William Grant Stairs

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William Stairs
William Stairs

William Grant Stairs (July 1, 1863 – June 9, 1892) was a Canadian explorer, soldier, and adventurer.

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia ,the sixth child and third son of John Stairs and Mary Morrow, he attended school at Fort Massey Academy in Halifax, Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh, Scotland, and the Royal Military College of Canada.

After graduating as a trained engineer, Stairs spent three years working for the New Zealand Trigonometrical Survey in northern New Zealand. In 1885, he accepted the offer of a commission in the British Royal Engineers and trained in Chatham, England.

In the tradition of the great Victorian era explorers, on his first mission Capt. Stairs distinguished himself as the second in command to Henry Morton Stanley, in the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. Stairs sailed from London on January 20, 1887. He met Stanley in Suez on February 6. Their expedition started from Banana at the mouth of the Congo River on March 19 and ended in Bagamoyo, Tanzania on December 5, 1889.

During two of his three-year journeys across Africa, Stairs discovered one source of the Nile, the Semliki River, and became the first non-African to ever climb in the Ruwenzoris, reaching 10,677 ft before having to turn around. In the midst of the first three thousand mile trans-African trek he was seriously wounded in the chest by a poisonous arrow during an attack by warring natives. He would recover from his wound to continue the journey. In Dublin, Ireland there is a bronze plaque depicting this August 13, 1887 event on the statue of expedition Surgeon Major Thomas Heazle Parke who removed the arrow and sucked the poison from the wound.

Lauded in Europe and North America for his heroic exploits, on his return to England Capt. Stairs was named a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in 1890. In 1891 he transferred to the Royal Welsh Regiment and was then asked by King Léopold II of Belgium to command a mission to take control of the African copper lands of Katanga.

After leading this successful expedition, Capt. Stairs began planning for another mission into the African continent. However, in 1892, a few weeks shy of his twenty-ninth birthday, and suffering from recurring bouts of malaria, he died at Chinde, Mozambique.

Upon his passing, memorials were erected at the Royal Military College of Canada and St. George's Cathedral in Kingston, Ontario and in Rochester Cathedral near Chatham, England. A collection of artifacts from his African expeditions are at the McCord Museum, Montreal, Quebec and his diaries are preserved in the Public Archives of Nova Scotia.

Captain Stairs is buried in the European Cemetery in Chinde, Mozambique at the mouth of the Zambezi River.

[edit] Further reading

His missions are detailed in books, two of which contain Stairs' diaries compiled during the two major expeditions:

The following book provides background on the Stairs family of Halifax.

  • James Frost, Merchant Princes, Halifax's First Family of Finance, Ships and Steel, 2003, James Lorimer and Company.

The detailed personal diaries of Capt. Stairs of the day-to-day events during these two major expeditions in the quest to explore the "dark continent" portray a chilling story of battles with slave trade operators and cannibals, the threat of disease and starvation, and the daunting challenge in leading a caravan of several thousand men through the unforgiving jungles and dangerous rivers of a vast and hitherto little known land.

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