BRUCE, WILLIAM THOMAS (1841-1928)

BRUCE, WILLIAM THOMAS, Presbyterian minister, Tabusintac and Burnt Church, 1895-1900; b. Middle Musquodoboit, N.S., 1841, s/o Joseph Bruce and Mary Alice Logan; m. 1877, Alice Mary Straton, formerly of Aberdeen, Scotland; d. Truro, N.S., 19 Sep 1928.

William T. Bruce was educated at Dalhousie University (BA 1872) and trained in medicine at the affiliated Halifax Medical College (MD 1875). He was also trained for the ministry at the Presbyterian College in Halifax and did a year of further study at the University of Edinburgh. His desire was to serve as a medical missionary in a foreign field, probably in the New Hebrides, where two of his sisters were missionaries, "but circumstances closed the door to the fulfillment of his high purpose."

Ordained in 1876, Bruce ministered within the Pictou and Truro presbyteries in Nova Scotia until 1894. In 1895 he was called to Tabusintac and Burnt Church, where the pulpits had been vacant since the departure of the Rev. James Rosborough in 1892. During his term, on 3 September 1899, a new St David's Church was opened at Burnt Church.

In 1900 Bruce applied for a retirement pension on the grounds of failing health. He spent the rest of his life in Truro, where he was a church elder. He and his wife, Alice M. Straton, raised two daughters and six sons.