Colonel William Patrick Anderson was born on September 4, 1851, in Levis, Quebec.

He was a Canadian civil engineer. He was educated at Bishop's University. After studying for a year at Manitoba College, he began work as a railway and township surveyor. In 1874, he began to work as a draftsman at the Department of Marine and Fisheries in Ottawa, working on the design of lighthouses. In 1880, Anderson became Chief Engineer of the department, a position he held until his retirement in 1919. As the Superintendent of Lighthouses, he was responsible for many of the more notable lighthouses in Canada. During his career, he designed and built more than 500 lighthouses and fifty fog-alarm stations across Canada, e.g., the Colchester Reef lighthouse (1885) on a caisson in Lake Erie, the first-order fog siren station on Belle Isle (Newfoundland and Labrador, 1898), and the nine flying buttress lighthouses at Pointe-au-Pere, Escarpment Bagot, Estevan Point, Michipicoten Island, Caribou Island, Belle Isle Northeast, Cape Bauld, Cape Norman, and Cape Anguille. Near the end of his career, Anderson designed the visually appealing Point Abino Lighthouse near Fort Erie, Ontario. He joined the Canadian Militia in 1864 and participated in the First and Second Fenian Raids (1866-1871). Later, he commanded the Ottawa and Carleton Rifles regiment in the Militia. He was made a companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George in 1913. He was the founder and editor of the Canadian Militia Gazette and Chairman of the Geographic Board of Canada (1911-1913, 1925-1926). Anderson was a charter member of the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers and the Engineering Institute of Canada. He served as Chair of the Ottawa Public School Board and contributed many articles to Encyclopedia Britannica.

In 1876, he married Dorothea Susannah Small (1856–1949). He died on February 1, 1927, in Ottawa, Canada.