The United Church of Canada was founded in 1925 as a merger of the Methodist Church of Canada, the Congregational Union of Ontario and Quebec, part of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and the Association of Local Union Churches.
Robert (Bob) Edmund Dorsey was born in Hamilton, Ontario on December 4, 1919 to Annie and Josiah (Joe) Joshua Dorsey. Dorsey attended McMaster University and graduated with a BA in 1941. He excelled in tennis and badminton, winning the singles tennis championship in a district meet in 1939, and competing in badminton tournaments at the Thistle Club to become Hamilton’s singles champion for two consecutive years.
During his time at McMaster, Dorsey trained as a cadet in the McMaster Contingent of the Canadian Officers' Training Corps (COTC). He completed his military training in 2 years and was named a 2nd lieutenant in 1942, enlisting in active service in May of the same year. While stationed at Camp Gordon, Dorsey completed the requirements to become a lieutenant. He then acted as a training centre instructor in Simcoe and Brantford. In 1943, he married Florence Kathleen Riley. Florence and Dorsey had one son, John Josiah, born February 1, 1944, whom Dorsey never had the opportunity to meet.
After being transferred to the Canadian Army (Active Force) Overseas, Dorsey boarded a ship for England, where he joined to the 5th Canadian Reinforcement Unit. He was assigned to the 7th Brigade Group, 3rd Canadian Division a month later. In the spring of 1944, Dorsey became a reinforcement officer for the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa, a machine gun and mortar regiment designated for active service. Dorsey was involved in their pre-invasion training prior to the D-Day operation. He co-founded a frontline regimental newspaper called “The Rocket.” Dorsey was killed at Normandy on June 7, 1944. He was given full military honours in a burial ceremony at Beny-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery, Reviers in Calvados, France.
Arthur Medland served as a Leading Aircraftman (1714975) with the RAF stationed at Maintenance Unit 351 serving the British North African Force. Medland had family in Verdun, Quebec, including his Uncle William White, whose son Douglas, he also corresponded with. Douglas White served on the HMCS Owen Sound.
Daniel David Moses is an award-winning poet, playwright, and essayist who is of Delaware descent. He grew up on a farm on Six Nations lands near Brantford, Ontario, and he has a B.A. from York University and a M.F.A. from UBC.
Daniel David Moses is known for his original voice and his ability to portray a thriving, “organic” native culture in his plays, eschewing the tragic motif often apparent in depictions of native people. His plays include Coyote City (1988), Big Buck City (1991), Almighty Voice and His Wife (1991), and The Witch of Niagara (1998), and Moses’ works of poetry include Delicate Bodies (1980) and The White Line (1990). He has been a writer-in-residence at various institutions including Theatre Passe Muraille, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the University of British Columbia, the University of Western Ontario, the University of Windsor, the University of Toronto (Scarborough), the Sage Hill Writing Experience, McMaster University, and Concordia University. He has also served on various boards relating to native culture and the arts, including being a founding member of the Committee to Re-establish the Trickster. Moses passed away on 13 July 2020, at the age of 68.
Jessie Sarah Graham was born in 1906. She married Elmore Joselin, and they lived in Scarborough, Toronto, where their daughter, Beverley was born. Jessie Joselin died in 1998.
During the Second World War, Mrs. Joselin volunteered with the Salvation Army’s Red Shield Women’s Auxiliary affiliated with Birch Cliff School in Scarborough. She led a group that made children’s clothing (especially layettes) for British families whose homes had been destroyed by German bombs. The effort continued after the war and was extended to French families.
Mrs. Joselin’s father was an art teacher in Toronto. One of his students, Bettina (‘Bun’) Somers, from England, befriended Jessie. In addition to art, Somers also studied nursing. When it was time for Jessie to give birth to Beverley, Somers delivered her. Upon her return to England, Somers worked as a ‘tracer’ during the Second World War. The job of a tracer was to trace drawings prepared by draughtsmen to facilitate the production of blueprint copies.
Henry Eugene (Hank) Novak was a native of Hamilton, a McMaster student, and an RCAF officer during the Second World War. He was killed in action on January 17, 1945.
A more detailed biographical note by Dr. C.M. Johnston can be found at <a href="http://alumni.os.mcmaster.ca/s/1439/index.aspx?pgid=682">‘Discover McMaster’s World War II Honour Roll’</a>.
Born in the Netherlands in 1938, Marianne Brandis (full last name: “Brender à Brandis”) immigrated with her family in 1947 to Terrace, BC and currently lives in Stratford, Ontario. She was educated at UBC, St. Francis Xavier University, and McMaster University from which she graduated with a BA in 1960 and MA in 1964.
Brandis worked for a time as a copywriter for CKOC in Hamilton and CBC in Toronto in the 1960s. She also taught creative writing and English literature at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (Ryerson University) from 1967 until she resigned in 1989 at the age of 50 after which she pursued writing full-time. She continues to teach creative writing and memoir writing workshops.
Brandis’ writings contain diverse topics and include historical fiction, creative non-fiction, memoir, and biography genres. In her historical works, she deals with significant events and the private and daily lives of individuals. Perhaps best known are Brandis’ historical books for younger readers which were published in the 1980s and 1990s, and out of these, The Tinderbox (1982), The Quarter-Pie Window (1985), The Sign of the Scales (1990), Fire Ship (1992), and Rebellion (1996) received various awards and commendations. Brandis’ most recent projects have been creative non-fiction and other life-writing works. Brandis has collaborated extensively with her brother Gerard Brender à Brandis, the wood engraver and bookwright, and whose fonds is also at McMaster.
Mattha (“Madzy”) Cornelia Brender à Brandis (née van Vollenhoven) (1910-1984), known as “Madzy”, was a writer who was born in Scheveningen, Holland in 1910. She was the third of four children. She studied law in Leiden, but before completing her degree, she married Wim (“Bill”) Brender à Brandis. They had three children: Marianne Brandis, Gerard Brender à Brandis, and Joost (“Jock”) Brender à Brandis. They lived briefly in New York City, but they moved back to Holland just as World War II began. Wim was ultimately sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in 1942, and during this time, Madzy cared for their children in Nazi occupied Netherlands. The family immigrated to northern B.C. in 1947 and lived on a farm for nine years. In 1958, Madzy and Bill moved to Antigonish, Nova Scotia and worked at St. Francis Xavier University, and in 1959 they moved to Burlington, Ontario.
Madzy wrote in both Dutch and English, and much of her writing was autobiographical and details her experience as an immigrant. She wrote columns for four different newspapers in Holland and Canada; sixty-eight columns and other short works remain, though she wrote more that have not survived. She wrote a memoir about life on their farm in B.C. titled Land for our Son, published under the name Maxine Brandis, and which she translated into Dutch. She also wrote short stories and a great deal of unpublished material for family members, such as diaries, memoirs, letters, etc. Madzy contracted rheumatoid arthritis while still living in WWII Holland, and by 1972, unable to use her hands to write, she was using a tape recorder for correspondence, research, and for recording family memories.
Peter Calamai spent almost five decades as a newspaper reporter and editor working for major Canadian newspapers. He obtained a B.Sc. in physics from McMaster University in 1965, and while a student, he was editor-in-chief of the undergraduate student newspaper The Silhouette during which it was named the best student newspaper in Canada. Calamai remains involved in McMaster’s alumni community.
Best known for his award-winning 1987 adult literacy series, Calamai has worked on a number of high-profile stories in Washington, Europe, Africa, and Ottawa; he has worked as national and foreign correspondents for Southam News (1969-1990), editorial pages editor at The Ottawa Citizen (1990-1996), and national science reporter at the Toronto Star (1998-2008). Calamai has also worked as a freelance reporter, photographer, consultant, speech writer, and instructor.
An advocate for science, literacy, and journalistic professionalism, Calamai has been nationally recognized for his involvement in public issues and exceptional news reporting and writing through his Order of Canada (2014) and Diamond Jubilee Medal, among numerous other awards. Remaining dedicated to the promotion of accurate science reporting, he is a founding member of the Canadian Science Writers’ Association and the Science Media Centre of Canada.
Calamai passed away at the age of 75, in January 2019.
John Stoughton Dennis was a surveyor, soldier, and public servant. Born in Kingston, Dennis had a long surveying career in Ontario and Manitoba, as well as serving as a militia officer, and public servant. He was appointed Canada’s first surveyor general in 1871. In addition, he was an active entrepreneur. The documents in this collection are related to a timber felling venture on the Magnetawan River near Parry Sound, Ontario.
Henri de Maillé, marquis de Carman, was a French nobleman who flourished in the late 17th century. In 1674 he married Marie Anne du Puy de Murinées; their only child, Donatien, was the maternal grandfather and namesake of Donatien Alphonse François — better known by his title, the Marquis de Sade.
Robert and Susan Evans lived in London, England. They had two sons, Victor and Cecil and a daughter, Winifred. Not long before the start of the First World War they moved to a farm in Gaston, Oregon, and later to Portland. They maintained contact with a number of people in England, including Robert’s sister Emily, Susan’s sister Mary, and a family friend William Waterson.
Victor and Cecil Evans were brothers who fought in the First World War. Cecil (2557483) served as a gunner and Victor (2557484) was a driver.
Victor Roland Evans, 27 July 1896, and Cecil John Robert Evans, 7 April 1898, were born in London, England, to Susan and Robert Evans and later moved to Portland, Oregon. The brothers travelled together from Portland to Victoria, BC and enlisted on 1 March 1918.
Both brothers were sent to France and served with the Canadian Field Artillery.
Stuart McLean was a Canadian radio broadcaster and author, best known as the host of the CBC Radio program The Vinyl Café where he began in 1994. He was born in Montreal in 1948. He attended Lower Canada College in Montreal, and graduated from Sir George Williams University with a B.A. degree in 1971. McLean began his broadcasting career making radio documentaries for CBC Radio's Sunday Morning from 1978-1982. In 1979 he won an ACTRA award for Best Radio Documentary for his contribution to the program's coverage of the Jonestown massacre. From 1982-1994, McLean appeared on Monday mornings with Peter Gzowski on Morningside. McLean was a co-writer of a feature film titled, Looking for Miracles (Sullivan Films for Disney Studios, 1989). In 1994 he created the show The Vinyl Café. McLean retired as Professor Emeritus in 2004 from Ryerson University in Toronto where he was director of the broadcast division of the School of Journalism. Stuart McLean died in 2017.
McLean published in fiction and non-fiction. His first book, The Morningside World of Stuart McLean was published in 1989. He also wrote Welcome Home: Travels in Small Town Canada, and edited the collection When We Were Young. Welcome Home was chosen by the Canadian Authors’ Association as the best non-fiction book of 1993. He published a series of Vinyl Café books, the first of which is Stories from Vinyl Café in 1995. Since 1998 McLean has toured with the Vinyl Café to theatres across Canada and the United States. His awards include a B’Nai Brith Award for Human Rights in Broadcast Journalism. He is a three-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. In 2011 McLean was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. He has been awarded Honourary Doctorates from several universities, including one from McMaster in 2014. McLean passed away on the 15th of February, 2017, at the age of 68.
Ruth has long been fascinated with the lives of women of the mythology of Ancient Greece and goddesses of the Greek Pantheon as they are presented in Greek mythology and she has written extensively about them in poetry. There are three epics and one stand-alone volume. All her books are published by Colombo & Company.
Thomas Cunningham (Tom) Wilson (b. 1959) is a Canadian rock musician and songwriter based in Hamilton. He is also an author and visual artist. At the age of 53, he learned that he was adopted and that his ancestry is Mohawk.
As a musician, Wilson has a solo career and was also a founding member of The Florida Razors (1981-1987), Junkhouse (1989-1997), Blackie and the Rodeo Kings (1996 onward), and Lee Harvey Osmond (2009 onward). Collectively, they have recorded at least 18 albums.
He is the author of the acclaimed memoir Beautiful Scars: Steeltown Secrets, Mohawk Skywalkers and the Road Home, published by Doubleday Canada in 2017.
The first exhibition of his visual art was held at the Art Gallery of Burlington in 2018-2019.
Sam Lipshitz was born on 14 February 1910 in Radom, Poland. He was sent to live with an aunt in Montreal at age 17, where he joined the Jewish Cultural Club of Montreal. He joined the Young Communist League while working at the Jewish Public Library. He was dismissed from the library following the 1929 Hebron Massacre because he aligned himself with the Soviet interpretation of the event. He married Manya Lipshitz on 20 January 1930 and they settled in Toronto. He became editor of Der Kamf (later renamed Vochenblatt) in 1932. He was appointed secretary of the party’s Anti-Fascist Committee in 1933, became head of the Jewish National Committee and sat on the Party’s Central Committee from 1943 to 1946. He was arrested and briefly detained in the Don Jail with Tim Buck and fourteen other party leaders in 1942. He joined the executive of the Canadian Jewish Congress in 1943. Through the Congress, he was sent to Poland in 1945 to report on the condition of Jews in the aftermath of the Holocaust. He and Manya visited the USSR in 1956 and shortly following their return, they resigned from the Communist Party. Sam went on to a career as an editor, author, and printer.
Rose Eizenstraus was born in 1913. Her parents were socialist atheists, and she was raised in the Toronto Jewish community. At an early age, she became involved in the Young Pioneers. In 1939, she was Tim Buck’s private secretary. Rose was one of the founding members of the New Theatre Group in Montreal. In Toronto, she was involved in the Belmont Theatre Group and the Theatre of Action. She performed in the notorious play, Eight Men Speak, in the role of Zelda, during its sole performance at Toronto’s Standard Theatre on December 4, 1933.
Rose was the wife of Dave Kashtan.
Stewart Smith was born in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba. His father, A.E. Smith, was a social gospel church minister in Brandon and leader of the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919. In 1923, Stewart moved to Toronto and began organizing. The following year he accepted an offer from the CPC to become the National Secretary of the Young Communist League. In 1926, he attended the Lenin School in Moscow and was later appointed to the Political Bureau of the CPC. In 1937, he was elected alderman on the Toronto City Council as the first communist elected to office in Toronto’s history. In 1946, he was elected to the Board of Control. Stewart was a prominent member of the Labor-Progressive Party of Ontario and served as party leader between 1951 and 1957. He resigned from the Communist Party of Canada in 1957.
Morris Biderman was born in 1908 in Chenchine, a small town near Kielce, Poland. He was the youngest of five sons; his father immigrated to Canada when he was four years old. Morris’s childhood memories of Poland include the Russian and German troops fighting in his town during the Great War, and the 1918 Kielce Pogrom, which prompted his family to join his father in Toronto. The family emigrated to Canada in 1920, living on Leonard Avenue, then later Bellevue Avenue, in Toronto; he attended Ryerson Public School until he dropped out at age 16. Morris then entered the trades as a needle worker and became involved in Leftist politics. He joined the Freedom Choir (Freiheit Gesang), which was held at Alhambra Hall, 450 Spadina Avenue, which housed the Labour League (a Toronto-based, Communist-led secular Jewish organization) and in 1927 he joined the Young Communist League. He worked as an under presser and was later hired as an operator for sportswear at Eaton’s, where he worked until 1937.
In 1937, Morris joined the Labour League and became manager of Der Kamf, the Communist weekly Yiddish newspaper, later renamed Der Vochenblatt. When the Communist party was briefly outlawed during the Second World War, Der Kamf was closed, and Morris returned to work in the sportswear industry. In 1942, he became president of the Labour League. In 1945, he was elected as the first national secretary to the newly founded United Jewish People’s Order. In 1955, Morris was one of eight delegates in a delegation chosen by the Canada-Soviet Friendship Society who visited the Soviet Union. Following the revelations of Khrushchev’s Secret Speech in 1956, Morris broke with the Communist Party and resigned from the UJPO at their annual conference held in December 1959 at Toronto’s Union Station. He later co-founded a new organization, the New Fraternal Jewish Association. In 2000, he wrote his memoir, A Life on the Jewish Left: An Immigrant’s Experience (Toronto: Onward Publishing).
Morris married Minnie Usprich (1909-2001) in September 1929. Morris’ older brother Dave Biderman is the father of Ruth Borchiver.
Ruth Ann Borchiver was a social worker and psychologist. Her father, David Biderman, joined the Communist Party of Canada in 1921. She grew up speaking Yiddish and attended leftist shules. As a teenager, she briefly taught Yiddish at the Morris Winchevsky Shule in Toronto before pursuing a career in social work. She was head of Jewish Child and Family Services until the late 1950s. In 1991, she completed a Doctor of Education in applied psychology at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation, based on interviews with former members of the Communist movement in Canada, was titled: “A Social-Psychological Analysis of Millennial Thought in the Communist Party of Canada: 1921-1957.
