Willem de Gelder was born in the 1880s in Doorn, the son of a well-to-do banker. He came to Canada in 1910 and by the 1920s he had become a successful homesteader owning a half-section of land. But in 1922 he rented out his land, went to the Netherlands to see his family, and returning to Canada he disposed of his homestead – and vanished.