John G. Wigmore was the son of Thomas B. Wigmore of Thorold, Ontario and served as a Leading Aircraftman with the RCAF during the Second World War. His older brother William (Bill) C. Wigmore was a Squadron Leader and flew in England, Gibraltar and Malta and was mentioned in dispatches.
The United Church of Canada was founded in 1925 as a merger of the Methodist Church of Canada, the Congregational Union of Ontario and Quebec, part of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and the Association of Local Union Churches.
William Charles Noble was born on 1 May 1941 to William T. Noble(1913-1989) and Lucy R. Noble (1913-2005). A graduate of the University of Toronto, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Calgary in 1968 (thesis entitled “Iroquois archaeology and the development of Iroquois social organization, 1000-1650 A.D.: A study in culture change based on archaeology, ethnohistory and ethnology”). Noble was the first Canadian-born student to graduate with a Ph.D. from the University of Calgary, which was the first university in Canada to establish an archaeology program. He was hired as an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University on 1 July 1971. Nicknamed “Barren Lands Bill”, Noble excavated many sites, including Cleveland (AhHb-7), Hamilton (AiHa-5), Thorold (AgGt-1), and Walker (AgHa-9). He was the author of numerous studies on Iroquois (Six Nations / Haudenosaunee / Rotinonshionni) culture, the Neutral (Chonnonton / Onguiaahra) people who lived along the western shores of Lake Ontario, and early Ontario archaeology. In the early 1990s he was Professor Emeritus after taking early retirement. Married twice, first to Jean MacLeod Slater and later to Jacqueline E.M. Crerar (Noble), he had two children, Gordon William Noble (1969-1988) and Elizabeth M. Noble. He died on 26 April 2009.
Frank S. Wood, born in March 1871, emigrated from Yorkshire, England to Hamilton, Ontario in 1888. It was during that year he collected a small lithic celt from a site in Yorkshire, which marked the beginning of his collecting career. The Wood artifact collection consists of approximately 10,007 specimens. The collection was amassed by Frank S. Wood and continued by his son Alfred E. Wood. Importantly, Wood collected a Palaeo-indigineous fluted point in Binbrook Township. This projectile point is one of the oldest found in Ontario (8000-6000 BCE). The Wood artifact collection was donated to McMaster University in 1973 (housed in the Ethnography Collection in the Department of Anthropology).
In 1894, Wood participated in the “Around the Bay Road Race”, winning second place behind W.R. Marshall. Frank S. Wood’s final race occurred as part of the 1 July 1 1927 Confederation Jubilee celebrations in Hamilton. He entered as the most senior participant at 56 years old.
Gisela Commanda was born Gisela Almgren in England on 9 December 1908. Her father was a Swedish artist, Per Johan Hugo Almgren and her mother was Antonia, née Cyriax (1881-1927). Her parents married when both were art students in Sweden; they separated in 1912. Known as “T” (for Tony/Antonia), Gisela’s mother was a friend of David Garnett and D.H. Lawrence; she adopted the pseudonym “Mrs. Anthony” or “Antonius” after separating from Almgren, in the belief that he was pursuing her. Under the name Tony Cyriax she published Among Italian Peasants in 1919, illustrated with her own watercolours. She and her daughter Gisela stayed close to the Lawrences in Italy in 1913 (see The Letters of D.H. Lawrence, ed. James T. Boulton. Cambridge University Press, 1979, vol. 1, 520; vol. 2, 139).
Gisela’s life was no less dramatic, although entirely different from that of her mother. Trained as an artist, she was inspired by hearing Grey Owl speak about the aboriginal peoples of Canada during a tour of England, likely during his first British tour in 1935-6. She travelled first to a USA reservation for indigenous people in 1939 and then came to Canada the following year. Wanting to learn Ojibwa, she had been in touch with Grey Owl’s canoe man in the making of his 1937 Mississagi River film, Antoine Commanda (see Donald B. Smith, From the Land of the Shadows: the Making of Grey Owl, 1990, 308). She visited Commanda at Bisco and married him in 1942. The couple seem to have separated after a short time (although they were not divorced until 1975) and Gisela Commanda, now afforded First Nations status as a result of her marriage, lived on a series of reserves, including Brantford, Ontario and Cardston, Alberta, documenting her travels and the stories of those she met in her lengthy series of notebooks. She worked as an advocate for and promoter of native culture, teaching native crafts and often dressing as an aboriginal person, just as Grey Owl had done.
None of her written work seems ever to have been published and much of it seems to have been lost during her frequent moves. Always prone to “nervous indisposition” (a depressed state which descended whenever she lacked stimulation), she was restless, rarely living in one place for long. After some years at a nursing home in Cornwall, Ontario during the 1970s, she moved to Woodlands Villa, Long Sault, Ontario, where she died on 22 March 1993.
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.
Basil H.Johnston, writer, was born in 1929 on Wasauksing First Nation (formerly Parry Island First Nation) located near Parry Sound, Ontario, Canada. He was a member of the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation Band (formerly known as the “Cape Croker Band of Ojibwa”). He attended elementary school at the Cape Croker First Nations Reserve until the age of 10, after which he attended the Spanish Indian Residential School in Spanish, Ontario. He graduated in 1950 and attended Loyola College in Montreal, where he graduated with a B.A in 1954. From 1955 to 1961 Johnston was employed by the Toronto Board of Trade. He received his Secondary School Teaching Certificate from the Ontario College of Education in 1962. From 1962 to 1969 he taught history at Earl Haig Secondary School in North York. In 1969 he took a position as Ethnologist at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto where he lectured to public groups and colleges. He remained at the ROM until 1994 where he worked with a mandate to record and celebrate Ojibway (Anishinaube) heritage, especially language and mythology. Johnston had also lectured at many universities, including the University of Saskatchewan and Trent University.
Johnston was the author of 16 books published in Canada, the United States and Germany. His books included Indian School Days (1988) and Moose Meat and Wild Rice (1978). In 1978, Johnston wrote The Ojibway Language Course Outline and the Ojibway Language Lexicon for Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. Johnston was a fluent speaker and teacher of the Anishinaube language who writes in both English and Anishinaabemowin. His writings appeared in many newspapers, anthologies and journals. In 1978 he was narrator and writer for the script of a film The Man, the Snake and the Fox for the National Film Board of Canada. In 1982 he established Winter Spirit Creations, an operation that has supplied Ojibway language print and audio programs to individuals, schools, colleges and universities in Canada and the United States. Johnston received the Order of Ontario in 1989 as well as Honorary Doctorates from the University of Toronto (1994) and Laurentian University (1998). In 2007 Johnston received the Aboriginal Achievement Award for Heritage and Spirituality. Johnston passed away on September 8, 2015.
Arthur Medland served as a Leading Aircraftman (1714975) with the RAF stationed at Maintenance Unit 351 serving the British North African Force. Medland had family in Verdun, Quebec, including his Uncle William White, whose son Douglas, he also corresponded with. Douglas White served on the HMCS Owen Sound.
Herb Gibson, farmer, First World War soldier (787167), was born 11 November 1889 to William Russell Gibson (1848-1917) and Euphemia Nairn. After serving in the 42nd Lanark and Renfrew Militia, Herb worked on the family farm in Balderston, Ontario until March 1916, when, despite his father’s wishes he enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
Trained at Valcartier, Quebec, he was initially appointed to the 110th Reserve Battalion for training and then transferred to the 4th Canadian Division to begin fighting in France. He was drafted into the 75th Battalion to replace their losses on the Somme and he arrived in France in December 1916. In March 1917, he was part of the offensive at Vimy Ridge, where he was shot in the right arm. After recovering in England, he returned to France in November 1917. In January of 1918 he learned that both his parents had died just before Christmas. Then in July, while lying at a listening post at Arras, Gibson was shot in the chest. He would see out the rest of the war while recovering in England and be sent back to Canada to be discharged in March 1919.
Due to the wounds Herb sustained, he was unable to work on the farm as he had prior to the war. He sold his farm and moved to Winnipeg to build houses with his brother. Herbert Gibson and May Bell Keays (1896/7-1999) were married in St. Vital, Manitoba on 10 February 1931, after she had finished caring for her younger siblings. They had two children and returned to Ontario in 1939, where Herb first worked at Batawa, Ontario, and then at the #6 Repair Depot RCAF Station, Trenton until 1955. He passed away on 17 October 1967.
Jessie Sarah Graham was born in 1906. She married Elmore Joselin, and they lived in Scarborough, Toronto, where their daughter, Beverley was born. Jessie Joselin died in 1998.
During the Second World War, Mrs. Joselin volunteered with the Salvation Army’s Red Shield Women’s Auxiliary affiliated with Birch Cliff School in Scarborough. She led a group that made children’s clothing (especially layettes) for British families whose homes had been destroyed by German bombs. The effort continued after the war and was extended to French families.
Mrs. Joselin’s father was an art teacher in Toronto. One of his students, Bettina (‘Bun’) Somers, from England, befriended Jessie. In addition to art, Somers also studied nursing. When it was time for Jessie to give birth to Beverley, Somers delivered her. Upon her return to England, Somers worked as a ‘tracer’ during the Second World War. The job of a tracer was to trace drawings prepared by draughtsmen to facilitate the production of blueprint copies.
The Simpson and Reid families were both based in Aberdeen, Scotland during the early nineteenth century.
Thomas Bassett Reid, the patriarch of the Reid family, originally hailed from London. He was active as a bootmaker in that city from at least 1786. In 1820 he dissolved a business partnership with one Edward Eld, leaving the latter in control of all its assets, and sometime afterward he moved to Scotland.
There he met Lilly McLachlan of Aberdeen, whom he subsequently married in 1828. The banns were published in Glasgow and the two were wed at St. Cuthbert’s Church in Edinburgh, where the couple settled. They had at least five children: Thomas, Alexander, George (b. 1832), Anne (b. 1835), and Amelia. Some time after Anne's birth, the family relocated to Aberdeen, which was to be their home for a generation.
Thomas the elder, the family patriarch, died sometime prior to 1851; his daughter Amelia died in 1857.
Thomas the younger served in the British Army; being appointed assistant surgeon in 1851 and full surgeon in 1858. During this time period — which coincided with the Rebellion of 1857 — he served for several years in India. His correspondence home provides a valuable insight into his life and impressions during this period. After returning home, he enrolled in medical school at the University of Aberdeen and subsequently became a licensed physician. He later set up a private practise in Aberdeen.
His younger brother George, an engineer, died at Suez (presumably during the construction of the canal) in 1865, leaving all his worldly goods to his mother Lilly.
Anne, a teacher by profession, married James Walker Simpson in 1861. By the time of their wedding, neither of James’ parents (James and Margaret) were still living.
Little is known of Alexander’s education and life save that he followed in his elder brother’s footsteps and became, like Thomas, a physician.
Over the course of the late nineteenth century, at least one branch of the family relocated to Canada. Alexander, his sister Anne, and her husband James Simpson all made the journey during this period. Alexander settled in Hamilton, and James is known to have relocated to Montreal some time prior to 1911.
In spite of time and distance, the Simpson, MacLachlan, and Reid families remained in contact for many years. Descendents of the family live in and around Hamilton to this day.
National Federation of Canadian University Students (NFCUS)
The National Federation of Canadian University Students came into being in December of 1926 in the wake of a British Empire debating team which toured Canada. The founding conference was held at McGill University in Montreal. The organization was founded to create "a better understanding among students, more cooperation ... among ... universities, ... and to furnish a means of creating international ties with groups of students in other countries."
The Federation became dormant during the years of World War II but revived in 1946. In 1964 the Federation underwent a re-organization and was renamed the Canadian Union of Students in an attempt to conciliate differences between English-speaking and French-speaking students. The fonds contains an essay which outlines these problems, titled "Assessment of the History of CUS/NFCUS (1926-1965)". It officially dissolved in 1969.
Farley Mowat was born on May 12, 1921 in Belleville, Ont. and educated at the University of Toronto. In 1952 he published People of the Deer, a book about the Ihalmiut people of the Barrenlands, the first of his many books with a northern theme. Other popular Mowat themes are stories that involve the sea, Newfoundland and the protection of the environment and all living creatures. He was a man of strong opinions who described himself as a "rampant nationalist" and a "story-teller who is more concerned with reaching his audience than with garnering kudos from the arbiters of literary greatness." Among the many honours and awards that he received was an honorary doctorate from McMaster University in 1994. Farley Mowat died on May 6, 2014.
Henry Eugene (Hank) Novak was a native of Hamilton, a McMaster student, and an RCAF officer during the Second World War. He was killed in action on January 17, 1945.
A more detailed biographical note by Dr. C.M. Johnston can be found at <a href="http://alumni.os.mcmaster.ca/s/1439/index.aspx?pgid=682">‘Discover McMaster’s World War II Honour Roll’</a>.
Mattha (“Madzy”) Cornelia Brender à Brandis (née van Vollenhoven) (1910-1984), known as “Madzy”, was a writer who was born in Scheveningen, Holland in 1910. She was the third of four children. She studied law in Leiden, but before completing her degree, she married Wim (“Bill”) Brender à Brandis. They had three children: Marianne Brandis, Gerard Brender à Brandis, and Joost (“Jock”) Brender à Brandis. They lived briefly in New York City, but they moved back to Holland just as World War II began. Wim was ultimately sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in 1942, and during this time, Madzy cared for their children in Nazi occupied Netherlands. The family immigrated to northern B.C. in 1947 and lived on a farm for nine years. In 1958, Madzy and Bill moved to Antigonish, Nova Scotia and worked at St. Francis Xavier University, and in 1959 they moved to Burlington, Ontario.
Madzy wrote in both Dutch and English, and much of her writing was autobiographical and details her experience as an immigrant. She wrote columns for four different newspapers in Holland and Canada; sixty-eight columns and other short works remain, though she wrote more that have not survived. She wrote a memoir about life on their farm in B.C. titled Land for our Son, published under the name Maxine Brandis, and which she translated into Dutch. She also wrote short stories and a great deal of unpublished material for family members, such as diaries, memoirs, letters, etc. Madzy contracted rheumatoid arthritis while still living in WWII Holland, and by 1972, unable to use her hands to write, she was using a tape recorder for correspondence, research, and for recording family memories.
John Stoughton Dennis was a surveyor, soldier, and public servant. Born in Kingston, Dennis had a long surveying career in Ontario and Manitoba, as well as serving as a militia officer, and public servant. He was appointed Canada’s first surveyor general in 1871. In addition, he was an active entrepreneur. The documents in this collection are related to a timber felling venture on the Magnetawan River near Parry Sound, Ontario.
Ray Gardner had a long career as an editor and journalist. Born in Victoria, Gardner grew up in Vancouver and worked for the city's three dailies, including The Province, The Sun and the News Herald. In 1947 he won the prestigious Kemsley scholarship, then awarded annually to the "outstanding young newspaperman in Canada," and spent 14 months in the United Kingdom and Europe. While in the UK, he married Kay Gardner, whom he had met in Vancouver in 1945.
On his return to Canada, Mr. Gardner served as managing editor of the Edmonton Bulletin, and worked as a freelance writer for numerous Canadian periodicals, including Maclean's, Liberty and Reader's Digest. After serving as West Coast editor of Maclean's, he joined The Star in 1961, where he became editor of Star Weekly, a weekly magazine supplement distributed with The Star. When it folded in 1968, he moved over to the daily as an assistant managing editor, serving in a variety of roles. He was appointed ombudsman, the reader's representative at the newspaper, in 1982, and remained in that post until his retirement in 1986.
Robert and Susan Evans lived in London, England. They had two sons, Victor and Cecil and a daughter, Winifred. Not long before the start of the First World War they moved to a farm in Gaston, Oregon, and later to Portland. They maintained contact with a number of people in England, including Robert’s sister Emily, Susan’s sister Mary, and a family friend William Waterson.
Victor and Cecil Evans were brothers who fought in the First World War. Cecil (2557483) served as a gunner and Victor (2557484) was a driver.
Victor Roland Evans, 27 July 1896, and Cecil John Robert Evans, 7 April 1898, were born in London, England, to Susan and Robert Evans and later moved to Portland, Oregon. The brothers travelled together from Portland to Victoria, BC and enlisted on 1 March 1918.
Both brothers were sent to France and served with the Canadian Field Artillery.
Henry Giroux, an American sociologist, cultural critic, and political activist, is one of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy.
Born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1943, Giroux excelled at athletics and attended Gorham State Teachers' College on a basketball scholarship. After graduating in 1967 he went on to pursue a Master's degree in history at Appalachian State College, an experience he would later describe as foundational owing to his exposure to radical politics as a teacher's assistant to a politically progressive professor. After completing his master's, he taught social studies at secondary school level for a number of years before completing his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon in 1977.
Since that time, Giroux has held positions at Boston University, Miami University, and Penn State University; in 2005, he accepted a new post as the Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. He has also held visiting professorships and teaching fellowships at a number of institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago, Northeastern University, and Tokyo Metropolitan University.
A leading theorist of critical pedagogy, Giroux's work touches on cultural studies, youth studies, critical pedagogy, popular culture, media studies, social theory, and the politics of higher and public education. According to his faculty biography at McMaster University, "…he is particularly interested in what he calls the war on youth, the corporatization of higher education, the politics of neoliberalism, the assault on civic literacy and the collapse of public memory, public pedagogy, the educative nature of politics, and the rise of various youth movements across the globe."
A prolific writer and speaker, he is the author of over 60 books and more than 400 papers.
Henri de Maillé, marquis de Carman, was a French nobleman who flourished in the late 17th century. In 1674 he married Marie Anne du Puy de Murinées; their only child, Donatien, was the maternal grandfather and namesake of Donatien Alphonse François — better known by his title, the Marquis de Sade.
