Timothy Leary was born 22 October 1920 in Springfield, Massachusetts. In the 1950s and 1960s he taught psychology at the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard University. He was a proponent of the drug culture in the 1960s and experimented with consciousness-altering drugs such as LSD.
A prolific author, he wrote an autobiography, Flashbacks (1983). He died on 31 May 1996.
Sir Edwin Hartley Cameron Leather was born in Toronto, Ont. on 22 May 1919, the son of Harold Hamilton Leather and the former Grace C. Holmes. He was educated at Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ont. and the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont. He married Sheila Greenlees on 9 March 1940; the couple has two daughters. During World War II, he served overseas with the Canadian Army.
After the war he remained in England, becoming a parliamentary candidate in 1945. He was Conservative Member of Parliament for North Somerset from 1950-1964. He was knighted in 1962. In 1973 he succeeded the murdered Sir Richard Sharples as Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Bermuda and remained in this position until 1977. He was for several years an executive and then director of Hogg Robinson Ltd. as well as serving on the board of directors of several other companies. He died in Bermuda on 5 April 2005.
Sir Edwin wrote on politics, business and religion for many newspapers and magazines, as well as being a public speaker and broadcaster. He was also the author of three novels.
Grace C. Holmes, of Toronto, married Harold Leather in 1918 while in England. They had one child, Edwin.
Harold Hamilton Leather was born on 23 May 1893 in Hamilton, Ont., the son of Thomas Edwin Leather and the former Helen McIntyre Skinner. He was educated at Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ont. He served in World War I, joining the Imperial Service Corps in England as a private. He returned to Canada in 1919 with rank of captain.
While in England he married Grace C. Holmes, of Toronto, in 1918. They had one child, Edwin. Harold Leather established his own company, Leather Cartage in 1924 in Hamilton, which was sold in the 1950s, with Leather remaining a director until his death in 1981. During World War II, he was in charge of the Canadian Red Cross parcels scheme. For this service he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire and received medals from six foreign countries.
After the war, he became chairman of the Canadian Red Cross for six years, and subsequently was named an honorary counsellor of the national organization. Among many other activities, he served on the board of directors of McMaster University and the Stratford Festival until his retirement at the age of 80. He died in Hamilton in 1981.
Alvin Lee was born in Woodville, Ontario. He attended the University of Toronto where he received his Bachelors of Arts, a Master of Arts in English and a Ph.D in English in 1961. Lee began a teaching career at McMaster University as Assistant Professor of English in 1960 and progressed to Associate Professor, Assistant Dean, School of Graduate Studies, Dean of Graduate Studies, Vice-President, Academic and President and Vice-Chancellor from 1980 to 1990. Alvin Lee is the author of several books and articles on Old English literature and is a specialist in Middle English literature. He is currently Professor Emeritus, Department of English, at McMaster University. He served as General Editor of the 30-volume Collected Works of Northrop Frye, published by the University of Toronto Press between 1996 and 2012.
Dr. Lee was elected a Member of the Royal Commonwealth Society (England) in 1962. He was appointed Honorary Professor of English, University of Science and Technology, Beijing and Honorary Professor at Peking University in 1993. He was recognized by the Hamilton Gallery of Distinction in 1996 and achieved the City of Hamilton Award for Lifetime Distinction in Support of the Arts in 2015. He is also the Governor of the Lee Academy (a private elementary school in Lynden, Ontario); and served as Vice-Chair of the McMaster Museum of Art (1998-2005).
John Busteed Lee, educator, poet, and editor, was born on 24 November 1951 in Highgate, ON, son of George and Irene Lee. He received a B.A. in English at the University of Western Ontario, in 1974, followed by a B.Ed. in English and theatre arts in 1975 and an M.A. in Teaching English in 1985 at the same institution. Lee taught at Waterford District High School in Norfolk County from 1975 to 1987, at which time he made the decision to earn a living exclusively through writing, performing and teaching poetry.
A prolific writer, he is the author of over forty of books and chapbooks of poetry, including Pig Dance Dreams and Stella’s Journey. His poetry, which has appeared in over 500 publications, has earned Lee many grants and awards, most significant of which have been the CBC Tilden Award and the People’s Poetry Award (twice). He has also written children’s books, plays, short stories, reviews, a writer’s guide, and memoirs, and has edited numerous anthologies of poetry, including Smaller than God. In addition to writing and editing, Lee was writer-in-residence at Kitchener Public Library in 2001 and has given many public readings of his work and facilitated poetry workshops for school children. In 2005 he was named Poet Laureate of Brantford, ON in perpetuity. Lee is married to Cathy Jean Morden, and they have two sons, Dylan and Sean-Paul.
Christopher Levenson - poet, translator, editor, and professor of English and creative writing - was born in London, England in 1934. He lived in the Netherlands, Germany and the United States before moving to Canada in 1968. His first book of poetry, In Transit was included in New Poets (1959). In 1960 he was the first recipient of the Eric Gregory Award. He was co-founder and editor of Arc magazine, and from 1981 to 1991 founded and organized the Arc reading series in Ottawa. Since living in Canada, he has published many articles and books of poetry. He has published two volumes of translations from seventeenth-century Dutch poetry and individual verse translations in European journals. He taught English and creative writing at Carleton University and was Series Editor of Harbinger Poets, an imprint of Carleton University Press, devoted exclusively to first books of Canadian poetry. He was for a year Poetry Editor of the Literary Review of Canada. He lives in Vancouver.
C.S. Lewis was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on 29 November 1898 and educated at Oxford. He was a literary scholar, critic and novelist, fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, 1925-1954 and afterwards professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge. In addition to scholarly works, he wrote popular religious and moral books such as The Problem of Pain (1940).
However, he is best known as an author of children's books — most notably the Chronicles of Narnia, the most popular of which is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950). He died at The Kilns, Headington Quarry, near Oxford on 22 November 1963.
David Lewis was a political leader, labour lawyer, and university professor.
David was born in Svisloch, Poland on June 23, 1909. He was the son of Rose (nee Lazarovitch) and Moishe Losz, a prominent labour leader in Poland and Canada.
David immigrated to Montreal with his family in 1921. He attended Baron Byng High School where he befriended Irving Layton, A.M. Klein, and his future wife, Sophie Carson.
He attended McGill University from 1927-1931. While at McGill, he helped found the Montreal branch of the Young People’s Socialist League, and founded a campus magazine, The McGilliad.
In 1932, David was awarded a Rhodes scholarship and attended Oxford University. At Oxford, he was active with the Oxford Union and developed a reputation as a leader and a talented speaker.
Following his return to Canada, he practiced law in Ottawa. In 1935, he became the national secretary for the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. With the CCF, he helped draft the Winnipeg Declaration of 1956.
In 1943, he co-authored Make This Your Canada with F.R Scott.
In 1950, David resigned as national secretary and moved to Toronto to practice law in partnership with Ted Joliffe. Through his support of Tommy Douglas, David played a role in the founding of the New Democratic Party in July 1961. He was elected as Member of Parliament for York South in 1962. He lost his seat in the 1963 general election but returned to the House of Commons in the 1965. He was re-elected in 1968 and became the federal leader of the party in 1971.
David lost his seat in 1974 and resigned as leader. In his post-political life, he became a professor at the Institute of Canadian Studies at Carleton University.
David was named as a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1977. His memoirs, The Good Fight: Political Memoirs 1909-1958 (Toronto: MacMillan) were published in 1981. He died on May 23, 1981.
David is the father of Stephen Lewis, the diplomat and former leader of the Ontario NDP, Michael Lewis, Janet Solberg and Nina Libeskind.
Stephen Lewis is a politician, humanitarian, global activist, diplomat, and public speaker. He is a Companion of the Order of Canada, was named “Canadian of the Year” by Maclean’s in 2003 and has received countless awards and recognition for his humanitarian work in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa.
Stephen was born in Ottawa on November 11, 1937. He is the son of Sophie and David Lewis, the former leader of the federal New Democratic Party. He is married to Michele Landsberg, author and columnist for the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star, with whom he has three children, Ilana Landsberg-Lewis, Avi Lewis, and Jenny Lewis.
Stephen received post-secondary education at the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia. Before he could finish his degree, he entered politics and was elected to the Ontario Legislature in 1963 as a member of the New Democratic Party.
Between 1970 and 1978, Stephen was the Provincial Leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party. Following his political career, he became involved in broadcasting. He received the Gordon Sinclair ACTRA Award for broadcasting in 1982 and his CBC radio documentaries were published as Art Out of Agony: The Holocaust Theme in Literature, Sculpture and Film (Toronto: CBC Enterprises, 1984).
In October 1984, Stephen was appointed as Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. He chaired the committee which drafted the five-year UN Programme on African Economic Recovery and the first International Conference on Climate Change in 1988. In September 1986, the UN Secretary General appointed Stephen as his Special Advisor on Africa.
In July 1988, Lewis resigned from his ambassadorship. He continued to act in a personal capacity as Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General on Africa.
In May 1992, Stephen was appointed as Special Advisor on Race Relations to the Premier of Ontario. In 1993, Stephen joined the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Group on the Fourth World Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing in September 1995.
Between 1994 and 1996, Stephen was coordinator of a two-year study commissioned by the UN on the impact of armed conflict on children, led by Graça Machel.
On October 25, 1995, Stephen was appointed Deputy Executive Director (External Relations) of the United Nations Children’s Fund. He resigned January 6, 1999.
In 1998, Stephen was selected by the Organization of African Unity to participate on the International Panel of Eminent Personalities to Investigate the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and the Surrounding Events. Between 1999 and 2001, Stephen acted as Consultant to UNAIDS, UNIFEM, and the Economic Commission for Africa.
Between 2001 to 2006, Stephen was appointed as the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa.
Stephen is board co-chair of the Stephen Lewis Foundation, a charity he co-founded in 2003 that supports community-based organizations working on the frontlines of the AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa. From 2007 to 2021, he was co-director of the advocacy organization AIDS-Free World which he co-founded with Paula Donovan.
Stephen is the author of Race Against Time (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2005), a publication of lectures delivered during his Massey Lecture Tour.
On July 1, 2006, Stephen was named McMaster University’s first Social Sciences Scholar-in-Residence.
Stephen holds 40 honorary degrees from Canadian and American universities. His first honorary doctorate was given at McMaster University in 1979.
Wilmarth S. Lewis was an important American collector, particularly noted for his collection of Horace Walpole.
William Douw Lightall, lawyer, historian, novelist, poet, philosopher, anthologist, and editor was born on 27 December 1857 in Hamilton, Ontario. He was educated at McGill University. He practised law in Montreal from 1881-1944, became a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1902, Mayor of Westmount, Quebec from 1900 to 1903, and president of the Canadian Authors Association in 1930.
His first novel, The Young Seigneur; or, Nation-making, using the pen name of Wilfrid Châteauclair, was published in 1888. The next year his poetry anthology, Songs of the Great Dominion: Voices from the Forests and Waters, the Settlements and Cities of Canada was published. His Canada: A Modern Nation was published in 1904. In 1933 The Person of Evolution: The Outer Consciousness, The Outer Knowledge, The Directive Power, Studies of Instinct as Contribution to a Philosophy of Evolution was published. Lightall died on 3 August 1954.
Manya Kantorowicz was born in Bialystok, Poland in December 1906. The youngest daughter of nine children; her mother was a baker, and her parents were secular Jews in the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) tradition. She developed an early interest in Communist politics. At age 13, she left Bialystok, Poland and joined the Twelfth Children’s Work Commune in Vitesbsk, Russia; and entered the Teachers’ Seminary there in 1923. In 1926 she immigrated to Montreal where her brothers had earlier settled. She joined the Young Communist League in Montreal immediately following her arrival. She married Sam Lipshitz on 20 January 1930. They moved to Brunswick Street in Toronto, and she began a 25-year career teaching Yiddish and Jewish History at the Morris Winchevsky School, operated by the United Jewish People’s Order (UJPO). In 1977, Manya published a memoir of her recollections of Jewish life in Russia and immigrating to Canada, titled Bletlekh fun a shturmisher tsayt. It was published in translation as Time Remembered: A Jewish Children’s Commune in the Soviet Union in the 1920s (Toronto: Lugus Publications, 1991).
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.
Sub/Lieut. (A) John Lisle, R.N.V.R., had his plane shot down in the spring of 1943. One of his crew was killed. Lisle and his gunner were captured and held in Stalagluft-3 prisoner of war camp in Germany until May 1945.
Franz Liszt, Hungarian composer and pianist, was born in Raiding near Sopron on 22 October 1811. He made his debut at the age of nine and subsequently studied in Vienna with Czerny and Salieri. Later on in Paris he came to know all the principal artistic figures of the period and was influenced by Hector Berlioz, Frederic Chopin and Nicolo Paganini. He lived with Mme. D'Agoult (better known by her pen name, Daniel Stern) between 1833 and 1844 and they had three children. Their daughter Cosima became the wife of Hans von Bülow and later married Wagner.
Liszt's reputation as a performer rests mainly on the great tours of Europe and Asia Minor which he undertook between 1838 and 1847. In 1848 he was persuaded by Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, whom he had met in Kiev a few months earlier, to give up his career as a travelling virtuoso and to concentrate upon composition. He accepted an appointment to settle at Weimar where he lived with the princess for the next twelve years, a period during which he wrote or revised many of the major works for which he is known.
In the face of increasing opposition at Weimar and hoping that the Pope would sanction a divorce for the Princess, Liszt moved to Rome in 1861, composing mainly religious music for the next eight years. Invited to return to Weimar to give master classes in piano in 1869 and given a similar invitation to return to Budapest two years later, he spent the remaining years of his life making regular journeys between Rome, Weimar and Budapest. He died on 31 July 1886 in Bayreuth, Bavaria.
Lloyd's Register was formed in 1760. Starting in 1764, it published an annual list stating the condition of all sea-going merchant ships of 100 gross tonnes or more. Ships remain in the registry until they are sunk or scrapped.
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.
Locks’ Press was a private press, owned and operated by Fred and Margaret Lock in Kingston, Ontario. The press was originally established in 1978 in Brisbane, Australia, where the Locks’ resided from 1974 to 1987. The first book from the press was published there in 1979 and by 1987 when they moved to Canada, the Press had produced seven books. In Kingston, Fred Lock received an appointment as Professor of English at Queen’s University. The Locks’ bought a house and have since worked out of their home, where they have turned their kitchen into a press room and two bedrooms into a studio and bindery. By 2001, they had printed eleven books, fourteen pamphlets, and twelve broadsides, most of them with illustrations by Margaret Lock. Though the Press ceased book publication after 2000, it continued to produce broadsides. In 2013, Locks’ Press ceased operations and Margaret and Fred Lock moved to England.
Margaret Lock was born in Hamilton in 1950 and graduated from McMaster University in Fine Art in 1972. She later studied printmaking at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Fred Lock was born in England in 1948 and moved to Canada in 1971 as a graduate student in the Department of English at McMaster. From 1974 to 1987 he taught in Australia, at the University of Queensland. Fred has a special interest in Latin, medieval and eighteenth-century English texts. He acts as editor and has also provided translations for about a third of the titles. Margaret designs the books and does the typesetting, illustrating in woodcuts, printing and binding. The type is handset, and printed one page at a time in a proofing press. The paper is hand-made, and the books are in small editions, bound by hand. The Locks’ aims are to publish literature before 1900, in order to reflect their personal interests and provide an opportunity for Margaret’s woodcut illustrations. Locks’ Press has been represented in many group and solo exhibitions, in Australia, Canada and the United States. The Locks have won awards for their excellence in the book arts.
