Sir William Pearce Howland, KCMG, CB, PC (29 May 1811 – 1 January 1907) served as the second Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, from 1868 to 1873.

In 1852 he acquired a grist mill, sawmill, and general store in Kleinburg, whose operations he left to his brother Henry Stark Howland.

In 1906, at the request of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Prime Minister of Canada, Howland prepared an autobiography that included extensive appendices about politics in the 1860s.

[2] On 12 July 1843, Sir William Pearce Howland married Mary Ann (or Marianne) Blyth, the widow of David Webb, a ship's captain.

[3] William Pearce Howland, then a Minister of the Crown in Canada married Susannah Julia, daughter of Shrewsbury, Esquire, on 21 November 1865.