R.W. Hardy was a Methodist and later United Church minister, who served congregations in Saskatchewan and British Columbia. He was born in 1890 and spent his childhood in Ontario, before attending the University of Toronto. He was ordained and married in June 1921, in Whitby, Ontario. He moved west and was assigned by the Methodist Church to the hospital in Hafford, Saskatchewan. From 1925 to 1930, Hardy served as a United Church minister in Speers and then Maymont, before transferring to Cranbrook, B.C.