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Keith Patrick was born on Sept 22, 1918, in Saint John New Brunswick. He was the son of Hugh and Lily Patrick, and had six brothers: W.E. Robinson, Ronald, Edmond, Raymond, Kenneth Roland, and Murray. He received an elementary and high school education in Saint John, West Haven, Connecticut, and Lynn, Massachusetts. He was employed by American News Co. in Lynn at the outbreak of war, prompting him to return to New Brunswick to enlist. Keith served in the R.C.A.F. from 1940 to 1945 as a Wireless Operator/Air Gunner. He received training at Wireless School in Calgary and Bombing and Gunnery School in Macdonald, Manitoba. His overseas postings included Operational Training Units and Ferry Command in England; in Egypt with the RAF 108 Squadron; and in France with the 427 Lion Squadron.

He was on his second tour with the RCAF 427 Squadron when his Halifax bomber was shot down in Pas-de-Calais, France, on the night of June 12, 1944. Seriously injured, he and his pilot, Don Fulton, were sheltered by members of the French Resistance. They were liberated in September 1944. Keith retired from the RCAF in February 1945 at the rank of Flight Lieutenant.

After the war, he had a successful career as a Purchasing Manager with Ford Motor Co. in Saint John, Canadair in Montreal and Fleet Manufacturing and Horton-CBI in Fort Erie.

Keith married Phyllis Taylor on June 29, 1946. They had three children, Charmian, Janet, and Philip. Keith self-published his memoirs, To the Stars, with his daughter Janet Lee MacNeil in 2014. Keith passed away in 2021, in Kitchener, Ontario.

Gary Barwin is the author of twenty-six books of poetry and fiction, as well as works for children and teens. He is also a composer, multidisciplinary artist, and owner and operator of Serif of Nottingham Editions, a Hamilton-based small press. Through Serif of Nottingham and other small presses, Barwin has also published numerous chapbooks, broadsides, and pamphlets.

Barwin was born in 1964 in Northern Ireland. His family immigrated to Canada in the 1970s. In 1985, Barwin graduated from York University with a BFA in music and a BA in creative writing. He went on to complete a PhD in music composition at SUNY Buffalo.

Barwin has taught creative writing at several colleges and universities, including King’s University College (Western University), McMaster University, and Mohawk College. He has also participated in writer in residence programs at Toronto Public Library, Western University, London Public Library, McMaster University, Hamilton Public Library, Wilfrid Laurier University, and others. In addition, Barwin has taught creative writing to at-risk youth through Hamilton’s ArtForms program.

Barwin’s novel Yiddish for Pirates was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. The novel also won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, and the Hamilton Literary Award. Barwin is also a four-time recipient of the Hamilton Book of the Year award and a co-winner of the bpNichol Chapbook Award.

Barwin lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

Samuel Nickle was born in Winnipeg in 1913/14 to Olga and Sam Nickle. The family moved to Calgary in 1917. In 1935 he started the Nickle Map Service Ltd. In 1935 in response to the Turner Valley oil boom. During the Second World War he served in the Calgary Highlanders and was commissioned in the Intelligence Corps in 1943.

Following the war he resumed his mapping business working in the oil and gas industry. He continued to support the Calgary Highlanders and was appointed to Honorary Colonel. He passed away on 26 January 1994.

Ruthven Colquhoun McNairn served in the Second World War with the Algonquin Regiment. Born in Toronto on 24 August 1914, to William Harvey McNairn, a professor at McMaster University and Hester (Wilson) McNairn. He was the third of four brothers, with Robert and Norman proceeding him, and Ian following. The family relocated to Hamilton in 1930 when the University did.

In February 1933, after finishing high school, McNairn hitchhiked to travel to California and travelling around before being jailed on a charge of vagrancy. His father bailed him out and McNairn made his way home by June.

He began his studies at McMaster University, beginning in Mathematics and Physics, and then transferring to General Arts. He enjoyed being part of the Dramatic Society and appeared in a number of plays. He also was part of the literary society. He graduated in 1938, and did some more travelling before returning to Hamilton.

On 1 November 1940, he began military training with McMaster’s COTC and part time militia with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. He completed his training in 1941 and hoped to join the Navy, which his younger brother also hoped to join. With no offers forthcoming, he formally enlisted 11 May 1942, and was sent for training at Gordon Head, BC. He would join the Algonquin Regiment in 1943 and shipped to Europe in early summer.

He was part of the operation to attempt to closed the ‘Falaise Gap’ and would then carry on towards Belgium, the Netherlands, and finally into Germany. Throughout this time he kept his own diary, as well as helping to write the regiment’s war diary when the official diarists were busy. He would carry on this work and though he died before the official history was published, he is credited with doing much of the work on Warpath.

Returning home, McNairn had aspirations of writing, either as a journalist or in longer form. Unfortunately, in June 1946, he was diagnosed with an especially virulent form of TB, tuberculous empyema. Likely contracted while still in Europe, he was transferred to Hamilton’s Mountain Sanatorium for care, but would never recover. McNairn died 5 September 1946 and was buried in Grove Cemetery, in Dundas.

Judith Robinson was born in Toronto, Ont. on Victoria Street on April 6, 1899. She was the daughter of Jessie and John Robinson Robinson (nicknamed “Black Jack Robinson”), who was the editor of the Toronto Telegram until his death in 1929. She attended Toronto Model School until age 12, when she contracted a childhood illness which stopped her schooling. Self-taught in journalism and literature, she also developed an interest in architecture.

Known as ‘Brad’ to her friends, Robinson became a reporter at the Toronto Globe in 1929. Under Globe President George McCullagh, she wrote a Page One feature column daily beginning in 1936. She resigned in 1940 over a political disagreement with the Globe’s coverage of World War II. With her brother John and Oakley Dalgleish, she clandestinely printed advertisements under the name “Canada Calling,” criticizing Mackenzie King government’s slow response to the war effort. In May 1941, she and Dalgleish founded NEWS, a national weekly newspaper whose editorial office was her home at 63 Wellesley St. NEWS closed in 1946. During the war she was also was active in the Women’s Emergency Committee which petitioned the Canadian government to close the Christie Street Veteran’s Hospital in Toronto. Those efforts helped result in the opening of Sunnybrook Military Hospital in 1946. Beginning in 1953, she wrote a daily column for the Toronto Telegram until her death on December 17, 1961.

Robinson authored three non-fiction books: Tom Cullen of Baltimore (1949), As We Came By (1951), and This Is On the House (1957). She edited John Farthing’s political treatise, Freedom Wears a Crown, and helped publish the medical memoir Days of Living: The Journal of Martin Roher, for which she wrote the introduction.

Susan Musgrave was born on March 12, 1951 in Santa Cruz, California. She has lived in Hawaii, Ireland, England and Columbia and presently resides in Sidney, British Columbia. She is married to Stephen Reid whose fonds is also at McMaster. She has published novels, children's books, collections of essays and poetry. Her published works include Entrance of the Celebrant (1972), Selected Strawberries and Other Poems (1977), The Charcoal Burners (1980), The Dancing Chicken (1987), Great Musgrave (1989) Forcing the Narcissus (1994), The Situation in Which We Are Both Amateurs (1997), Things That Keep and Do Not Change (1999) and Cargo of Orchids (2000) and Origami Dove (2011), A Taste of Haida Gwaii (2016), More Blueberries (2019) (Chldren’s book) and Kiss Tickle Cuddle Hug (2010) (Children’s book).

Harvey Feit is professor emeritus in McMaster University’s Department of Anthropology. A major focus of Feit’s research is his work with Eeyou (Cree) peoples in Eeyou Istchee (primarily Northern Québec), particularly around the creation and implementation of the James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement (JBNQA).

Feit was born in 1941. He pursued graduate studies in anthropology at McGill University, receiving an M.A. in 1969 and a Ph.D. in 1979. Feit’s research on Eeyou hunters led him to work closely with Eeyou communities on various ethnographic projects and, eventually, the negotiation and implementation of the JBNQA, which was the first major land claim agreement and treaty between the Crown and Indigenous peoples in Canada since the early 20th century. From 1972-1987, Feit served as expert witness in the court case preceding the signing of the JBNQA (Chief Robert Kanatewat et al. vs. JBDC, JBEC et al. in Québec Superior Court, 1973) and worked as a researcher, program and policy developer, and advisor with Eeyou negotiators and government bodies. A project of particular significance that Feit contributed to during this time was an income security program to sustain Eeyou families living on the land.

Feit was assistant professor at Carleton University (1972-1975) and McGill University (1975-1978). In 1981, he took up a full-time position at McMaster. In 1992, he assisted in founding the Indigenous Studies Program at the university. Feit also became a member of the adjunct graduate faculty in the Chanie Wenjack School for Indigenous Studies at Trent University. In 2001, he was named a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Feit’s research has appeared in two co-edited volumes and over 75 book chapters, journal articles, reports, and expert affidavits and testimonies. Major themes in his research include colonialism and its effects, Indigenous self-governance, the basic income program for Eeyou families, and subsistence hunting.

George Francis Clingan (1894-1964) of Virden, Manitoba joined the Canadian military in October 1915. He remained in the military, serving with the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa during World War II. He was Commanding Officer in 1942. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. His daughter Peggy married Lt. Colin Murray who served with the 27th Canadian Infantry Brigade at the time it was based in Hannover, Germany as part of Canada's contribution to NATO.

Colin Smythe, the founder of Colin Smythe Limited Publishers, was born in Berkshire, England. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He returned to England and in 1966 established Colin Smythe Limited, in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire. The firm specializes in Anglo-Irish literature. In 1987 he was presented with an award from the Association of Anglo-Irish Literature in Dublin.

Peter C. Newman, author, journalist, and editor, was born in Vienna, Austria on 10 May 1929 as Peta Neumann to Jewish parents who lived in Czechoslovakia. The family left Breclav just before the Nazi take-over in 1938 and he moved to Canada in 1940 and became a citizen in 1945. He was educated at the University of Toronto. As a journalist he has worked for the Financial Post, Toronto Star and Maclean's magazine. He was editor-in-chief of the Toronto Star from 1969 to 1971 before moving on to Maclean's, transforming it into a weekly news magazine.

After eleven years of running Maclean's, he decided to stay on as senior contributing editor. He has written biographies of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, the Bronfman family, and a history of the Hudson Bay Company. He often challenged the establishment, while also being a chronicler of it. Including A Nation Divided: Canada and the Coming of Pierre Trudeau (1969), The Establishment Man: Conrad Black, A Portrait of Power (1982), The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister (2005), and When the Gods Changed: The Death of Liberal Canada (2011). In 2004 he published his autobiography, Here Be Dragons.

He died 7 September 2023 at the age of 94, in Belleville, Ontario, from complications suffered from a stroke the previous year and Parkinson's.

John Edward Macfarlane, editor and publisher, was born in Montreal on 28 March 1942. He was educated at the University of Alberta. As an undergraduate he began to work for Canadian University Press and has stayed close to the world of Canadian newspapers and magazines ever since. At the age of 23 he became an editorial writer for the Globe and Mail, and he was subsequently appointed Entertainment Editor for the Toronto Star, Associate and later Executive Editor of Maclean's, Editor of Toronto Life, Weekend Magazine, Saturday Night and Financial Times. Macfarlane has also been the President of a public relations agency, and the Managing Director of C.T.V News Service. With Jan Walter and Gary Ross, John Macfarlane founded the publishing house Macfarlane, Walter & Ross, in 1988. MW&R specialized in non-fiction. It was purchased by McClelland & Stewart in 2000 and closed in 2003.

Leon Gerstenzang was a journalist and manufacturer. He was born in 1913 in Warsaw, Poland to Anczel (Edward) Gerstenzang, a dental surgeon, and Sara née Krinkevich. As an infant he was evacuated to Irkuta, Siberia, by his mother upon the outbreak of the First World War. Upon the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, he was taken by his mother to Harbin, China. His father had been imprisoned in Warsaw, and joined the family in Tientsin (now Tianjin), China in 1920.

Gerstenzang entered British Tientsin Grammar School in 1921 and graduated in 1929 with a Cambridge School Certificate. In 1930, he joined the British daily newspaper, Peking & Tientsin Times as proof-reader and cub reporter. In 1932 he left the for the United States. as a student and entered Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School in New York city. He was accepted by New York University’s School of Journalism. Owing to the Depression of 1932 he could not maintain student status and finish college. He returned to Tientsin in late 1932 and rejoined the editorial staff of the newspaper, where he established a Sunday edition of the Peking & Tientsin Times. He married Rachel Lili Tunik in 1938. In 1939 he joined Reuters Ltd. in Tientsin as News Editor and Correspondent.

From the end of 1935 to the end of 1941, Gerstenzang served as a senior Lance Corporal in the British Municipal Emergency Corps during the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War. Together with other Reuters staff, he was imprisoned by the Japanese during the occupation of Tientsin, for 100 days. At the close of the war, he resumed work as Manager for Reuters in 1945 until the Chinese Communists entered the city in January 1949 and banned foreign correspondents’ operation of news agencies which resulted in the Reuters office being closed. In mid-1949, Gerstenzang moved to Hong Kong and resided at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. He left Hong Kong in late 1950 for Sydney, N.S.W., upon receiving Australian immigration, where he covered under his own name for Reuters and Australian Associated Press.

In 1952, Leon and Lili Gerstenzang travelled to Toronto, Canada, and received their Landed Immigration status in 1953. They continued to live in Toronto until their deaths.

Gerstenzang worked in various manufacturing businesses and Real Estate in Canada after 1953. He joined the Ripley Manufacturing Co., Toronto, and subsequently became the President of the Canadian branch of the Q-Tip Corporation.

He died in Toronto in 2005.

Rachel Lili Gerstenzang, known as Lili, was born on July 25, 1918 in Harbin, China. Her father, Aaron Tunik was a businessman in the Export Import business. Her mother was Raisa Tunik, née Levin.

Lili Gerstenzang moved to Tientsin in 1921, where she was educated at the British Tienstin Grammar School until 1933. The family moved to Shanghai, where she attended the Shanghai Public School for Girls. She was active in entering art contests and won notable mention in local newspapers.

She married Leon Gerstenzang in 1938. With her husband, Leon Gerstenzang, she left northern China upon the Chinese Communist occupation. They moved to Hong Kong in July 1949.

They moved to Sydney, Australia and lived there from Nov 1950 to Feb 1953. Lili Gerstenzang attended the East Sydney Technical College, studying Art from 1950 to 1952 and moved to Toronto, Canada in late 1952, becoming and immigrant in 1953. Lili Gerstenzang attended the Ontario College of Art from 1955 to 1956 and 1963-1964.

She died 9 February 2019.

Reginald Francis Mutart was born on 7 June 1897 in Mimico, Ontario to Charles and Augusta Mutart, and worked as a clerk prior to the First World War. On 22 May 1916 he enlisted in the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force, and was assigned to the 64th Battery Canadian Field Artillery, 2nd Division French Mortars. During his service in the war, he saw action in France, including at the Battle of Vimy Ridge. He was honourably discharged on 19 August 1919, having attained the rank of Gunner. Following the war he would work for the Canadian National Railways as a clerk. He would marry a woman named Carrie, with whom he had at least one child, a son named Robert Jack Mutart. Reginald died on 2 August 1929 in Niagara Falls, Ontario following injures sustained in a gas explosion in the cellar of his home.

Robert Jack Mutart was born on 7 May 1923 to Reginald and Carrie Mutart. Following the death of his father in 1929, his mother remarried a man named A. Lebert. Robert enlisted for service in the Second World War on 25 March 1942, and served in the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve. Attaining the rank of Leading Signalman, Robert would serve in the Atlantic Theatre on minesweeping and convoy missions. He was honourably discharged on 25 October 1945, but continued to serve as a reservist until 1957. On 12 May 1945 he married Anne Mattiuz, with whom he had three children: Donna, Bobby, and Jimmy. After the war, Robert would become a dentist in Hamilton. Robert died on 3 February 1962 in Detroit, Michigan, at the age of 38.

Born in the Netherlands in 1938, Marianne Brandis (full last name: “Brender à Brandis”) immigrated with her family in 1947 to Terrace, BC and currently lives in Stratford, Ontario. She was educated at UBC, St. Francis Xavier University, and McMaster University from which she graduated with a BA in 1960 and MA in 1964.

Brandis worked for a time as a copywriter for CKOC in Hamilton and CBC in Toronto in the 1960s. She also taught creative writing and English literature at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (Ryerson University) from 1967 until she resigned in 1989 at the age of 50 after which she pursued writing full-time. She continues to teach creative writing and memoir writing workshops.

Brandis’ writings contain diverse topics and include historical fiction, creative non-fiction, memoir, and biography genres. In her historical works, she deals with significant events and the private and daily lives of individuals. Perhaps best known are Brandis’ historical books for younger readers which were published in the 1980s and 1990s, and out of these, The Tinderbox (1982), The Quarter-Pie Window (1985), The Sign of the Scales (1990), Fire Ship (1992), and Rebellion (1996) received various awards and commendations. Brandis’ most recent projects have been creative non-fiction and other life-writing works. Brandis has collaborated extensively with her brother Gerard Brender à Brandis, the wood engraver and bookwright, and whose fonds is also at McMaster.

Sir Sydney Philip Perigal Waterlow, born 12 October 1878 in Barnet, England, was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. After a short period as part of the diplomatic service, Waterlow returned to Cambridge to resume his studies in 1905. It was during this period that Waterlow attached himself to the Bloomsbury group, a group he kept in close contact until his death. After his second marriage to Margery Eckhard, Waterlow resumed work in the diplomatic service. From 1919 through 1929, Waterlow held the positions of acting First Secretary at the Paris Peace Conference, Director of the Foreign Division of the Department for Overseas Trade, and as Minister at Bangkok and Addis Ababa. In the decade following, Waterlow served as British Minister in Athens until 1939. Sir Sydney Waterlow died on 4 December 1944.