William Francis Ganong FRSC (19 February 1864 – 7 September 1941) was a Canadian botanist, historian and cartographer.

It was expected that young William would enter the family business when he came of age, but early on, he showed an interest in the natural world.

He was an early naturalist and by the age of seventeen, he had first-hand knowledge of numerous rivers and coastal areas of New Brunswick as well as the flora and fauna of the province.

His explorations would continue throughout his life, both on his own and with one or more companions including Arthur H. Pierce, Mauran I. Furbish and George Upham Hay.

Ganong expanded and revised Olmsted's planting specifications to make the entire campus an arboretum, and they reworked the herbaceous beds as a "systematics garden" after the Engler-Prantl classification system.

Under his administration, Smith's Botany department reached a peak in student enrollment, size of staff, and number of courses.

He ensured that the range and quality of equipment available to students was high, and the department was able to attain a positive academic reputation.

He acquired a working knowledge of the Maliseet and Mi'kmaq languages, and with that understanding and consultation with linguists and native historians, he undertook an investigation of the aboriginal place names in the Maritime Provinces, publishing a series of six articles in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada between 1911 and 1928.

Later, in the 1930s, he published an additional nine articles in the Transactions on what he termed the crucial maps in the early cartography and place-nomenclature of the region.

Another mountain to the north of Mount Carleton was named for Ganong in 1901 by his friend and naturalist Mauran Furbish.

In addition to document-based research and translation, Ganong prepared maps, took photographs and gave slide presentations.

[12] He was also the first to pose a scientific explanation for the often sighted Ghost Ship of Northumberland Strait suggesting it was an electrical illusion.