Virginia Woolf, novelist and essayist, was born in Kensington on 25 January 1882 and educated at home by her father, Sir Leslie Stephen. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf. Together they established the Hogarth Press in 1917. Although her early novels employed a more traditional style of writing, she later explored different techniques such as stream of consciousness. In addition to her fiction, Woolf wrote essays, biography, and the feminist classic A Room of One's Own. She suffered from bouts of mental instability throughout her life and drowned herself on 28 March 1941.
Robert Percy Wright was born in Montreal on 5 October 1882. He was educated at McGill University where he excelled in athletics, graduating in medicine in 1908. He interned at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal from 1908-10 followed by a placement at the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital in New York, 1910-1912. After a lengthy tour through Europe, Wright was appointed as a specialist in his two fields of expertise, Otolaryngology and Ophthalmology, in October 1911 at Jeffery Hale Hospital, Quebec City. He became a Vice-President of the Medical Officers Association of Quebec in 1913.
In 1904 he had joined the Canadian militia as a private and received regular promotions through the ranks. When he left for France in 1915 he was a Major with the 1st Canadian Field Ambulance, Canadian Expeditionary Force. In France he rose to the rank of Colonel, and was appointed Assistant Director Medical Services (A.D.M.S.), Canadian Army Medical Corps (C.A.M.C.), 1st Canadian Division in July 1917. Upon his return to Canada he received an appointment at the Montreal General Hospital. From 1923 to 1929 he practised at the Methodist General Hospital, Terreon, Mexico before returning to Montreal. In 1925 he married Hectorine Lafleur. He published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, was a fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. His date of death is not known.
Organized in 1972, the Writers' Union of Canada held its first annual general meeting of eighty founding members at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa on 3 November 1973. The purpose of the Writers' Union is to unite Canadian writers for the advancement of their common interest--the fostering of Canadian writing, relations with publishers, exchange of information among members, safeguarding the freedom to write and publish, and good relations with other writers and their organizations in Canada and throughout the world.
For further information on the Writers' Union, see Ted Whittaker, ed., The Writers' Union of Canada: A Directory of Members (Toronto: The Writers' Union of Canada, 1981).
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.
W. B. Yeats, poet and playwright, was born in Dublin on 13 June 1865. His most popular play is the patriotic Cathleen ni Houlihan first performed in 1902. His poetry includes The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair (1929). Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. He died in Roquebrune, France on 28 January 1939.
The first YMCA in Canada opened in Montreal in 1851. Canadian YMCA War Services started fifteen years later. During the First World War they offered recreational and educational opportunities. This included the partnership with Canadian universities, known as Khaki College/University, to provide education and job training to prepare troops for their return to civilian life.
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.
Franklin Charles Zurbrigg, born 1 June 1917, was from Exeter, Ontario. He served with the Royal Canadian Air Force, with the rank of Flight Sergeant, as a navigator and bomb aimer. He was killed on 13 January 1943 when his plane overshot the runway at Silloth aerodrome. He is buried in the Causewayhead Cemetery, Silloth, Cumbria, Scotland.
