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The son of a prominent Irish contractor, Joseph M. Pigott was born in Hamilton on 23 February 1885 and educated in Hamilton Separate Schools and Collegiate Institute. In 1903 he began working for his father's expanding construction company, one he would guide to unknown wealth and size. After having gained a thorough grounding in the construction industry Pigott travelled to Saskatchewan in 1909 with his younger brother Roy where they secured a large contract to build St. Paul's Hospital in Saskatoon. While in the West, Pigott met and married Yvonne Prince, daughter of Hon. B. Prince of Battlefield, Saskatchewan, and returned to Hamilton before living briefly in Detroit.

When Roy Pigott returned from the First World War, the two brothers began to direct Pigott Construction to fortune and fame. The first $1,000,000 year came in 1926, and in 1930, Hamilton's earliest skyscraper, the 16-storey Pigott Building, was completed. While Joseph and Roy led the company through the years of the depression, Pigott also dedicated himself to his growing family of 6 boys, 4 of whom were later associated with their father in his business.

After the Second World War Pigott Construction was Canada's largest privately-owned construction company amassing more than $113,000,000 in business in a single year. As head of his own company, Pigott erected some of Canada's largest industrial plants and finest buildings, including the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; Crown Life Insurance Company head office, Toronto; Bank of Canada, Ottawa; a $45,000,000 plant for General Motors, Oshawa, and buildings totalling $50,000,000 for A. V. Roe Company in Malton. In Hamilton, buildings erected by the Pigott firm include the Canadian Westinghouse offices, Banks of Nova Scotia, Royal and Montreal, McMaster University, the County Court House, Westdale Secondary School, St. Joseph's Hospital, the Pigott Building, the new City Hall and the Cathedral of Christ the King. Upon completion of the Cathedral, Pope Pius XI, in recognition of his accomplishment on this and other buildings, created him a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great and later "Con Placa".

In 1946 in acknowledgment of his services to the Government of Canada during the war Pigott was created Commander of the British Empire. His service to Canada as president of the Wartime Housing Ltd. provided solutions to some most serious problems at that critical time. In consideration of his contributions to social welfare and to the political and intellectual life of Christian society, he was invested as a knight of magistral grace of the Sovereign and Military order of Malta in 1953, and in 1962, he was awarded the honorary degree of LL.D by McMaster University. He was a former president of the Canadian Construction Association, Hamilton Chamber of Commerce, a former vice-president and director of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, president of Pigott Realty Ltd., vice-president and director of North American Life Assurance Company, director of Canada Permanent Trust Company, Atlas Steels Ltd., and United Fuel Investments Ltd. Pigott was also a former president of the board of governors of the Art Gallery of Hamilton, a director of the Ontario Heart Foundation, chairman of the advisory committee of St. Joseph's Hospital, a member of the Hamilton Club, the Hamilton Golf and Country Club and the National Club of Toronto. Pigott played an enormous role in the development of Hamilton. He died in Hamilton on 20 April 1969.

Vivian de Sola Pinto was born in 1895 and educated at Oxford in classics and English, though his studies interrupted by World War I. After spending some time at the Sorbonne, he was appointed chair of English at Southampton. In 1938 he took up the chair of English at Nottingham University in its first year of incorporation where he remained until his retirement in 1961. Pinto was also an author, critic, and poet – a champion of the unorthodox and non-conformist strain in English literature. He published works on Sir Charles Sedley, Peter Sterry, and Rochester. He edited a collection of poems by D.H. Lawrence and played a leading part in the bicentenary celebration of William Blake. He also published an autobiography, The City Than Shone. Pinto died on 27 July 1969.

Pirate is the largest and most awarded advertising production company in Canada. Founded in Toronto in 1990, Pirate began in radio but has since expanded to television and the internet, has added a New York office, and as of 2012 operates 10 recording studios. The company specializes in voice, music, and sound design, and also employs music composers, script and concept writers, and a large team of producers and casting directors. Pirate is highly regarded in the industry for its innovation—it was one of the first studios to offer both writing and production services, one of the first to build its own studios, and has developed a rights-cleared music search engine for advertisers. Pirate’s early success attracted an ever-increasing client base from many different sectors of society including airlines, the automotive industry, charitable organizations, cultural and educational institutions, financial institutions, the food and beverage industry, governments and government agencies, media and telecommunication companies, retail stores, unions and more.

Anna Porter (née Szigethy), publisher and author, was born in Budapest during World War II. In 1956, at the age of 12, she and her mother immigrated to New Zealand to escape the Soviet presence in Hungary. She has B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Canterbury. In the late 1960s, she worked as a proofreader with Cassell’s in England and in sales and as an editor with Collier Macmillan. In 1969 she was hired as an editorial coordinator with McClelland & Stewart and then became Vice-President, Editor-in-Chief, until 1978. From 1978 until 1992, she was the President of McClelland-Bantam Inc. (Seal Books). From 1986 until 1991, she was the Executive Chairman of Doubleday Canada Ltd. In 1979, with Michael de Pencier, she established Key Porter Books. She was the CEO and publisher of Key Porter Books from 1981 until July 2004 when she sold a majority interest in Key Porter Books to H.B. Fenn Limited.

Porter is the author of three novels: Hidden Agenda (1985), Mortal Sins (1987), and The Bookfair Murders (1997). She has also written three works of non-fiction: The Storyteller: Memory, Secrets, Magic and Lies (2006), Kasztner’s Train: The True Story of Rezso Kasztner, Unknown Hero of the Holocaust (2007; awarded the Canadian Jewish Book Award for History and the Nereus Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize), and The Ghosts of Europe: Journeys Through Central Europe's Troubled Past and Uncertain Future (2010; awarded the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize). She has also written numerous pieces for magazines and newspapers. Porter serves on the boards of many companies and organizations. In recognition of her varied achievements, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1991. In 2003, she was awarded the Order of Ontario. She has been awarded honorary degrees from Ryerson University, St. Mary’s University, and the Law Society of Upper Canada. She is married to Julian Porter, Q.C. and has two daughters, Catherine and Julia, and three grandchildren. She currently lives in Toronto.

Ezra Pound, poet, essayist, editor, and translator, was born on 30 October 1885 in Hailey, Idaho. He was educated at Hamilton College and the University of Pennyslvania. One of the great poets of the twentieth century, he lived most of his life in Europe, arriving in Italy in 1908. After World War II, he was found not mentally competent to stand trial for treason and was confined to St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C. While there he wrote The Pisan Cantos (1949) which won him the Bollingen Prize. On his release in 1958 he returned to Italy. He died in Venice on 1 November 1972.

During the course of researching his Ph.D thesis (“International Influences on the Anti-Vietnam War Movement in Canada, 1965-1975”) at the University of New Brunswick, Christopher Powell conducted interviews with a number of individuals who had been active in the protest movement against the Vietnam War during the mid-to-late 1960s . These included both Americans and Canadians; all were resident in Canada during the conflict. Many were involved with broader political and labour movements. The interviews themselves centred on participants’ anti-war activities, but also touch on broader political and biographical themes. Upon completion of his thesis, Dr. Powell donated the interviews and accompanying transcripts to McMaster University.

The brothers John Cowper Powys, Theodore Francis Powys and Llewelyn Powys were members of a family of eleven children born to the Reverend C.F. Powys, an Anglican clergyman and vicar of Montacute, and his wife Mary-Cowper Johnson, a descendant of the poet William Cowper.

John Cowper Powys was born on 8 October 1872 in Shirley, Derbyshire. He was a novelist, essayist, poet and lecturer. He attended Corpus Christi College (M.A.) and was awarded an honorary doctor of letters from the University of Wales. He was a lecturer in England and United States, spending nearly thirty years there, mostly based in New York city. He married Margaret Alice Lyon in 1896 and had one son. He published the novels Wolf Solent (1929), A Glastonbury Romance (1932), and Owen Glendower (1940). His essays include The Meaning of Culture (1930), The Pleasures of Literature (1938), and The Art of Growing Old (1943). He died on 17 June 1963 in Blaenau Ffestiniog, Merionieth, Wales.

T.F. Powys was born on 20 December 1875, in Shirley, Derbyshire. He attended Dorchester Grammar School. He was a farmer and ran his own farm, White House Farm at Suffolk, before “retiring” to Dorset to write. A man who rarely left home or travelled in a car, he married Violet Dodds in 1905 and had three children. From 1904-1940 he settled in the village of East Chaldon and wrote novels short stories and essays. His works, such as Black Irony (1923) and Mr. Weston’s Good Wine (1927), are set in Dorset. He also wrote a number of short stories and fables. T.F. Powys died on 27 November 1953.

Llewelyn Powys was born at Rothesay House, South Walks, Dorchester on 13 August 1884 and spent his childhood in Montacute, Somerset. As an adult he lived for periods in Kenya, the United States, Dorset and Switzerland. He wrote 26 books, amongst them Black Laughter about life in Africa, Skin for Skin, a memoir of his residence in a Swiss sanatorium for tuberculosis, and Impassioned Clay, a statement of his philosophical outlook. He died in 1939.

In March 1915, at the age of nineteen, during his third year in pre-med-sciences at the University of Toronto, D'Arcy Jerome Prendergast was recruited into the 25th Battery of the Canadian Field Artillery. He served in the trenches for several months, and in the spring of 1916 he returned to England where he received a commission as a second lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery. In 1917 Prendergast was a balloon observer attached to the Royal Flying Corps, 5th Kite Balloon Section. Later in the war, he commanded the 18th Balloon Company, sections no. 1 and 31.

Klaus Pringsheim, conductor, teacher, music critic and composer, was born in Munich on 24 July 1883. His father was Alfred Pringsheim (b. 1850). Klaus Pringsheim studied music under Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) in Vienna. In 1931 he left Germany for Japan where he became a professor at the Ueno Academy of Music. From 1941-1946 he directed the Tokyo Chamber Symphony Orchestra. After a brief period in the United States, he returned to Japan in 1951. He was appointed director of the Musashino Academy of Music. He composed an opera as well as music for the piano and chamber music. Pringsheim was the brother-in-law of Thomas Mann (1875-1955) and his fonds contains some letters written by Mann. He died in Tokyo on 7 December 1972. One of Klaus Pringsheim's sons, Klaus H. Pringsheim, has published a memoir, Man of the World: Memoirs of Europe, Asia & North America (1930s to 1980s) (1995).

Klaus H. Pringsheim was the son of Klaus Pringsheim, a conductor and composer. He was born in Germany in 1923 but he grew up in Japan where his father taught music. He remained in Japan until after the Occupation at the end of World War II. He then studied Political Science in the United States at both Berkeley and Columbia. He taught in the Political Science Department at McMaster University for 23 years. Upon retirement, he became president of the Canada -Japan Trade Council, a post he held from 1989 to 2000. He died on 6 February 2001. He published an autobiography, Man of the World: Memoirs of Europe, Asia and North America in 1995.

Bill 63, which was designed to guarantee the language rights of the English minority in Quebec, sparked a tide of nationalist agitation. The collection consists of newspapers, press and other statements.

Terence Rattigan, the playwright, was born in 1911 in London and educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Oxford. Shortly after leaving Oxford without a degree he had a play produced in the West End. He excelled in both stage plays and films. Some of his best known works are The Winslow Boy, The Browning Version and Separate Tables. Rattigan died in Bermuda in 1977.

George Baldwin Read served with the British Expeditionary Force during the First World War, and with the Canadian Artillery as a Captain in the Second World War. Born in 1886 in Ireland, he was a 2nd Lieutenant in the Cork Artillery Militia in 1903. Family legend says that he left home and travelled the world, working in Hawaii, Australia, and ending up in Canada in 1909. While there, he met and married Gwendolen Pym and they had two children, Montague (1914) and Michael Richard (1915).

Read returned to England and became a Captain with NO. 10 Coy. RGA, where he served at Queenstown Harbour. He was later promoted to Admiral and served in France and Belgium.

During the Second World War he served as a Major, possibly as a spotter on Partridge Island. He retired in April 1951.

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.

James Henry Reid was born in Toronto on 20 April 1891. He enlisted in the Canadian Army Dental Corps on 4 March 1916. At the time of his enlistment he was a dental student. He graduated from the Royal College of Dental Surgeons shortly thereafter. He apparently went to England in May 1917 and served out the duration of the war at a number of hospitals and dental clinics in London. Reid was a Lieutenant in 1916-17 and a Captain from 1917-19.

Stephen Douglas Reid was born in Massey, Ontario on 12 March 1950, the second of nine children born to Douglas Reid and Sylvia Shiels. At the age of sixteen, Reid turned to criminal activities, and he was jailed in 1971 for his part in the theft of gold bars in Ottawa. Escaping from prison, Reid, along with Patrick Mitchell and Lionel Wright, formed The Stopwatch Gang, robbing over 100 banks in Canada and the United States from their home in Arizona in the late 1970s. The FBI apprehended Reid in 1980, and he served time in Marion Penitentiary in Illinois until his extradition to Canada.

In 1984, while incarcerated at Millhaven Institution in Ontario, he began to write. The manuscript of his first novel, Jackrabbit Parole, attracted the attention of Susan Musgrave, who agreed to edit the manuscript. The book was published in 1986, the same year that Reid and Musgrave were married. He was released on parole in 1987. They then lived with their daughters Charlotte Musgrave and Sophie Musgrave Reid on Vancouver Island, and Reid joined in the activities of the literary community in British Columbia. His works include short stories, poetry, plays, articles, many of which have been published by Canada's leading newspapers and magazines. Much of Reid's writing and other work has involved issues relating to prison.

In 1999, as a result of a relapse into addiction, Reid participated in one more bank robbery, for which he is now serving an 18-year sentence at William Head Institution in British Columbia. In January 2008 he was granted day parole. Late in 2010 he was back in prison for violating parole. Reid had been living at his home in Massett, BC when in June 2018, he was admitted to hospital and died five days later of pulmonary edema and a heart blockage.

The Revolutionary Marxist Group (RMG) was a Canada-wide organization composed of militant socialists. It was founded in the summer of 1973. The RMG was closely affiliated with the Fourth International, an organization founded by Leon Trotsky in opposition to Stalinist socialism. As an affiliate to the Fourth International, the RMG maintained relations with several other related socialist sects. The most notable of these were the League for Socialist Action, the Revolutionary Workers League, the International Marxist Group , and the Socialist Workers Party. In 1977, the RMG, along with two other groups fused to form the Revolutionary Workers League.

Born in Hamilton, Ont. in 1881, Ella Reynolds was the only daughter of Robert and May Reynolds. She was a journalist, poet and author. She worked at The Hamilton Spectator from 1912 until 1945. In addition to writing music and theatre reviews at the Spectator, she wrote a book column entitled "Under the Study Lamp" and a weekly column entitled "Wren's Nest" under the pen name Jennie Wren. When the Hamilton chapter of the Canadian Women's Press Club was formed in 1927, she became its first president. In retirement she devoted her time writing poetry and reading mystery novels. Ryerson Press published her book of poems Samson in Hades in 1957. Reynolds died in 1970.

The content of these notebooks was created by George Alfred Reynolds (Rennie) Gibbons of Sturgeon River, N.W.T., Robin Gibbons, and Frank Carson.