David Boyle

Who was David Boyle?

David Boyle was a Canadian blacksmith, teacher, archaeologist, musicologist, and historian.

Boyle arrived in Canada from Scotland in 1856 and apprenticed to a blacksmith. He would become a teacher in rural Ontario in 1865, a school principal in Elora from 1871-1881, and later a bookseller in Toronto. Boyle followed what were then "radical child-centered theories" of Johann Pestalozzi.

In 1884, Boyle became curator of the Canadian Institute Museum, a post he held until 1896, and of the Ontario Provincial Museum from 1886-1911. He cultivated a core of loyal collectors across southern and central Ontario who assisted him in archaeological digs and in collecting artifacts for the museums. These men included Andrew Frederick Hunter, George E Laidlaw, J. Hugh Hammond, John Long, Dr Thomas W. Beeman, William Wintemberg and Frederick William Waugh. He was also the Secretary of the Ontario Historical Society after 1898, and became highly influential in the local historical societies that grew up in Ontario in the late nineteenth century.