Colonel Gerald William Lingen Nicholson CD (6 January 1902 – 28 February 1980) was a British-Canadian soldier, historian, author, and teacher.

Several years after graduating from Queen's, Nicholson returned to school and in 1935 obtained a Bachelor of Paedagogy degree from the University of Toronto.

Once Nicholson finished his degree in Toronto the couple returned to Saskatchewan, where Gerald took a job as the principal at Battleford Collegiate Institute.

In 1940, at the age of 38, he joined the Canadian Army and was commissioned into the Prince Albert and Battleford Volunteers, a Non-Permanent Active Militia regiment.

A year later, on 5 March 1942, the 1st Battalion, Prince Albert Volunteers was activated and transferred to Vernon Military Camp as part of the 19th Infantry Brigade.

Upon his departure, a reporter for the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix noted, "Mr. Nicholson will be missed in Biggar, as in a short time here he has taken part in public activities, serving as president of the Canadian Club, leader of St. Paul's Church choir, and taken an interest in the dramatic and musical life of the town.

[6] Upon his retirement in September, Nicholson joined the staff of Nepean High School in Ottawa's Highland Park neighbourhood, where he taught English for a single year.

In the introduction to the 2015 reissue of the book, Mark Osborne Humphries notes, "between 1918 and 1962, there were three abortive attempts to write Canada's official history of the Great War, but successive historians found it impossible to escape backroom intriguing, personal rivalries, and funding cuts.

Nicholson's final monograph was the humorous memoir Keep Your Forks: Fifty Years at Red Pine Camp, published in the fall of 1979, months before his death.

Beginning in 1943 the Nicholsons stayed annually at Red Pine Camp, a summer resort on Golden Lake in the Ottawa Valley.

The first, the Gerald William Lingen Nicholson fonds, is held at Library and Archives Canada and contains both personal information as well as his research material.