John Charles Dent

The Canadian Portrait Gallery John Charles Dent

The Metropolitan of Canada is the oldest Bishop in British North America, and, with one exception, the oldest Colonial Bishop now living. He is an Englishman by birth and education, and was born on the 19th of December, 1804. He was educated principally at Wadham College, Oxford, where he early exhibited great fondness for classics and polite literature. He entered at Wadham in 1823, taking his degree in honours (second class) in 1826, and becoming an M. A. in 1830. In 1828 he was made a deacon, and in the following year he was ordained a priest. For three years he filled a curacy in a small town in Devonshire, and from 1831 to 1838 officiated as minister of St. John's Chapel, in Truro, Cornwall.