The school itself is named after Robert Land, a United Empire Loyalist originally from New York who migrated into what later became Upper Canada with his family in the mid-1780s, in the wake of the American Revolutionary War. Land is often seen as one of the first inhabitants of modern-day Hamilton, Ontario. The Academy's founder and former headmaster (prior to 2015), Lt. Col. Scott Bowman, is a direct descendant of Land.[clarification needed]