Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Wade, Henry Gerald
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1875-1953
History
Henry Gerald Wade was born in 1875 in Port Hope, Ontario. He grew up on a farm and attended school at Bishop Ridley College. In 1910, he moved to Winnipeg where his uncle, Harry Willson, had established the Willson Stationery Company. He remained with Willson's until his retirement in 1947. Wade became an officer of the newly re-organized Winnipeg chapter of the Charles Dickens Fellowship and began collecting books and lecturing. He was one of the more ardent Dickensians to become a charter member of the Pickwick Club. Eventually, Wade's literary interests expanded to encompass Canadian writers, several of whom became personal friends. His library included a notable collection of autographed editions and letters from such prominent writers in the 1920s and 1930s as Bliss Carmen, William Arthur Deacon, Frederick Philip Grove, Hopkins Moorhouse, Charles G.D. Roberts, and Robert Stead.