Smythe was born in
Gracehill,
County Antrim, in
Ireland on 27 December 1861 to a poor
Protestant family. His parents were Stafford Smythe and Leonora Cary. Smythe was largely self-taught and read widely. At school he won prizes in geology, botany, and physics. When he was eighteen Smythe lost all his belongings in a shipwreck while attempting to travel to New York. In 1884 he emigrated to the United States, and on the ship there met the Irish theosophist
William Quan Judge. After some time in Chicago, he spent 1887 to 1889 in Scotland. He emigrated to Canada that year and married Mary Adelaide Constantine on board the ship there and moved to Toronto in September 1889 as an agent for the Portland Cement Company, with whom he was employed for about five years. During his journalism career Smythe worked for the
Toronto Globe and
Toronto Star, and later edited the
Hamilton Herald (from 1928) and
The Toronto World. In 1891 Smythe published his first book of poetry,
Poems Grave and Gay, and founded the Toronto Theosophical Society that 16 February and served as its first president. He was the Society's primary leader for the next forty years. He worked unpaid for the theosophical publications
The Lamp and
Canadian Theosophist. In an article in the
Canadian Theosophist in 1928 Smythe criticized the
antisemitic and
anti-Catholic writings in
The Chalice by
Brother XII, the English mystic Edward Arthur Wilson who had become influential in Canadian theosophist circles. According to Greg Gatenby Smythe was "one of the best known newspaper men in Canada, and serious critics would call him one of the best poets in the nation". His writing was influenced by the
Celtic Revival of such writers as fellow theosophists
W. B. Yeats and
George William Russell; he corresponded with Russell, as well as with
Emma Goldman, and associated with radical thinkers and writers. Smythe died 6 October 1947 at
St. Joseph's Hospital in
Hamilton, Ontario. ==Personal life==