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Henry Carl Nunn was born in Bolton, Ontario, on the 21st of July, 1883. Son of George Nunn and Emma Jane Cole, he had one sister, Nell. He grew up in Bolton until the family moved to Hamilton in his teens. After a number of early jobs, he started his own business selling mail order hardware and building materials. Quickly, he became a pioneer in North America of pre-fabricated homes. Nunn was the founder and President of the Halliday Homes Company, which was famous for the “Bunkie” style home. The company survived the Depression under Nunn’s ethical and hardworking guidance and then prospered in the years following.

He married Margaret Johnston in 1908, and they went on to have two children, Roger and Phyllis. Outside his work, Nunn was a committed naturalist with a particular interest in ornithology. He was Chairman of the Federation of Ontario Naturalists and promoted the appreciation of birds and wildlife throughout his life. He was also active in his church and lived his faith in his daily life. Additional biographical and genealogical details can be found in Box 6, file 19.

Born in Cooksville, Ontario, Emily Murphy (née Ferguson) was educated at Bishop Strahan School in Toronto. A feminist and lawyer, she was appointed to the Women's Court in Edmonton in 1916, the first woman magistrate appointed to such a position in the British Empire. She also wrote several accounts of life and travel in Manitoba, Alberta, and Europe under the pseudonym of "Janey Canuck".

Johannis (Hans) Mol, professor and author, was born in Rozenburg, The Netherlands, on 14 February 1922. He was educated at the United Theological Faculty in Sydney, Australia, the Union Theological Seminary in New York, and Columbia University in New New York. He lectured in sociology at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand from 1961-1963 and was a fellow in sociology at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the Australian National University from 1963 until he arrived at McMaster University in 1970. He is the author of several books on the sociology of religion. After his retirement he was named Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies.

Thomas D'Arcy McGee, journalist, politician, and poet, was born on 13 April 1825 in Carlingford, County Louth, Ireland. He left for New England for the first time in 1842. It was not until 1857, after a return to Ireland and a further sojourn in the United States, that he moved to Montreal. In December 1857 he was elected to represent Montreal in the Legislative Assembly. By 1867 the Irish Republican Brotherhood, more popularly known as the Fenians, were on the rise. McGee opposed them because of their support of republicans and their plans to invade British North America. McGee lost his support in the Irish community and was on the verge of withdrawing from politics when he was assassinated in Ottawa on 7 April 1868. An Irish immigrant, Patrick James Whelan, was convicted of the crime and executed on 11 February 1869. In addition to his journalism and speeches, McGee wrote A Popular History of Ireland (1863), which is considered to be his best work, and poetry which was collected and published after his death.

Colin Lock was born in England in 1933. He was educated at the University of London and Imperial College London. He held appointments at U.K. Atomic Energy Authority, and was a scientific officer for the Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. at Chalk River, Ont. from 1957-1960. In 1963 he completed his Ph.D. from the University of London and was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at McMaster University. He taught there until his sudden death on 1 May 1996 while visiting the Chalk River Laboratories.

His long career at McMaster, where he specialized in the study of inorganic chemistry and pathology, led to clinical research in cancer and arthritis. Dr. Lock was elected Fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada in 1968 and served as Chairman from 1981-1983. In 1989 he was presented with the prestigious Montreal Medal for his contributions to the field of inorganic chemistry. He was the author and co-author of over 250 scientific papers. Until his death he was on the Research and Development Advisory Panel for the Atomic Energy Commission of Canada. He was married to Helen E. Howard-Lock, professor of Chemistry at McMaster.

Irving Layton was born in Neamts, Rumania on 12 March 1912. He moved to Canada the next year with his parents Moses and Keine Lasarovitch. He was educated at McGill University. A prolific and controversial poet, he published his first collected poems in 1959, A Red Carpet for the Sun, which won the Governor's General Award for Poetry. His poems have been collected several times since then. Layton died on 4 January 2006.

William Cowper, English poet, was born at his father's rectory at Great Berkhampstead on 15 November 1731. He was educated at Westminster College and called to the bar in 1754. Following a spell of mental instability, bouts of which were to plague him for the rest of his life, he went to live at Huntingdon with the Revd. Morely Unwin, his wife, Mary (b. 1724) and their son William, who by then was away from home. On the death of Unwin, Mary moved to Olney in Buckinghamshire with Cowper. The curate in Olney, John Newton, collaborated with Cowper in the writing of the Olney Hymns (1779) after which he moved to London. Under Mrs. Unwin's influence, Cowper wrote a series of moral satires, published in 1782 as Poems. Mrs. Unwin died on 17 December 1796 while William Cowper lived for a few more years, dying on 25 April 1800.

Trevor Cole is a writer. He was born on 15 February 1960 to William and Hilda Cole. He graduated from Conestoga College in 1982 He began his career working as a copywriter in advertising for three radio station: in Simcoe, Ont. in 1982, then moving on to Cornwall, Ont., and ending in Ottawa in 1985. He became Associate Editor of the Ottawa Magazine where he stayed until 1987. In 1990 he joined the Globe and Mail, working in various capacities on many of their specialty publications.

He has won numerous awards for his journalism and continues to publish in magazines. His first novel Norman Bray in the Performance of His Life was published in 2004. His most recent novel is Practical Jean (2010). His journalism and his novels have been nominated for several awards; Practical Jean won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour. He has also won several National Magazine Awards.

Richard Allen is an educator, author and politician. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. on 10 February 1929 and educated at the University of British Columbia, the University of Toronto, the University of Saskatchewan and Duke University. He joined McMaster University in 1974 and held the rank of Professor in the History Department from 1976 to 1987.

He was first elected as a New Democratic Party (NDP) member of the Ontario Legislature for Hamilton West in 1982. Successful re-elections followed in 1985, 1987, and 1990. He assumed responsibility for many portfolios when the NDP was in opposition: 1982-1987, critic for Colleges and Universities; 1983-1985, critic for Cultural Affairs; 1983-1987, critic for Education; 1985-1987, critic for Skills Development; 1987-1990, critic for Community and Social Services and the Office of Disabled Persons as well as Francophone Affairs. When the NDP formed the government in 1990 he became the Minister of Colleges and Universities, Minister of Skills Development, and Minister Responsible for International Trade, and, then in 1994, he became Minister of Housing, a post he held until the government was defeated in 1995.

Charlotte Stopes, Shakespearean scholar and supporter of women’s education, was born in Edinburgh and was educated informally at Edinburgh University before women were officially allowed to attend. She married Henry Stopes, an architect, civil engineer and anthropologist in 1879. The Stopes were the parents of Marie Stopes, birth-control advocate.

The first Society of Friends Preparative Meeting in Upper Canada was held at Yonge Street, 6 June 1804, authorized by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. The first Yonge Street Monthly Meeting was held in September 1806. In 1812, Yonge Street Monthly Meeting allowed an indulged meeting to be held at the house of John Haight which was situated near Pickering. In 1819 a Preparative Meeting was established at Pickering in the newly built meeting house which was used until 1833-34 when a new meeting house was built.

There was a split in 1828 between Orthodox members and a Hicksite faction with the Hicksites forced to establish a new meeting house about two miles away. This split was not unique to Pickering but reflective of a wider movement both in British North America and the United States which is often referred to as the Great Separation. Friends who were followers of Elias Hicks separated from the existing body of Friends.

The Social Democratic Party of Canada (SDPC) was a Marxist organization that formed in 1911 as a result of a split from the Socialist Party of Canada over affiliation with the Socialist International. The SDPC was affiliated with the International Socialist Bureau, and had a paper entitled Cotton’s Weekly (1908-1915), continued by the Canadian Forward (1916-1918). Prominent Ontario members of the SDPC included James Simpson, a mayor of Toronto in the 1930s. Most of the SDPC members joined the Communist Party of Canada in 1921 or the CCF in the 1930s.

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923), the novelist and short story writer, spent most of her short life in England. Following a very brief first marriage in 1909, she fell in love with and later married John Middleton Murry. She died of tuberculosis in 1923.

Thomas Laidlaw was a Scottish-Canadian author and farmer. Laidlaw was born in Roxburghshire, Scotland in 1825 and immigrated to Canada with his parents in 1831 and settled in Wellington County, Ontario. A farmer by trade, Laidlaw was a self-educated man who became a fairly noted writer, contributing extensively to the press. He wrote mainly on topics related to the Guelph area and Scotland and published prose and poetry. Among his books are Sprigs O' Heather for Scottish Gatherings [18-?] and The Old Concession Road (1892). Laidlaw died in Guelph in 1902.

Lily Edward Jones was a poet who lived in Hamilton, Ont. She published two books with local printers, Odd Echoes in 1929, and Woodland Songs in 1936. Both books are in Research Collections.

Grey Owl was born Archibald Stansfeld Belaney in 1888 in Hastings, England. He moved to Canada in 1906 and became a guide and trapper in Northern Ontario. It was under the influence of his lover, Anahareo, that Grey Owl became a nature conservationist, adopting the persona of an Ojibwa man. He also became an author of books about the north and Ojibwa culture. Near the end of his life he undertook lecture tours of Britain and the United States. Grey Owl died in Prince Albert, Sask., in 1938.

Lawrence Durrell, novelist and poet, was born on 12 February 1912 in Julundur, India, the son of Lawrence Samuel Durrell, a British civil engineer. He was educated at the College of St. Joseph, Darjeeling, and St. Edmund's College in Canterbury. In 1939 under the auspices of the British Council, he taught at the British Institute in Athens. He became Foreign Press Service Officer at the British Information Office in Cairo in 1941 and press attaché with the same office in 1944. Through his contacts in the diplomatic service during the war, Durrell met Dudley and Mary Honor. His most well known work, The Alexandria Quartet, was started shortly after the war and published from 1957 to 1960. Durrell died on 7 November 1990 in Sommieres, France.

Robertson Davies (1913-1995) was a writer, journalist, and university professor. Educated at Upper Canada College, Queen's University and Balliol College, Oxford, he returned to Canada in 1940 as literary editor of Saturday Night. Two years later, he became the editor of the Peterborough Examiner. At the beginning of his career Davies earned his reputation as a journalist, dramatist and the alter ego of the cantankerous diarist, Samuel Marchbanks. In 1951 Davies published his first novel, Tempest Tost. Altogether he wrote a dozen novels, but he was equally prolific as an essayist, book reviewer, short story writer, and satiric commentator of his age. Davies taught literature at the University of Toronto from 1960 to 1981, and it was also during this period that he was named the first Master of Massey College. He was the recipient of many honours, including the D.Litt conferred upon him by McMaster University in 1959.

Edmund Blunden, English poet and critic, born in London on 1 November 1896. He was educated at Christ's Hospital and Queen's College, Oxford. He spent many years at Oxford University teaching. In 1943 he joined the staff of the Times Literary Supplement. At the time of his death, 20 January 1974, he was a professor at Oxford.

Hamilton Steel Wheel Company Limited was incorporated in 1916 by letter patent under the first part of the Companies Act with its head office in Hamilton, Ontario. Both certificates are stamped "cancelled". It was a subsidiary of Dominion Foundries and Steel Limited. The two merged in 1917.