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Sarah Robson was born on 19 October 1816. She married William Thomas Thompson in a Quaker ceremony on 9 February 1842 at Newcastle-on-Tyne. They had two sons, Thomas Phillips (born 25 November 1844; died 22 May 1933) and Theodore (born 2 September 1846; died 16 June 1874). The family emigrated to Canada in 1857, settled first in Lindsay, Ontario, and by 1865, moved to St. Catharines. In 1878 Sarah and her husband returned to England. They were back in North America in 1882, living in Charlottesville, Virginia. The couple died within a few hours of each other on 23-24 April 1883. Thomas Phillips Thompson, Pierre Berton's grandfather, was a journalist, author, and labour organizer. He wrote under the nom de plume of "Jimuel Briggs". He married Delia Florence Fisher on 2 March 1872. One of their children was Laura Beatrice Thompson (born 13 March 1878), the mother of Lucy Woodward and Pierre Berton.

Ernst Zundel, Holocaust denier, was born in Germany on 24 April 1939. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a trade school. He had shown promise as an artist and was sent into a training program of a graphic arts institute. He moved to Canada in 1958 and was hired as an apprentice in commercial art at Simpsons in Toronto. He became a very prolific graphic artist. In 1959 Zundel met Adrien Arcand, leader of Canada's National Socialist Christian Party. Through him Zundel formed North American and European contacts. He ran for leadership of the Liberal Party in 1966. Beginning in the 1970s Zundel organized revisionist conferences, and began his mass mailing of revisionist books and pamphlets. In 1984 he was charged under Canada's Criminal Code for publishing hate literature which promoted social and racial charges. The trial was held in 1985 and he was found guilty.

Writing magazine was begun by the poets David McFadden (1940-) and Fred Wah (1939-), at the David Thompson University Centre in Nelson, British Columbia, in 1980. Though it began as part of the creative writing programme there, it is not a student magazine. It has published the work of Canadian writers such as Margaret Atwood, Susan Musgrave, and George Bowering, among others.

Morris Wolfe was born in Toronto, Ont. on 9 March 1938. In 1961, he graduated from the University of Toronto with a general B.A. Wolfe received an Honours Degree in English from the University of Guelph in 1968 and a Master's Degree in English in 1973 from the University of Waterloo. He taught English at the University of Guelph for five years and retired early from part-time teaching at the Ontario College of Art and Design where he taught film history for thirty years. In 1970, Wolfe turned to freelance writing and since then has written, edited and co-edited twelve books. He has also published hundreds of columns, articles, review articles and reviews in a variety of Canadian and American journals, including Canadian Literature, Cinema Canada, Jewish Dialog, Saturday Night, Toronto Life, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. Wolfe wrote a television column for Saturday Night from 1973 to1980, a book column for Books in Canada from 1973 to 1984, a media column for the journal Content from 1976 to 1979, and a magazine column for the Globe and Mail from 1989 to 1995.

Thomas Russell Wilkins, physicist, was born in Toronto on 6 June 1891. He graduated from McMaster University, then located in Toronto, Ontario, in 1912, before continuing on to the University of Chicago. From 1918 to 1925 he was head of the Department of Mathematics and Physics at Brandon College in Calgary, Alberta. During that time he also completed his doctorate at the University of Chicago. He spent one year, 1925-1926, at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, England. In 1926 he joined the Physics Department of the University of Rochester in New York. In 1928 he was appointed director of the Institute of Optics. He died in Rochester on 10 December 1940. Wilkins secured photographic recordings of cosmic rays and the disintegration of radium atoms.

The Federation of Glass, Ceramic and Silica Sand Workers, an organization which emerged from the Federation of Flat Glass Workers of America, was originally formed in 1934 and came to Canada in 1954. Canadian glass workers were organized under District 6 Headquarters in Hamilton, Ont., under the direction of Oliver Hodges. In 1954 the name of the union was changed to the United Glass and Ceramic Workers of North America.

The Toronto Association for Peace (TAP) was one of the many peace groups under the umbrella of the Canadian Peace Congress (CPC). It was founded at the same time or slightly before the CPC, in December 1948.

Ian Thomas is a Canadian composer, musician, and author. He was born on 23 July 1950 in Hamilton, Ont. Thomas began working as a musician in the 1960s with his first band “Ian, Oliver, and Nora”. With the addition of a two more members they became “Tranquility Base” and performed as the Pop-Group in Residence with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. Thomas briefly worked as a producer for the CBC before returning to the stage. In 1973, Ian Thomas reached national and international success with the single “Painted Ladies”, garnering a Juno (Gold Leaf) Award for Promising Male Vocalist. Over the next two decades Thomas would release over a dozen albums under his own name as well as writing hits for a number of international musicians. In 1991, he joined a number of fellow Canadian musicians in “the Boomers” and would release another four albums with them into the early 2000s. Starting in 2003, he toured both as a solo artist and with “Lunch at Allen’s”. His career has won him a number of awards recognizing his quality as a musician and as a humanitarian. In addition to his performing career, Thomas wrote music for a number of movies and television shows as well as a stage-musical adaptation of Frankenstein. Thomas has worked on a number of projects with his brother, comedian Dave Thomas. Ian Thomas has authored two books, Bequest and The Lost Chord, published by Manor House Press. Copies of these books are included in the fonds

Pieter Tas (1868-1947) was born in Holland but became best known as a musician in England. From 1907 to 1910 he was resident conductor of the private orchestra of the Duke of Devonshire. His son Pierre Tas (1902-1971) was a well-regarded violinist and teacher.

Jonathan Swift, satirist, cleric and politician, was born in Dublin, Ireland.

The International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (IUE-CIO) held its first annual convention, 25-6 October 1952, in Guelph, Ont. It was affiliated with the IUE in the United States which had been founded in 1949. The union members in Canada formed part of District Five until 1965 when the district was renamed the Canadian District. The IUE Canadian District merged with the Communications Workers of Canada (CWC) in 1983. The new organization was called the Communications, Electronic, Electrical and Technical Workers of Canada. In 1985 the name was changed to the Communications and Electrical Workers of Canada; in 1992 the name became the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada as a result of a merger with the Canadian Paperworkers Union and the Energy and Chemical Workers of Canada.

William Burton Hurd was born in Brockville, Ontario in 1894. He was a Rhodes scholar, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and president of the Canadian Political Economy Association. In 1921 he became Professor of Political Economy at Brandon College and was appointed Dean of Arts in 1928. He came to McMaster University as Professor of Political Economy in 1935, became Associate Dean of Arts in 1939, and chaired the Department of Political Economy from 1947 to 1949. A regular contributor to economic, political, and banking periodicals, he was an expert on population problems and the author of several books, including Origin, Birthplace, Nationality and Language of the Canadian People and Racial Origins and Nativity of the Canadian People.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) was formed in 1963 by a merger of the National Union of Public Employees and the National Union of Public Service Employees.

During the First World War Marion S. Simpson of Hamilton, Ont. wrote letters of encouragement and sent parcels, mainly socks, to Canadian soldiers overseas.

Geoffrey Handley-Taylor was born in 1920 in Horsforth, Yorkshire, England. Known primarily for his specialist bibliographies, he compiled the standard bibliographies of Winifred Holtby, John Masefield and C. Day-Lewis, and the Authors of Today checklists of counties. Handley-Taylor was also responsible for several select national bibliographies of Monaco and Iran. He was founder-donor of the Winifred Holtby Memorial Collection, Fisk University, Nashville, 1955. He was also a member of numerous English literary societies.

The Hamilton Chamber Music Society was founded in 1952 under the joint auspices of the Fine Arts Department of McMaster University and the Hamilton Conservatory of Music in Hamilton, Ont. Its first president was Reginald Godden, pianist, composer and teacher, who had been principal of the Hamilton Conservatory since 1948. The Society organizes concerts at which chamber music is performed by musicians of international stature as well as local musicians.

John Danforth Herman Greenwood (1889-1975) was an English composer born in London and educated at the Royal College of Music in London. Most of his professional activity was as a composer, conductor and musical director for film and theatrical productions. He wrote scores for nearly fifty films. During World War I he worked on the staff of the BBC European Service as Assistant Music Supervisor.

Stanley Gray was born in 1944 and grew up in the working class, east end of Montreal. He graduated from McGill University (B.A.) and Balliol College (B. Phil.). Gray taught at McGill University and was one of the main organizers of Opération McGill. He was dismissed from the Political Science department in 1969 when a compromise could not be reached over his political activities. Thereafter, he became a leader of the Front de libération populaire (FLP). When it began to decline in importance after the 1970 provincial election, he was instrumental in forming another organization, the Patriotes québecois. Gray was also a prominent member of the Combined Universities Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Gray wrote a thesis for Oxford (D. Phil) on Marxist theory with an historical analysis of working class struggles in England, the United States, and Quebec.

Denis Martin Shaw, Professor Emeritus, McMaster University School of Geography and Geology, was born on 20 August 1923, in Lancashire, England to Norman Wade and Sylvia (Shackleton) Shaw. He attended the King Edward VII school in St. Anne’s and continued his education at Emmanuel College in Cambridge. There, he received his BA in 1943 and later in 1948 his MA, after having served as a Signals Officer for three years. In 1946 Shaw married Doris Pauline (Paula) Mitchell. They had 3 children: Geoffrey, Gillian, and Peter Shaw. Soon thereafter he enrolled at the University of Chicago for a doctorate. By 1951 he had joined the Department of Geology at McMaster University. Shaw divorced Paula Shaw in 1975, and married Susan Evans in 1976. He died in Hamilton on 6 October 2003.

Saul Jacob Frankel was born in Montreal on 6 August 1917. Educated at McGill University he obtained his Ph.D. in 1958. He joined the Political Science Department at McGill in 1954 and taught there until 1969, rising to the rank of Professor. During 1966-1967 he chaired the Royal Commission on Employer-Relations in the Public Services of New Brunswick. He moved to McMaster University where he became Dean of Social Sciences from 1969-1976. From 1976 to 1987 he served as a full-time Board member and Adjudicator of the Public Services Staff Relations Board in Ottawa. He died in 1992.