• Home
• People
• Richard H. G. Bonnycastle

Richard H. G. Bonnycastle

Richard Henry Gardyn Bonnycastle (August 25, 1903 - September 29, 1968) was a Canadian lawyer, fur trader, adventurer, and a businessman who helped found and then owned the romance novel publishing company, Harlequin Enterprises.Born in Binscarth, Manitoba, Richard was the first of the six children Ellen Boulton and her husband Angus L. Bonnycastle, a lawyer and provincial politician. [1] He was educated at University of Trinity College in Toronto, Ontario and at England's Oxford University where he toured Europe as a member of the university's ice hockey team which included a future Prime Minister of Canada, Lester Pearson, and a future Governor General of Canada, Roland Michener.In 1925, Richard Bonnycastle went to work for the Hudson's Bay Company. Between 1926 and 1937 he worked as a junior accountant before winding up as district manager for its western Arctic operations. In 1984, his diaries of the years he spent in the north were edited and compiled by journalist and author Heather Robertson and published as A Gentleman Adventurer: The Arctic Diaries of R.H.G. Bonnycastle. [2]In 1931, Richard Bonnycastle married Mary Northwood. The couple had three children.