectures and publications. Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912) is considered to be his literary masterpiece. He won a Governor General's Award for My Discovery of the West: A Discussion of East and West in Canada. Leacock died in Toronto in 1944 leaving three unfinished books, including his autobiography Last Leaves (1945), which were published posthumously.