DRUMMOND, WILLIAM HENRY Cana dian poet, was born at Mohill in Co. Leitrim, Ireland, the son of an officer in the Royal Irish Constabulary, who emigrated with his family to Canada in about 1864. In 1869 Drummond obtained work as a telegraph operator at Bord-a-Plouffe on the Riviere des Prairies ; but he afterwards studied medicine at Bishop's college, Lennoxville, where he took his degree in 1884. From 1888 he practised medicine in Montreal, where he wrote verse in his leisure time. In 1905 he left his Montreal practice to look after the Drummond mines which he owned in conjunction with his brothers. His poems, some of the best known of which are The Habitant (1897), Phil-O-Rum's Canoe (1898) and Johnnie Court neau (1901) have been collected, with an introduction by Louis Frechelte and an appreciation by Neil Munro (1912) .
See J. F. Macdonald, William Henry Drummond (1925) .