William D. (Bill) Finlayson, Ph.D., F.R.S.C. is the senior-most archaeologist in Ontario archaeology with over 60 years of experience in the field. One of his many noteworthy accomplishments was being voted a Specially-Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada for his innovations in Ontario archaeology.

Bill has had a truly fascinating and unconventional career. Early on, the undertook the total excavation of the Draper site, an Ontario Woodland Tradition village in Pickering which remains the most significant site of its kind excavated in southern Ontario. In 1976, he left the Department of Anthropology at The University of Western Ontario (now Western University) to revitalize Wilfrid Jury’s Museum of Indian Archaeology and Pioneer Life. In 1985, he was appointed Lawson Professor of Canadian Archaeology, the first archaeologist to hold an endowed chair in Canadian Archaeology. This allowed Bill to devote more time to his field research in the Crawford Lake area near Milton.

The next phase in Bill’s career began in 2001 when he took early retirement, providing him with an excellent opportunity to establish his own archaeological consulting firm. This Land Archaeology Inc. provided services to land developers in the Greater Toronto Area and beyond. Since 2005 he has undertaken the salvage excavation of more than 60 19th century homesteads and farmsteads, culminating in the total excavation of Patterson Village, the largest excavation of a 19th century company town associated with the Patterson Bros. farm equipment manufacturing company.

After leaving archaeological consulting, Bill returned to his research. This included a major academic publication and accompanying popular book on his 1985 and 1988 salvage excavation of the Keffer site in the City of Vaughan with co-author Harry Lerner. Most recently, he has resumed his research on the Crawford Lake archaeological research program, now in its 35th year of operation.

Bill has travelled extensively, visiting archaeological sites in the American Southwest, Washington State, Alberta, England, Scotland, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Mexico, Peru and Easter Island.

When not pursuing his research and travelling, Bill enjoys time at his family cottage on the shores of Georgian Bay.

Bill Finlayson is thoughtfully and humbly committed to searching for better knowledge from archaeological studies whether it be in Indigenous history or Euro-Canadian history of the 19th century Ontario. The popular book series and occasional papers such as the landmark study The Keffer Site, 15th and 16th Century A.D. Ontario Woodland Tradition Frontiers, Communities, and Coalescence on the Don and Upper Rouge River Drainages, Southern Ontario, Canada, co-authored with Harry Lerner continues to reflect his ardent commitment to making archaeological findings available to the general public and to interested researchers.