During the War of 1812, many Canadian families suffered great losses of property and possessions through depredations of the military on both sides. By 1820, most of the claims had still not been honoured and the claimants were very distressed. They engaged John Galt to lobby for them with the British Government.

Galt was an extraordinary man. The son of a sea captain, he was born in 1779 in Irvine, Scotland and was a cousin to Captain William Gilkison, later a landowner in Upper Canada. Although he was involved in business from the age of 16, he was a prolific writer of plays, poems, biographies, novels, and travel guides. The turning point in his career came in 1819 when he was hired to lobby for the Glasgow-Edinburgh Canal with the British Government. This brought him to the attention of the Canadian claimants, who then hired him for a similar role.

Meeting with little interest from the government, Galt sought to solve the problem in a different way. One of the reasons why Galt was making little headway initially was that Britain had just gone through about twenty years of war with France and was broke. So Galt thought he might be able to sell the solution of the problem as a way to have the British Government receive money instead of paying it out. His proposal was to form a company, raise capital, and buy all available land in Upper Canada from the Crown. Then the company would settle people on the land, and use the money they got from the settlers to pay off the claimants. Any profits would go back to the company. So was born the Canada Company.

After receiving its charter in 1823, the company eventually was to buy more than two million acres of land including the Huron Tract, an area of land between the present Kitchener and Lake Huron, and containing Goderich and Stratford. Most of the townships in the Huron Tract were named after directors of the Canada Company (Bosanquet, Williams, and so on).

Galt was appointed to represent the company in Canada and he arrived there in January 1827. He appointed Dr. William "Tiger" Dunlop as the Warden of the Forests, virtually his deputy. Right from the start, Galt clashed with the directors. Galt took the long view that helping settlers and putting money into developing the property would result in large profits in the future. The directors were more interested in reaping gains as quickly as possible by spending less and selling more. After only two stormy years in Canada, Galt was replaced in 1829. He returned to England and was promptly imprisoned for debt. He managed to regain his freedom but for the rest of his life was forced to write to live. He died in 1839 and his widow moved back to Canada to join her three sons who were already there.