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Paul Kirzner was born into a secular Jewish family in Toronto. His father was active in the Bundist movement, and one of the founders of the Toronto Cloakmakers’ Union in Canada. He joined the Young Communist League in 1932. He later formed a small company which distributed Soviet films. In 1940, he joined a closed group of the Communist Party of Canada and the Labour League. In 1949, he was a delegate of the UJPO to the Canadian Peace Congress. He was an original member of the New Fraternal Jewish Association, founded in 1960, though he later became less active due to a disagreement about Israel. He was an active member of the NDP and served on the provincial council and was treasurer of the Toronto area council.

Paul Kirzner was the husband of Sarah Kirzner.

Sarah Kirzner was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Toronto. Her parents were from Warsaw, Poland. Her sister immigrated to the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and her brother immigrated to Saskatchewan at age 16, where he became involved in Leftist politics. She became involved in the Young Communist League at age 18, when her brother encouraged the group to recruit her. She became involved in the Office and Store Employees Union, fighting for a $12.50 per week minimum wage. At the YCL, she met her husband Paul, and became leader of the Toronto YCL group named for Norman Bethune. After being disillusioned by Communist politics, particularly following the Hitler-Stalin Pact, she left the Communist Party officially in 1956.

Sarah Kirzner was the wife of Paul Kirzner.

Ernest Klein, linguist, author, and rabbi, was born on 26 July 1899 in Szatmar, Hungary. He was educated at the University of Vienna. He held a number of posts as rabbi in Czechoslovakia, Romania, and France before he immigrated to Canada where he held the post of Rabbi of Congregation Beth Yitshak in Toronto until his death in 1983. He is the author of A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (1966-1967).

Raymond Knister, poet and novelist, was born in Windsor, Ontario on 27 May 1899. He was educated at Victoria College for one year until poor health forced him to leave. In 1929 his first novel, White Narcissus appeared, and he began work on a biographical novel about John Keats, eventually entitled My Star Predominant. While on holiday at a cottage on Lake St. Clair, Knister accidentally drowned on 29 August, 1932. My Star Predominant was published posthumously in 1934 and his Collected Poems appeared in 1949.

Anton Koberger was a German goldsmith, printer and publisher, best known for publishing the Nuremberg Chronicle.

Starting as a goldsmith, Koberger moved into printing in 1471. He was very successful, establishing twenty-four presses. His success came from not just from printing, but also owning two papermills and forming business partnerships with booksellers all over Europe.

Lawrence Krader was an American anthropologist and ethnologist. Born in New York City to parents who had emigrated from Russia and Austria, Krader attended CCNY studying a range of subjects, before graduating in 1941. He joined the merchant navy during the Second World War, and then returned to school at Columbia University (1945-47) and a PhD from Harvard in 1954.

Krader taught at a number of institutions including, the University of Syracuse, the American University in Washington DC, the University of Waterloo, and the Free University of Berlin. In addition to his teaching appointments and other commitments, Krader was named the Secretary-General of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences from 1964-78.

The last decade of his life, he spent writing manuscripts on a range of topics. He died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism in November 1998, leaving much of his work unpublished.

Mark Krakowski was born in Kazakstan on 16 September 1943, the son of Jewish Holocaust survivors from Poland. His family fled Poland at the end of 1939 and survived the war in the Soviet Union, including an internment of 18 months in a Soviet gulag. His parents reached Kazakstan after they were released from the gulag in December 1941. His father then joined the Soviet army as a member of the Wanda Waszilewska brigade, a unit of Polish nationals in the Soviet red army. After the war, Mark and his mother were re-patriated to Poland, and, at the end of 1946, they re-united with his father. A period in refugee camps in Austria followed until the family, which included another son, were accepted as refugees in Sweden where they lived for 6 <U+00BD> years. They immigrated to Canada in May 1954. Mark graduated from the University of Western Ontario with a BA in history (1962-65). He attended Western's Faculty of Law for one year (1965-66). He also has a Master of Arts from the New School University (1968-70).

He has varied work experience as a senior research assistant for the Addiction Research Foundation, a parole officer, a human rights officer with the Ontario Human Rights Commission, a labour staff representative for various organizations, and a regional representative of the Public Service Alliance of Canada. Now retired, he currently resides in Toronto, and serves or has served as a board member on the Skyworks Charitable Foundation, Foodshare, and the Labour Community Services. He also completed nine years as a workers' representative on the Board of Referees, a quasi-judicial agency of the federal government's Employment Insurance Commission, which hears appeals of claimants who have been denied employment insurance by Service Canada.

The Communist Party of Canada was founded in Guelph, Ontario in June 1921 as a secret organization. It became a fully open party in 1924. In 1940 it was banned under the War Measures Act. In 1943 it re-emerged as a "new" party, the Labor-Progressive Party (LPP). The period from 1943-1945 was its most successful, with a claimed membership of 20,000. Tim Buck (1891-1973), a machinist and trade unionist, was general-secretary of the party for thirty-two years although he was forced underground during the 1940-1943 period. He also served as the national leader of the LPP.

The LPP last ran a federal candidate in a December 1958 by-election and nine provincial candidates in the 1959 Ontario election. Following this it returned to Communist Party of Canada name.

Edward Lacey was born in Lindsay, Ontario of French-Canadian and Irish descent. After attending separate and public schools in Lindsay, he went to the University of Toronto, winning the Edward Blake scholarship in Modern Languages and Literature and majoring in French and German. He graduated with a B.A. in the fall of 1959 and then moved to Texas to pursue his M.A. in Linguistics and Languages. There he met Randy Wicker (formerly Charlie Hayden), student politician and gay activist, and Byron Black, who remained lifelong friends. He received his M.A. degree in 1961.

Between 1961 and 1983 he worked as a translator or taught English as a second language and literature in Mexico, Trinidad, Brazil, Greece and Thailand. He also worked as a proofreader and editor in Thailand from 1984 to1987. In 1991 he taught English or worked as an editor in Indonesia and Thailand, until an accident in Bangkok permanently disabled him. He died of a heart attack in 1995.

Lacey’s publications include: The Forms of Life (1965), the first gay-identified book of poetry published in Canada; Path of Snow: Poems 1951-73 (1974); and Third World: Travel Poems (1994). His collection of letters entitled A Magic Prison: Letters from Edward Lacey (1995) was edited by David Helwig. Lacey has also translated books from French, Spanish and Portuguese. His own work has appeared in anthologies such as Gay Roots: Twenty Years of Gay Sunshine, An Anthology of Gay History: Sex, Politics & Culture (1991).

During the mid-1960s, Paul André Ladouceur attended Loyola College in Montreal and was active there in student politics, serving as vice-president of the Students Administrative Council in 1965. He also held positions with the Canadian Union of Students (CUS) between 1964 and 1966 as Quebec regional president and as associate secretary for international affairs within the CUS Secretariat. As a result of the international scope of his duties, Ladouceur was also responsible for CUS involvement in the Fédération Internationale du Sport Universitaire (FISU).

After graduating, he completed a Master’s degree in international relations at Carleton University’s School of International Affairs between 1966 and 1968, producing a research essay on the International Union of Students (IUS). After further studies in Geneva, Switzerland, he began a doctorate in political studies in 1969 at the University of Sussex, specializing in African politics. His thesis was published by Longman in 1979 under the title Chiefs and Politicians: The Politics of Regionalism in Northern Ghana. During his studies in Geneva in 1968, Ladouceur became closely involved with the development of the IUEF, a non-governmental organization dedicated to assisting African and Latin American refugee students through scholarships. He sat on the international board of the IUEF from 1969 until 1980, and from 1977 was its secretary-treasurer. In 1980 the IUEF was troubled by the revelation that its deputy director since July 1978, Craig Williamson, was a spy for the South African police force. The aftermath of the “Williamson Affair” resulted in the dissolution of the IUEF.

From 1972 to 1992 Paul Ladouceur was a public servant with the Canadian government, initially with the Canadian International Development Agency. He was on leave of absence with the World Health Organisation in Geneva from 1985 to 1993. He returned to Canada in 1996 and since then has been involved with the Orthodox Church.

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.

Don Lake, antiquarian bookseller, was born in Toronto on 11 July 1950. In the late 1970s he was involved in the establishment of a Toronto chapter of the Independent Socialists and in the publication of Workers' Action. In 1978 he began a bookstore called October Books. His current antiquarian business, D. & E. Lake Ltd., houses a large inventory of rare books (especially pertaining to early printed books, voyages and travels, Canadiana/Americana, and illustrated books), antique maps and prints, and modern books on art, architecture, and the decorative arts. In addition to antiquarian books, his company also sells Canadian art and has regular exhibitions of artwork in this area.

Patrick Lane was born on 26 March 1939 in Nelson, British Columbia. After working in general construction jobs, sawmill and logging work, he moved to Vancouver in the early 1960s, and with Bill Bissett and Seymour Mayne he started Very Stone House Press. His poetry concerns the brutal and violent world of mills and camps in the interior of British Columbia. His poems have twice been collected by Oxford University Press, in 1978 and 1987.

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.

Cosmo Gordon Lang, the son of Very Reverend John Marshall Lang, was born on 31 October 1864 and grew up in Fyvie, Aberdeenshire, the seat of his father's country parish. He was educated at Glasgow University and Balliol College, Oxford and ordained in 1890. He served as Archbishop of York, 1908-1928, and Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England, 1928-1942. He played a prominent role in the abdication of Edward VIII. Also an author, Lang published H.R.L. Sheppard: Himself and His Work (1937). Lang died on 5 December 1945.

Margaret Laurence, noted Canadian author, was born Jean Margaret Wemyss in Neepawa, Manitoba on 18 July 1926. She was educated at the University of Manitoba. In 1947 she married John Laurence and they had two children, Jocelyn and David. In 1949, they moved to England and then Africa, where they lived in Somalia and Ghana. The Laurences separated in 1962, and divorced in 1969. During this time she returned to Canada, living in Vancouver, before going back to England, first to London, and then to Elm Cottage in Buckinghamshire. In the early 1970s, she accepted a position of writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto, and settled in Lakefield, Ontario. In 1986, she was diagnosed with lung cancer and passed away, in her home in Lakefield, 5 January 1987.

Laurence twice won the Governor General's Award for fiction, as well as many other literary awards. Her best known works are The Stone Angel (1964), A Jest of God (1966), The Fire Dwellers (1969), A Bird in the House (1970), The Diviners (1974 and many others). Her memoirs, Dance on the Earth, were published posthumously.

Gary Lautens was born in Fort William, Ont., the son of Joe and Bertha Lautens. Shortly thereafter the family moved to Hamilton, Ont. where his father had accepted a position at the Hamilton Spectator. Gary Lautens graduated from Hamilton Central Collegiate Institute and then went on to McMaster University, obtaining a bachelor's degree in history in 1950, while writing for the campus newspaper, the Silhouette. After graduation Lautens joined the Hamilton Spectator and within a few years began to write a sports column, "The Gab Bag". In 1962 he joined the Toronto Star, quickly becoming a columnist. He won a National Newspaper Award in the Sports Writing category in 1965.Then, branching out from sports, he began to write a humorous, general-interest column, often relating the problems and delights of his family. He had married Jackie Lane in 1957 and the couple had three children. He published several collections of his columns in book form during his lifetime, twice winning the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. In 1982 he was appointed Executive Managing Editor of the Toronto Star, a position he held until 1984 when he became editor emeritus. He was an active supporter of McMaster University. He died in 1992. Two collections of his columns have been published posthumously. Jackie Lautens has written about her husband's life in the introduction to Peace, Mrs. Packard and the Meaning of Life (1993).

Luís de Almeida Portugal Soares de Alarcão d'Eça e Melo Silva Mascarenhas, 2nd Marquess of Lavradio was the 11th Viceroy of the Portuguese colony of Brazil, the second one that ruled the colony after the seat of government moved to Rio de Janeiro. He was the son of a Marquis of the same title, D. António de Almeida Soares e Portugal and his wife, D. Francisca das Chagas Mascarenhas. During the 1762 Spanish invasion of Portugal, he commanded the 1st Cascais Infantry Regiment.

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.

This organization originated in the 1920s as part of the Communist Party of Canada, from which its founders were expelled in 1928 because of their support for the political positions of Leon Trotsky. Banned during World War II the organization was relaunched in 1945 as the Revolutionary Workers Party, Canadian Section of the Fourth International.

By 1963 it was known as the League for Socialist Action, with members in Toronto and Vancouver. The following year a branch was established in Montreal under the name Ligue Socialiste Ouvrière. A youth wing, the Young Socialists, was established in 1964; its branch in Quebec was known as the Ligue des Jeunes Socialistes. Following a positive response from the New Democratic Party Socialist Caucus during 1967-1968, a section of the League emerged as the "Waffle" Caucus of the N.D.P. in 1969. The "Waffle", however, proved to be a broad, heterogeneous formation, encompassing a wide spectrum of views, from liberal-reformist and patriotic to revolutionary socialist and inter-nationalist and the N.D.P. soon found itself unable to tolerate the more revolutionary Marxist and Trotskyist elements within the party. The main body of the League for Socialist Action and the International Socialists continued working through the N.D.P. but many more extreme members became discouraged by their apparent lack of progress.

In the spring of 1972 the "Waffle" was proscribed as an organized left wing within the party. One section went on to found the Movement for an Independent Socialist Canada while others, wishing to remain inside the party formed the Left Caucus "to continue the struggle". The 1973 convention of the adult organization saw the emergence of a minority grouping, the Revolutionary Communist Tendency, which went on to join the Revolutionary Marxist Group. In 1977 supporters of the Revolutionary Marxist Group and a separate Quebec organization, the Groupe Marxiste Revolutionnarie, united with the League for Socialist Action and the Ligue Socialiste Ouvrière, as well as both youth groups, to form the Revolutionary Workers League. In the late 1980s the League changed its name to the Communist League of Canada.