William Pearce (1848–1930), was a surveyor, statistician, planner, and administrator in western Canada. He served in the federal government from 1874 to 1904 as federal surveyor and administrator, as federal advisor for western development and as Western consultant for the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. As Inspector of Dominion Lands Agencies, he oversaw the "development and allocation of all land, forests, mineral and water resources" from "Winnipeg to the eastern foothills of the Rockies"—representing 400,000 square miles of land, earning his nickname—"Czar of the West". He was known for his work on the Bow River watershed irrigation systems that transformed lands in southern Alberta into fertile land.

Pearce moved to Calgary, Alberta in 1884 and after retiring from public service, worked for the CPR as statistician. A year before he died he donated his 80 hectares (200 acres) estate to the City of Calgary. The Pearce Estate Wetland is an urban park. Pearce "believed in urban parks" and he "is the reason so much of the Bow remains accessible" to the public as it runs through the city core.

William Pearce was born near Port Talbot, Dunwich Township, Elgin County, Ontario on February 1, 1848. His parents, John Pearce and Elizabeth Moorhouse, were United Empire Loyalists.

He studied engineering for one semester at the University of Toronto. In 1869, he began a three-year surveying apprenticeship with the Toronto-based Wadsworth and Unwing, working in the woods of northern Ontario. This experienced "inspired his life-long interest in natural resource and wilderness development." In October 1872 he was certified as a Province of Ontario Land Surveyor.

In 1873, with Wadsworth and Unwin, he worked on the "challenging Thousand Island survey project running surveys across open water and ice on the shores of the St. Lawrence River."

In 1873, Canada's first Surveyor General, Colonel John Stoughton Dennis, hired Pearce for the newly created Dominion Department of the Interior, established to "absorb the vast North American regions of Rupert's Land and the North-West Territories." The Rupert's Land Act 1868 resulted in the transfer of Rupert's Land from the control of the Hudson's Bay Company to the Dominion of Canada—representing the largest land purchase in Canada's history, which was consummated in 1870. In 1873, the federal government created the Department of the Interior—a "single department administrative jurisdiction" over all First Nations and Metis land, and all public lands west of Ontario. Pearce's professional career as federal surveyor in these years following the land acquisition, was inextricably linked to the "strategies to assert Canadian sovereignty and control over this vast region", strategies that "were foundation stones of federal policy." He worked for the Canadian Department of the Interior for thirty years, from 1874 to 1904.

As Inspector of Agencies on the Dominion Lands Board, he "was in charge of investigating all land claims (mostly Metis) from the Red River to the Rockies." His first posting was in Winnipeg in May 1874. He worked in a climate of "shifting settlements, squatting, and rampant land speculation" involving the Metis, newly arrived settlers, and land speculators. Under the 1870 Manitoba Act, Metis settlers had "outer two miles" access," which referred to access to hay two miles beyond their defined holdings to feed their livestock."

As Inspector, he oversaw the "development and allocation of all land, forests, mineral and water resources" from "Winnipeg to the eastern foothills of the Rockies"—representing 400,000 square miles of land. With such influence, he earned the nickname the "Czar of the West".