Home → Maine Resources → Maine Writers Search → Maine Writers List → A Maine Writer

Canham, Erwin (1904 - 1982)

Genre: Non-Fiction, Non-Fiction - Scholarly

Erwin D. Canham was born in Auburn, ME. His family were Christian Scientists and his father was an agricultural editor at the Lewiston Sun Journal and Erwin later served as editor of the Christian Science Monitor for over 30 years. He graduated from Bates College in 1925 and he earned a B.A. and M.A. from Oxford in 1929 which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. He became managing editor at the Monitor in 1942, editor in 1945 and editor in chief in 1964. He served as a delegate to the United Nations Geneva conference on freedom of information in 1949 and chairman of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Information for the U.S. Information Agency, was a director of the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and a trustee of Wellesley College, Bates College, Boston Public Library and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. After his retirement from the Monitor, he and his wife split their time between Concord, MA and Saipan where he was a resident commissioner of the Northern Mariana islands. He died at the age of 77 on Guam.