William Fingland was born in Beverly Township, Ontario on 19 September 1885. Fingland was a student, likely at Knox College, at the time he enlisted in May 1915. Upon arriving in Europe, after his voyage over on the Megantic, Fingland sent a telegram to his sweetheart, later wife, [Jan]Etta McDiarmid. Once in England, Fingland began his work on behalf of the YMCA. He organized sport days, religious services, recreation activities and entertainment, including a moving picture show for troops just behind the line in Belgium and France. He visited soldiers in hospital, censored letters and dealt with the excesses of the soldiers around him. He witnessed first hand the devastation in Ypres. Fingland was involved with visiting the Canadian Forestry Camps and working with the Khaki University (College), in both London and Edinburgh, which helped to provide men on leave with places to stay, educational courses and recreational activities. Khaki University promoted education and arranged literary and historical lectures in London and France. The most popular courses with the troops involved agriculture. Fingland oversaw the Beaver Hut in 1919, a large YMCA tent for Canadian troops, and participated in a visit to the area by the Prince of Wales and Prince Albert. William and Etta were married in 1920.
Wallace Balfour Brett was born in Markdale, Ontario on 16 May 1895. Brett had been a farmer prior to enlisting in Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force in January 1917. Brett was a member of the 4th Company of the 8th Battalion. Brett was killed in action on 21 August 1918. He is buried in the Daours Communal Cemetery, 10 kilometers east of Amiens.
John Terpstra was born in Brockville, Ontario in 1953 and moved to Edmonton as a child. He has spent most of his life in Hamilton, Ontario. Terpstra was educated at Trinity Christian College in Chicago and the University of Toronto. He has published several books of poetry including the Governor-General Literary Awards’ nominee, Disarmament (2003). His prose works include The Boys, or Waiting for the Electrician’s Daughter (2005) which was a finalist for the Charles Taylor Prize and Falling into Place (2002). His selected poetry has been collected in Two or Three Guitars (2006).
Lloyd J. Montgomery was a Leading Seaman on board the HMCS Iroquois during the Second World War. He kept a small diary detailing the ship’s duties as part of the dangerous Murmansk Run, which took supplies to the Soviet Union.
Mrs. Bromley's husband served with Canadian forces in France during World War I. She received a letter from Sister E.B. Burpee, No. 1 Canadian General Hospital in France, 5 August 1917, informing her that her husband has "absorbed some of this terrible gas poison" and that he is seriously ill.
Lance Corporal Thomas Richard Phillips enlisted in August 1929 and served with the Welsh Guards throughout the Second World War. He married his wife, Eileen, in January of 1940 and they had a son, William Victor, two years later. Following the war he remained with the military.
Marmaduke Archer, his wife, and his son James emigrated from the United Kingdom to the United States in1850, settling in Wisconsin.
Clifford Bax, critic, editor, and playwright, was born on 13 July 1886 in Knightsbridge, London. He was educated at the Slade and then the Heatherly Art Schools, finishing his education in Germany. He founded the Phoenix Society (1919-1926) to revive important Elizabethan and Restoration dramas. His first play to be staged was The Poetasters of Ispahan in 1912 and his plays continued to be staged regularly until 1946. Bax died on 18 November 1962.
Harry Somers, composer, pianist, and broadcaster, was born in Toronto on 11 September 1925 and studied at the Toronto Conservatory from 1942 to 1949. He composed orchestral, choral and vocal works, as well as music for film, television and the stage. In the 1960s he became a broadcaster with CBC radio and television programmes about music. He received three honorary doctorates and was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1972. He died on 9 March 1999.
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.
Hans von Bülow, conductor and pianist, was born in Dresden, Germany on 8 January 1830. He studied both music and law, the latter in Leipzig. In 1851 he gave up law and went to Weimar to study piano under Franz Liszt (1811-1866). He married Liszt's daughter Cosima in 1857. Von Bülow toured as a pianist and also taught at the Stern and Marx conservatories in Berlin. In 1864 he became the conductor of the Court Opera in Munich, followed in 1867 by his appointment as director of the music conservatory there. From 1850-1855 he was Hoftmusikdirektor to the Duke of Meiningen. Von Bülow also composed some piano works and orchestral music. He died in Cairo on 12 February 1894.
Oliver Ridsdale Baldwin, 2nd Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, was born in 1899. An author and journalist, he was sometime Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for War and served as Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Leeward Islands, 1948-1950. He was also a Member of Parliament representing Dudley in 1929-1931 and Paisley 1945-1947. He died in 1958 and was succeeded by his brother.
John Barclay (1898-1966) was active in the Peace Pledge Union in the late 1930s; he was one of the official sponsors of the Union in 1939. The photographs are of Peace Pledge Union activities and participants in 1937-1938 including John Barclay, Dick Sheppard, Maurice Rowntree, Vera Brittain, J. Middleton Murry, Max Plowman and others. Barclay's son, Anthony, has written a brief memoir of his father. It is located in the master file.
Maurice Baring, poet, essayist, literary critic, and novelist, was born in London on 27 April 1874. He was educated at Eaton and Trinity College, Cambridge. He is credited with introducing Chekhov's work to the West. He died in Beauley, Inverness-shire, on 14 December 1845.
Robert Bolt is an English playwright and screenwriter born in 1924 in Sale, near Manchester, England where he was educated. His most well-known play, A Man for All Seasons, on the life of Sir Thomas More, opened in London in 1960.
Born on 3 November 1893, Arthur Stanley Bourinot was a poet and lawyer. After completing his education at the University of Toronto and his legal training at Osgoode Hall, he was called to the bar in 1920. He practised law in Ottawa until his retirement in 1959. He produced more than a dozen chapbooks of poetry between 1915 and 1966. He won the Governor General's Award for Under the Sun (1939). Bourinot was also an active member of the literary community in Canada. He edited the Canadian Poetry Magazine (1948-54 and 1966-8) and Canadian Author and Bookman (1953-4, 1957-60). He died on 17 January 1969.
James Brasch was born on 11 October 1929. He was educated at the State University of New York, Colgate University and the University of Wisconsin. He has published a guide to Henry James's novel, The Portrait of a Lady in 1966 and edited a volume of Ernest Hemingway's works in 1981. He began teaching in McMaster University's English department in 1966 and became an associate professor before his retirement in 1995.
William Cole was born on 22 April 1934, the son of Raymond Cole and his wife Elaine Cole, in Kitchener, Ont. Bill Cole pursued a theatrical and musical career. He performed with the Stratford Festival, the Spring Thaw Review and the Charlottetown Festival. He also did some directing and recorded one record. In later life he sang with the Kitchener Waterloo Philharmonic Choir. H also taught high school briefly. He married Hilda Neeb in August 1957; the couple had two children, Trevor and Valerie, later divorcing in 1982. Bill died in December 2005.
Robertson Davies (1913-1995) was a writer, journalist, and university professor. Educated at Upper Canada College, Queen's University and Balliol College, Oxford, he returned to Canada in 1940 as literary editor of Saturday Night. Two years later, he became the editor of the Peterborough Examiner. At the beginning of his career Davies earned his reputation as a journalist, dramatist and the alter ego of the cantankerous diarist, Samuel Marchbanks. In 1951 Davies published his first novel, Tempest Tost. Altogether he wrote a dozen novels, but he was equally prolific as an essayist, book reviewer, short story writer, and satiric commentator of his age. Davies taught literature at the University of Toronto from 1960 to 1981, and it was also during this period that he was named the first Master of Massey College. He was the recipient of many honours, including the D.Litt conferred upon him by McMaster University in 1959.
