Robert Whyte was born in 1874 and was married during the time he served with the London Scottish. His rank rose from Captain to Lieutenant Colonel. At the end of the war he attempted with Capt. R.M. Robertson to prepare a history of the Regiment that would be different than the official one by James H. Lindsay.
William Ready was born in Cardiff, Wales in 1914. He began his career as an acquisitions librarian at Stanford University. He was chief librarian at Marquette University before coming to McMaster University. He was responsible for bringing the J. R. R. Tolkein fonds to Marquette; at McMaster his most famous acquisition was that of the Bertrand Russell fonds. He was also a writer, publishing short stories and book reviews. His autobiography, Files on Parade, was published posthumously in 1982. He died on 12 September 1981 in Victoria, British Columbia, not long after he had retired from McMaster University.
Leslie McFarlane, journalist, author, playwright, screen writer, and film director, was born Charles Leslie McFarlane in Carleton Place, Ontario on 25 September 1902. His parents were John Henry McFarlane and Rebecca Barnett. Leslie worked as a journalist for the Sudbury Star and other newspapers in Northern Ontario before briefly moving to the United States in the mid-1920s. There he came in contact with the Stratemeyer Syndicate.
Returning to Canada, McFarlane began to write for the Syndicate's Dave Fearless series in 1926, writing seven books under the name of Roy Rockwood. Later the same year, he wrote the first book of the Hardy Boys series, again for the Syndicate, under the pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon. McFarlane wrote over twenty books for the series during the next twenty years. He also wrote the first three books of the Dana Girls series for the Syndicate, written under the name Carolyn Keene, in 1933. While writing these juvenile books, he wrote two novels and scores of short stories and novelettes for pulp and other magazines, including Maclean's, for whom McFarlane became an editor in the 1930s. He then wrote plays for CBC Radio's Canadian Theatre of the Air between 1938 and 1943.
In 1943, he joined the National Film Board of Canada as a documentary film writer and director. He also wrote speeches for the Minister of Munitions and Supply during the Second World War. In the 1950s, he wrote television plays for the CBC, becoming head of the television drama script department in 1958. He later returned to writing children's books, including the successful McGonigle Scores!, in 1966. His autobiography, Ghost of the Hardy Boys, was published in 1976. McFarlane and his first wife Amy Arnold had three children: Patricia, Brian, and Norah. Amy died in 1955, and he later married Bea Kenney. Leslie McFarlane died on 6 September 1977 in Whitby, Ontario.
Norman Frederick Simpson, playwright, was born in London on 29 January 1919. He was educated at the University of London and for many years made his living as a teacher. He established his reputation as a playwright in the Ionesco line with two productions in the late 1950s: A Resounding Tinkle, produced in 1957 and published in 1958 and One Way Pendulum, produced in 1959 and published in 1960. These plays present the absurd in a deadpan manner. Simpson has also written for radio and television and published one novel Harry Bleachbaker (1976). From 1976 to 1978 he was literary manager of the Royal Court Theatre. He died on August 27, 2011.
Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, composer, scholar and teacher, was born at Bournemouth on 27 February 1848. He was educated at Eton College and Exeter College, Oxford. He composed piano music and songs throughout his career while writing much less chamber and orchestral music as he grew older. He joined the staff of the Royal College of Music when it opened in 1883 and remained on staff until his death. For a brief period, 1900-1908, he also taught music at Oxford. He was knighted in 1898. He died in Rustington, Sussex, on 7 October 1918.
Guy Philip Debenham (MD and FRCS), surgeon and engraver, was born in Scarborough, England on 27 January 1923, the son of Leonard Debenham and Anna (née Archer-Shee). He was educated at Stonyhurst College, and at the age of 21 he graduated with a degree in medicine from the University of Edinburgh. Between 1945 and 1948 he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in the Middle East and was awarded the Palestine Medal for his service. After emigrating to Canada in 1958, he practiced medicine at several locations (Bassano, Alberta, and in Parry Sound and Hagersville, Ont.). In 1965 he and his family moved to St. Catharines where he worked as a surgeon at the Hotel Dieu Hospital and St. Catharines General Hospital. In the early 1970s he moved to Niagara-on-the-Lake. In 1990 he was the recipient of the Glen Sawyer Award from the Ontario Medical Association. He retired from the medical profession in 1991. Married twice, first to Marjorie (died in the early 1980s) and then to Diane Wheatley, he died on 1 December 2002.
Debenham was also a dedicated wood engraver. He took up engraving in the 1950s. Many of his works were exhibited at the annual Wayzgoose in Grimsby, Ont. and elsewhere in Canada, the UK, and Japan. He printed all his work on his 1862 Albion press which was donated posthumously to the MacKenzie Heritage Printery in Queenston, Ont. Debenham’s imprint was the Larchwood Press, which issued booklets, cards, and calendars. Gillian Debenham’s Piccolo’s Progress (1970), a children’s story written by Guy Debenham’s sister, is the first imprint of this fine press, published in an edition of 100 numbered copies.
Eric Harry Hutcheson and Robert Bazett Hutcheson, two brothers who served in the armed forces in World War II, were the sons of Harry McCamus (a lumberman) and Laura Phyllis Hutcheson (née Bazett, daughter of a pioneer surveyor) of Huntsville, Ont. Trained at No.2 Air Navigation School, Pennfield Ridge, New Brunswick, Eric Harry Hutcheson was a Flying Officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He died on 11 February 1944 at the age of 23.
Born on 7 July 1918, Robert Bazett Hutcheson graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce from Trinity College, University of Toronto. From 1940 to 1945, he was an officer (achieving the rank of Lieutenant Commander) with the Royal Canadian Navy on the HMCS Sherbrooke, HMCS Annapolis, HMCS Roxborourgh, and HMCS Kincardine. After the war, he returned to Huntsville and joined the family business, Muskoka Wood Products Ltd. He was the director of four different boards of the forest industry and served on other boards of a philanthropic and sport-related nature in the Huntsville community. He and his wife, Lecily, had three children. He died on 8 April 2004.
John Shelley, manager, administrator and director of Kings Norton Ammunition Works, Woolwich Arsenal, Abbey Wood during the Great War, was also associated with the British government. Although the fonds contains some pre-World War I material, the majority of the documents consist of photographs and correspondence relating to Shelley's munitions factories and reflect his activities in the war effort. Of particular interest are the many poignant letters written with considerable effort by female employees to Shelley. Several of the photographs show the Ladies' Fire Brigade at practice.
Norman Allatt was born on 7 December 1894 in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, England. He was the third child of Fred and Anne (née Hirst) Allatt. In 1906, the family immigrated to Toronto. In the 1911 census, Norman Allatt is listed as a shoe (machine) operator in a factory.
In January 1915 Allatt voluntarily joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force and was posted to the Canadian Exhibition grounds in Toronto to begin his training. His diary of 1915 documents his sailing overseas in August 1915, aboard the R.M.S. Hesperian en route to Plymouth from Montreal. In October 1915, Allatt departed for France and was assigned to the 14th battalion, Royal Montreal Regiment. During the war he was a sniper. When the war ended, the Royal Military Regiment was stationed in north-west France in the vicinity of Valenciennes, near the Belgian border. The regiment sailed from Liverpool in April 1919 for Halifax.
Allatt returned home to live with his parents and took up his pre-war job as a shoe machine operator. He married Gertrude Benford in 1920. In 1922 he was employed by the Robert Simpson Company in Toronto. In 1923 the family moved to Detroit where Allatt worked at several jobs, until the Second World War, when he sold his retail business and became a stock keeper of an insurance company. He died in 1976.
For further biographical history see the document prepared by his nephews, Doug, Bob and David Allatt, Sepember 2009 and copy of Allatt’s attestation papers.
James Edward Anderson was born in Perth, Ontario 23 February 1926. In 1953, he received his MD from the University of Toronto and was appointed a lecturer in Anatomy there in 1956. Anderson’s interest in archaeology and participation on dig sites lead to his involvement with the Department of Anthropology, where he became a full professor in 1961. He trained human osteologists and physical anthropologists at the University of Toronto and the State University of New York (SUNY) between 1963-66. In 1967, he became Chair and professor of the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University in the new School of Medicine, the Department would later become part of the Faculty of Social Sciences. As a result of health complications, he took early retirement in 1985, and passed away February 4th, 1995.
Anderson is known for his portable anatomy handbook for archaeologists, The Human Skeleton. As well as helping to illustrate the wealth of information available to archaeologists from careful examination of skeletal remains.
George Arnet was appointed as the vicar of The Cathedral Church of All Saints, Northgate, Wakefield , West Yorkshire on 12 May 1729. He resigned from that post in October 1750 and died in December that year. Arnet became a deacon in 1702, first serving at Dorrington, and then as vicar at Holbeach from 1711 to 1729. He left Lincolnshire for Wakefield and while serving at All Saints was also the rector at Wheldrake parish and the domestic chaplain of the Lord Archbishop of York.
Andrew Lang, classicist, translator, folk-lorist, journalist, poet, historian, and critic was born on 31 March 1844 in Selkirk, Scotland. He was educated at the University of St. Andrews, Glasgow University, and Balliol College, Oxford. He obtained a first-class degree in Classics and was elected a Fellow of Merton College in 1868. In 1875 he moved to London to begin his career in journalism. Shortly thereafter he was elected to the first governing council of the new Folklore Society. His published works are numerous and in many genres. He died on 22 July 1912 in Banchory, Scotland.
Dr. Myers Coplans was sanitary officer to the Second Army of the British Expeditionary Force during the First World War.
William Halse Rivers, psychologist and anthropologist, was born on 12 March 1864 in Luton, near, Chatham, Kent. He was educated at Tonbridge School and St. Bartholomew's Hospital. In 1897 he became a lecturer in psychology at Cambridge; in 1902 he was elected a fellow of St. John's College. He was most interested in the relationship between mind and body, playing a fundamental role in the establishment of both experimental psychology and social anthropology as academic disciplines in Britain. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1908 and won the Society's gold medal in 1914. He died on 4 June 1922. His father Henry Frederick Rivers was a speech therapist.
Elizabeth Gwillim, gentlewoman, author and artist, was baptized on 22 September 1762 in Aldwincle, England according to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. She married John Graves Simcoe on 30 December 1782, at the age of twenty, if the date of birth given by the DCB is correct. From 1791 to 1796 she lived with her husband in Upper Canada as he served out his term as Lieutenant Governor. While there she kept diaries and painted water colours of Canadian scenes. Her writings were published as The Diary of Mrs. John Graves Simcoe in 1911. She died at Wolford Lodge near Honiton, England on 17 January 1850.
C.T. Atkinson held the rank of Captain with the Oxford University Officers Training Corps, and served in the Seventh Division which was created in the autumn of 1914, and ceased to exist in the winter of 1918, after its demobilization in December. Its units were assembled from home stations, from Gibralter, Malta, Egypt and included the regulars remaining in England after the departure for France of the Sixth Division in 1907. In 1926, C.T. Atkinson undertook the writing of the history of the Seventh Division, which was published in 1927, under the title The Seventh Division 1914-1918. by John Murray.
During the First World War Marion S. Simpson of Hamilton, Ont. wrote letters of encouragement and sent parcels, mainly socks, to Canadian soldiers overseas.
William Fingland was born in Beverly Township, Ontario on 19 September 1885. Fingland was a student, likely at Knox College, at the time he enlisted in May 1915. Upon arriving in Europe, after his voyage over on the Megantic, Fingland sent a telegram to his sweetheart, later wife, [Jan]Etta McDiarmid. Once in England, Fingland began his work on behalf of the YMCA. He organized sport days, religious services, recreation activities and entertainment, including a moving picture show for troops just behind the line in Belgium and France. He visited soldiers in hospital, censored letters and dealt with the excesses of the soldiers around him. He witnessed first hand the devastation in Ypres. Fingland was involved with visiting the Canadian Forestry Camps and working with the Khaki University (College), in both London and Edinburgh, which helped to provide men on leave with places to stay, educational courses and recreational activities. Khaki University promoted education and arranged literary and historical lectures in London and France. The most popular courses with the troops involved agriculture. Fingland oversaw the Beaver Hut in 1919, a large YMCA tent for Canadian troops, and participated in a visit to the area by the Prince of Wales and Prince Albert. William and Etta were married in 1920.
Wallace Balfour Brett was born in Markdale, Ontario on 16 May 1895. Brett had been a farmer prior to enlisting in Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force in January 1917. Brett was a member of the 4th Company of the 8th Battalion. Brett was killed in action on 21 August 1918. He is buried in the Daours Communal Cemetery, 10 kilometers east of Amiens.
John Terpstra was born in Brockville, Ontario in 1953 and moved to Edmonton as a child. He has spent most of his life in Hamilton, Ontario. Terpstra was educated at Trinity Christian College in Chicago and the University of Toronto. He has published several books of poetry including the Governor-General Literary Awards’ nominee, Disarmament (2003). His prose works include The Boys, or Waiting for the Electrician’s Daughter (2005) which was a finalist for the Charles Taylor Prize and Falling into Place (2002). His selected poetry has been collected in Two or Three Guitars (2006).
