He was the son of the Reverend Henry Lonsdale (d 1926), Vicar of Upperby, who was a clergyman of the Church of England, and his wife, Jane, only daughter of William Windley of Nottingham. Lonsdale was born in the northern English county of Cumberland, since incorporated within Cumbria, and was educated at Westminster School in the London borough of Westminster from May 1899 to July 1902.
He attended Durham University but did not obtain a degree. Lonsdale immigrated to British Columbia from England in 1907. Two years later, having worked at a variety of jobs on the lower mainland of British Columbia and on northern Vancouver Island, he settled in Duncan, in Vancouver Island"s Cowichan Valley, where for a time, he operated a dairy business.
In 1916, seeing an opportunity in the lack of an English-style boys" preparatory school, he founded Shawnigan Lake School, partially modelling it on Westminster School, his own English public school.
Eventually, an ageing Lonsdale was forced into retirement, which Gossage states was his undoing: "lieutenant was a mutually painful moment and one which Christopher Lonsdale found impossible to accept. He died a broken and disconsolate man two months after."
He lies buried in the French Creek Cemetery in Parkville, British Columbia.
