The following is an excerpt from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.The entire article can be found at, _http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=41773_ (http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=41773) PILOT, WILLIAM, Church of England clergyman, educator, and writer; b. 30 Dec. 1841 in Bristol, England, son of Thomas Pilot and Ann Flook; m. 4 Oct. 1870 Agnes Elizabeth Whiteway Wakeham, niece of William Vallance Whiteway*, in St John’s, and they had two sons and two daughters; grandfather of the artist Robert Wakeham Pilot; d. 25 Sept. 1913 in St John’s. The school life of the children of fishing families, who made up the great majority of Newfoundland’s population, was disrupted by the custom of putting children as young as six years to work in the fishery. The low and broken attendance that resulted distressed Pilot, who ascribed it to the apathy of parents, without fully realizing the economic necessity which motivated them. He persistently, but unsuccessfully, urged upon government the need for free and compulsory education. He was more successful in advocating standard readers and the provision of maps, globes, blackboards, and other school facilities.