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William Humphreys Dayas, pianist and composer, was born in New York of English parents in 1863 and orphaned at an early age. He studied organ and composition, and travelled to Germany in 1881 where he eventually became a pupil of Franz Liszt. Although he was a gifted pianist, he was not totally comfortable on the stage; he devoted himself to teaching. He taught at several conservatories throughout Europe and in 1896 was appointed principal professor of pianoforte at the Royal Manchester College of Music in England. He championed the music of Liszt, as well as publishing a number of his own compositions, primarily in Germany. He died in 1903 in Manchester.

Baron de Boesner was an Austrian banker and perhaps a diplomat. Around 1807 he was in the employ of le comte de la Fare, Bishop of Nancy, for the business affairs of King Louis XVIII in a relation to the court of Vienna.

Sarah Dixon, poet of Canterbury, was very born in 1671 at Rochester, Kent. Poems on Several Occasions is her only published book. For further information on Dixon, see Messenger, Pastoral Tradition and the Female Talent (2001)

Isy Esses was a member of a Jewish family with business interests in a number of different locations. He was born in Manchester, England on 21 April 1910. Isy was the director of the Unico Trading Company in Kobe, Japan and was located there from 1934 onwards and presumably earlier than that. His brothers, Abraham (Abe/Aby) and Clement, were the directors of M.I. Esses & Sons Ltd. in Dublin, Ireland – although their joint control of this firm did not begin until later into the time period covered by this fonds. For a time Abraham lived in Palestine as did his sister Gladys. The Dublin company was named after their father, Moise Isaac Esses, who had retired. He and his wife lived in West Didsbury, near Manchester. Another sister, Rachel lived with them. The senior Esses died in September 1940 in Dublin where he and his wife had moved upon retirement. Gladys married Leon M. Safdie in 1937 while Abraham got engaged to Edith Stambouli. Isy was made a director of M.I. Esses in 1941. The brothers dealt in a variety of different goods including hairpins, buttons, jewellery, china, cotton and plywood. Unico shipped goods throughout the world – to other places in Asia, Britain, the Middle East, South America, Australia, and the United States. In May 1940 the three brothers were planning to form a new company for sundries only, named Esco Ltd. Business cards were printed. Another company, Messers. Esse & Cie was operative in Aleppo. M.I. Esses & Sons Ltd. and Esco Ltd. are still in operation today.

Running the business in Japan became more difficult as World War II went on and Isy Esses found himself under a terrific strain. It was difficult to find passage out of the Far East. In addition, he had responsibilities to the business which also delayed his departure. He did not leave Japan for good until late summer 1941 getting passage on a ship on 18 August bound for Shanghai. From there he was able to get to Bombay. He then made his way to Cape Town, South Africa, leaving there on 25 October 1941 for New York. During the period from 1934 to 1941 he had left Japan from time to time to visit relatives, including his parents in West Didsbury, and conduct business. The Unico Trading Company was not re-established; instead he started a new company, Esco. He stayed in New York until 1954 when he moved to Toronto. He married Marchelle Shalom in New York on 25 March 1946. Isy Esses died on 17 February 1991 in Toronto.

E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster was a British novelist. He was born in London on 1 January 1879 and educated at Tonbridge School and King's College, Cambridge. His first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread, was published in 1905; one of his best novels, A Passage to India, which won both the Femina Vie-Heureuse and James Tait Black prizes, was published in 1924. Forster was awarded the Order of Merit on his ninetieth birthday.

Francis Richard Charles Grant was the author, with John Parker Anderson, of a Life of Samuel Johnson (1887).

James Graham Harrison at the time of writing this manuscript was a hospital patient in Concord, New South Wales, Australia. He appears to be a writer of local history with particular concentration on Bendigo, which is near Melbourne, Victoria.

James R.H. Hille was an autograph collector who lived in Leigh-on-Sea, England.

Lily Edward Jones was a poet who lived in Hamilton, Ont. She published two books with local printers, Odd Echoes in 1929, and Woodland Songs in 1936. Both books are in Research Collections.

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.

Alexander Logie was born in Rosefield, Nairnshire, Scotland in 1823. It is not known when he moved to Canada. In 1843, he was admitted as a student at law by the Law Society of Upper Canada and was called to the Bar in 1848. He practiced in Hamilton, Ontario, and later served as a judge with the Wentworth County Court (1854-1873). Logie was active with
the St. Paul's Presbyterian Church in Hamilton, acting as a teacher, elder and trustee. He served on Hamilton City Council from 1857 to 1860. Logie died in Hamilton on 10 December
1873.

John Horton MacIntyre also used the name "Mack". He was the author of a few poetry books published, in part, by subscribers such as Maple Leaves and Sprigs O'Heather (1925).

Johannis (Hans) Mol, professor and author, was born in Rozenburg, The Netherlands, on 14 February 1922. He was educated at the United Theological Faculty in Sydney, Australia, the Union Theological Seminary in New York, and Columbia University in New New York. He lectured in sociology at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand from 1961-1963 and was a fellow in sociology at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the Australian National University from 1963 until he arrived at McMaster University in 1970. He is the author of several books on the sociology of religion. After his retirement he was named Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies.

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.

Milos Novotny, mathematician, was born in Czechoslovakia and educated at Charles University in Prague from 1949 to 1953. He taught at the Czech Technical University in Prague from 1953 to 1963. He arrived in Canada in 1968 for graduate study at McMaster University where he received his doctorate in 1972. His thesis was titled, "Integration and Laplace Transformation of Orthogonal Series." After graduating from McMaster University, he taught at the University of Guelph, Université de Montréal, and finally Champlain Regional College in St. Lambert.

Liam O'Flaherty, novelist, was born on 28 August 1896 on Inishmore in the Aran Islands, Ireland. He was educated at University College, Dublin. After World War I, he travelled through the United States and Canada, paying his way by working as a labourer and clerk. He returned to Ireland in 1920 and helped to found the Irish Communist Party in 1922. Later that year he was forced to flee to England. His novel, The Informer (1925), about a man who betrays his friends, won the James Tait Black Prize in 1926. He also wrote Famine (1937) about the potato famine of the 1840s. He died in Dublin on 7 September 1984.

Herbert Edward Palmer, lyric and narrative poet and critic, was born in Market Rasen, Lincolnshire on 10 February 1880 and educated at Birmingham and later Bonn Universities. For many years he worked as a schoolmaster. In 1921 he relinquished his post as English master at St. Alban's school to devote himself to a full-time literary career. His Collected Poems were published in 1933. He published an autobiography, The Mistletoe Child, in 1935. Palmer died on 17 May 1961.

Lorraine Phelan, a Toronto socialite, was born in 1914. She died suddenly in 1932 from an attack of appendicitis. Her brother, Paul Phelan, married Helen Gardiner, the daughter of Percy Gardiner, a Toronto financier, in 1942.

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