SANGSTER, William (1884-1960), active in Toronto in partnership with Richard L. Derbyshire, as Derbyshire & Sangster, Architects from early 1930 to 1932. Sangster was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 21 September 1884 and he served an apprenticeship in the office of Alex W. Macnaughton, Architect of Edinburgh, from 1902 to 1904. During this period, he studied architecture and design at the School of Applied Art from 1903 to 1906, and after graduation he joined the leading firm of Peddie & Washington Brown, Architects, where he was employed as a junior architect and delineator from 1907 to early 1910.
Sangster emigrated to Canada in 1910 and he worked for Ferdinand H. Marani in Toronto for two years, then spent one year in the Detroit office of George D. Mason, and one year as assistant to Bernal A. Jones of Kitchener. After WWI his skill as a clever draftsman was noticed by Henry Sproatt who immediately hired him as a senior designer in the prominent firm of Sproatt & Rolph. He remained there for the next eleven years, from 1919 to 1930, then opened a new office in Toronto with Derbyshire. The severe economic impact of the Great Depression had a major effect on architectural work in Toronto, and their collaboration ended in 1933, and after WWII Sangster rejoined the Marani office, by then called Marani & Morris, and remained with them until his retirement in 1959. He died in Toronto on 22 August 1960 (death notice Toronto Star, 24 Aug. 1960, 34; obituary R.A.I.C. Journal, xxviii, March 1961, 74; inf. Ontario Association of Architects)