Born in Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland in 1777, William Gilkison was the eldest son of David Gilkison, a partner in a small shipbuilding company. William Gilkison was a sailor, adventurer, land speculator, and founder of Elora. When he was a young man, he was a merchant seaman and was captured by the French during the Napoleonic Wars. After he escaped, he decided to emigrate to America, taking with him letters of reference to John Jacob Astor, founder of the great North West Company. Astor gave him command of a schooner on Lake Erie and he sailed her until 1803, when he married Isabella Grant, the daughter of Alexander Grant, commodore of the Great Lakes in 1777 and Administrator of Upper Canada in 1805.

After his marriage, he worked with his father-in-law. One of Gilkison's brothers-in-law was Thomas Dickson, cousin of Robert Hamilton, brother of William Dickson, the founder of Galt, and a prominent businessman in his own right. Gilkison had a famous cousin of his own; he was John Galt, the superintendent of the Canada Company and founder of Guelph.

Gilkison served in the War of 1812 and was at the Battle of Crysler's Farm. After the war, he returned to Scotland to educate his six children. The air must have suited him because his other five children were born there. His wife died in 1826, and, in 1832, he decided to join his children, some of whom had returned to Canada. He bought a large lot on the west bank of the Grand River in what is now West Brant in the City of Brantford. There he established a farm, which he called Oak Bank after his Glasgow home. The house he built is still standing as 71 Gilkison Street but the farm has been split up and covered in houses.

He must have liked the land on the Grand River because, when he heard that land was available further upriver, he bought about 14,000 acres of land in Nichol Township from Col. Thomas Clark. After visiting the area, he commissioned Lewis Burwell to lay out a town, which he named Elora, at the Falls of the Grand. Unfortunately, he never got to see the results, because he died suddenly in April 1833.