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Norman Roy Stephenson, son of William Howard and Caroline Emily Stephenson (née Farrow), was born in Toronto on 1 February 1890. He was one of eleven children. Four Stephenson brothers (Edwin Howard, John Carleton, Henry Arthur, and Roy) served in World War I. Roy Stephenson served with the 4th Battalion, the Royal Canadian Regiment, in northern France. He was wounded twice in battle: a gunshot in the shoulder at Ypres on 26 March 1915 and shrapnel in the leg at Canal du Nord near Arras on 10 September 1918.

After the war on 26 November 1920, he married Elfrida Bourne. They had four children. Although Stephenson was an electrician by trade, in the 1920s he worked at odd jobs, selling family produce. He also went out to western Canada during harvest time. In 1930 he applied and passed the Post Office exams and was a postman in Hamilton until his retirement. He died on 2 February 1959.

Edwin Howard Stephenson, the second son of William Howard and Caroline Emily Stephenson (née Farrow), was born in Tillsonburg, Ontario, on 20 April 1886. In 1902 in Hamilton, he worked as a watchmaker, and, then in 1906, he opened a small jewelry store in the Manitoulin Islands. In 1910 he entered Huron College and the University of Western Ontario. Ordained as a Deacon in 1916, he obtained a B.A. in 1917, and was ordained as an Anglican priest on 26 May 1918. He resigned his charge at the parish of Desboro Williamsford and Holland Centre on 11 June 1918.

On 2 July 1918, he went into training with the Canadian Army Medical Corps at London, Ont. On 11 October 1918, as part of the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force (No. 11 Stationary Hospital), he set sail from Vancouver to Vladivostok. With an advance party of soldiers on the Trans-Siberian Railway, he travelled into the interior of Russia to Omsk and back. Although he was scheduled to return to Canada with the C.S.E.F on 18 May 1919, he contracted smallpox and died on 23 May 1919. He is buried in the Churkin Russian Naval Cemetery.

William Alexander Stephens was born in Belfast, Ireland, on 9 April 1809. While still a child, he emigrated with his family to New York and then, in 1816, to Upper Canada (now Ontario), first to Toronto and Markham, then to Esquesing Township (now part of Halton Region) where his parents, Thomas and Eleanor (Newburn) Stephens, established a farm. Stephens was one of twelve children.

In 1839 Stephens was summoned to Hamilton for jury duty. While there, he commented on the view from the top of the mountain (escarpment) and was encouraged to compose a poem about it. Stephens took up the challenge and composed “Hamilton,” a lengthy poem in a style reminiscent of the 18th century, including long passages based on Biblical stories and references to Greek myths; it also contains descriptions of early Hamilton, particularly in the first half of Book IV.

The poem, along with others by Stephens, was published in 1840 in Toronto by Rogers and Thompson as Hamilton and other poems. The book was one of the first volumes of poetry by an Ontarian ever published and helped earn Stephens the title “the pioneer poet of Ontario,” as assigned by T. J. Rexaledan in an 1891 article in Saturday Night. An expanded edition of Hamilton and other poems was published in 1871. (Both editions are available in the Archives’ book collection).

Stephens married Marian (Mary) Crispin in Toronto Township (present day Mississauga) on 13 October 1845. They lived initially in Norval and then later in Ballinafad (both in Esquesing). They moved to Owen Sound in 1850 where Stephens had been appointed customs officer, and would live there for the rest of their lives. In the 1871 census, Stephens is 62 years of age, his wife Mary is 45, and their children are listed as James C. (24), Newburn (22), Eliza A. (20), Henry R. (18), William S. (16), Haldane H. (14), Mary E. (12), and Edward W. (7).

Several of Stephens’ siblings also lived in Owen Sound, including brothers Thomas C. Stephens, Robert E. Stephens, A. M. Stephens, and Henry N. Stephens, and sisters Mary Doyle, Eliza Miller, Ellen Layton, and Rachel Layton.

Over the years, Stephens held a variety of other positions in Owen Sound in addition to customs officer, including notary public, lumber merchant, newspaper editor, insurance agent, and mayor (1869). He was a member of the Disciples church and frequently spoke at church worship services.

Stephens was a prolific writer of essays and poems, with pieces appearing in a broad range of journals and newspapers, including the Gleaner (Niagara), the Canadian Casket and Canadian Gleaner (both of Hamilton), the Advocate, Palladium, Examiner, and Leader (all of Toronto), the Albion (New York), the Saturday Courier (Philadelphia), the Review (Streetsville), the Baptist Magazine (Montreal), and more.

He also authored separately published booklets and essays—A poetical geography and rhyming rules for spelling (Toronto, 1848), Papal infallibility … as seen in the light of revelation (Owen Sound, 1871), and The centennial: an international poem (Toronto, 1878).

Stephens died in Owen Sound in 1891.

William Force Stead, poet and clergyman, was born 29 August 1884 in Washington, D.C. and educated at the University of Virginia. He went to England with the U.S. consular service, serving as Vice-Consul in Liverpool and Nottingham. He left the service to study at Queen's College, Oxford. He was ordained into the Church of England and appointed assistant chaplain of the Anglican church in Florence, Italy. He returned to England around 1926 and was elected a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. From 1927 to 1933 he served as college chaplain. In 1939 he returned to the United States where he became professor of English at Trinity College in Washington, D.C. He died on 8 March 1967 in Baltimore, Maryland. His best work of poetry is Uriel, A Hymn in Praise of Divine Immanence (1933). He was also a reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement. His academic scholarship involved the poet Christopher Smart (1722-1771). In 1939 Stead edited Rejoice in the Lamb: A Song from Bedlam by Christopher Smart.

William Duncan Stark (1815-) and Robert Mackenzie Stark (1815-1873) were twin brothers, the sons of Scottish clergyman William Stark and his wife Elizabeth. The twins were born on 17 June 1815. Robert wrote A Popular History of British Mosses (London: Lovell Reeve, 1854).

Born in 1924, Dr. Ian Spenser received his undergraduate training from the University of Birmingham. He completed his postdoctoral work at the University of London, King's College in 1952 and went on to complete his D.Sc in organic and biochemistry at the University of London in 1969. Dr. Spenser began his academic career at McMaster as an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry in the Chemistry Department in 1957. He is currently a professor emeritus in the Chemistry Department. He has served the university in numerous capacities including terms on the McMaster Board of Governors and the Senate. Dr. Spenser has received numerous honors throughout his long and distinguished career. These honors include: the FRIC (Fellowship, Royal Institute of Chemistry, 1957), the FCIC (Fellowship, Chemical Institute of Canada, 1957), the FRSC (Fellowship, Royal Society of Canada, 1980), and the FRSC (UK) (Fellowship, Royal Society of Chemistry, 1980). He died in Dundas, Ontario on December 28, 2022.

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, composer, pianist, and music critic, was born Leon Dudley Sorabji on 14 August 1892 in Chingford, England, the son of a Spanish-Sicilian mother and a Parsi father. He adopted his Parsi names later in life. He was educated at private schools and self-taught as a composer. He composed orchestral works, chamber music, and works for piano, voice, and organ. For a long time he discouraged public performances of his music but relented in the mid 1970s. He died at Winfrith, Dorset on 15 October 1988.

Hugo Sonnenschein was born in Kyjov in what is now the Czech Republic in 1889. He wrote under the name of Sonka and his first book of poems was published in 1907 while he was a student in Vienna. During the First World War he served on the Balkan front, but was taken into custody for pacifist activities on several occasions. Following the war he turned to politics and founded the Red Guard as well as being active in the communist community, though he was later kicked out of the Communist Party. Die Legende vom weltverkommenen Sonka, was published in 1920, and is considered his major work. In 1943, he and his wife, Rosa, were sent to Auschwitz. He survived, but after the war he was accused of collaborating with the State Police and in 1947 sentenced to a twenty-year sentence. He died in 1953 in Mirov prison.

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.

Harry W. Snelling was born in Woolich, England on October 14, 1849. In March 1867 Snelling enlisted in the 60th Royal Rifles, 1st Battalion. Snelling and his battalion were sent to Canada to assist with the Riel uprising in 1870. Following his armed service, Snelling became involved in the operation of a small Montreal store. He married a woman from Ireland, named Jane (4 May 1840-, and they had a daughter Isabella Caroline (25 Sept. 1879-). Between 1891 and 1901 the family moved from Montreal to Kingston where he was the Manager for a telephone company. He was still alive in 1921 when the census was conducted.

Born in county Antrim, Ireland on 27 December 1861, Albert E. S. Smythe was a journalist in Belfast, Chicago, and Toronto (Toronto Globe, World, The Lamp). He was President of Toronto Press Club in 1907. He also wrote two books of poetry: Poems Grave and Gay (1891) and The Garden of the Sun (1923). He introduced theosophy into Canada, and was the first president of the Toronto Theosophical Society. He died in Hamilton, Ont., on 2 October 1947.

Dame Ethel Smyth, composer, author, and feminist, was born on 23 April 1858 in Sidcup, England. She was educated at the Leipzig Conservatorium. As well as several operas and other musical pieces, she composed suffragette music, including The March of the Women.

She was the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Oxford University. She wrote several autobiographical works, beginning with <I>Impressions That Remained (1919) and ending with What Happened Next* (1940). She died in Woking, Surrey on 9 May 1944.

Stewart Smith was born in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba. His father, A.E. Smith, was a social gospel church minister in Brandon and leader of the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919. In 1923, Stewart moved to Toronto and began organizing. The following year he accepted an offer from the CPC to become the National Secretary of the Young Communist League. In 1926, he attended the Lenin School in Moscow and was later appointed to the Political Bureau of the CPC. In 1937, he was elected alderman on the Toronto City Council as the first communist elected to office in Toronto’s history. In 1946, he was elected to the Board of Control. Stewart was a prominent member of the Labor-Progressive Party of Ontario and served as party leader between 1951 and 1957. He resigned from the Communist Party of Canada in 1957.

Rutherford Smith was born on 3 November 1877 in Mount Hope, Ontario, the second son of Joel and Margaret (née Dancey) Smith. He graduated from Caledonia High School and joined his dad in their carriage building business. After his father’s death, Robert Murphy, an archaeologist, helped Smith with his collection in the 1930s. Smith became interested in archaeology after his marriage to Ethel Louise Fothergill in 1929. He enjoyed finding artifacts, researching them and then giving them away. William Cleland and his nephew J.B. Morton convinced Smith to collect artifacts for their value. His wife often helped him catalogue artifacts. He was an active collector from 1933 until 1959. He excavated 64 sites almost entirely within Wentworth County. The largest and most important site from which he collected was the Dwyer Ossuary (AiHa-3) in Beverly Township. After the completion of the dig, he stopped actively collecting. Smith’s main source of artifacts (other than digging himself) was from close friends, William Cleland and Frank Butters, and from farmers as gifts. The Smith artifact collection contains over 10,000 artifacts. The Smith artifact collection, now housed the Ethnography collection in the Department of Anthropology, was willed to McMaster University, shortly after Smith’s death on 10 October 1952 in Guelph, Ontario.

Charlotte Turner, poet and novelist, was born in London on 4 May 1749. On 23 February 1765 she married Benjamin Smith. She turned to publishing her poetry after she and her husband were imprisoned for his debts. In 1788 he published her first novel, Emmeline, in four volumes. She was a mother of twelve; eight of her children were still alive when Charlotte Smith died on 28 October 1806 in Tilford, near Farnham, Surrey.

Richard Slobodin (1915-2005) was an American anthropologist and a founder of the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University. Born and educated in New York City, he worked extensively from the 1930s onwards as an ethnologist. The chief focus of his ethnological studies were the Dené peoples of the Yukon and Alaska, particularly the Gwich'in (Kutchin). His scholarly interests were broad, however, and he published extensively on a variety of subjects. These publications included significant biographical treatments of pioneering anthropologists <a href="http://holdings.mcmaster.ca/index.php/rivers-w-h-r-2">W.H.R. Rivers</a> and Northcote W. Thomas.

After a brief stint in the United States armed forces during and after the Second World War, he returned to academic life only to fall afoul of Sen. Robert McCarthy's House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUUAC) in the early 1950s. This blacklisting saw him disbarred from academic employment for a period of seven years, during which time he worked a variety of jobs to support himself before eventually completing his Ph.D. in 1959. He spent the next four years working various academic appointments in the United States while seeking entry to Canada, which repeatedly denied him a visa owing to his supposed Marxist connections.

He finally was admitted to Canada in 1964, accepting an academic appointment at McMaster University, and he became a Canadian citizen in 1970. During the 1960s and 1970s Slobodin continued extensive fieldwork in the Arctic while also playing an instrumental role in developing the faculty of anthropology at McMaster, of which he was a co-founder. In 1981, he was forced to accept compulsory retirement owing to his age, but remained active in the United Church and the New Democratic Party while maintaining voluminous correspondence with friends and fellow scholars around the world. He died in 2005 at the age of 89.

Slater was a barber and made parasols. He emigrated from England to Canada in 1890, settling in Hamilton, where he lived until his death, 10 November 1931.

Hans Sinn made a career of active involvement in all phases of national and international peace work. As a member of the editorial group Sanity: Peace Oriented News and Comment, Sinn observed Canadian and world affairs from a non-aligned peace perspective. Sanity, based in Montreal, was North America's leading independent peace newspaper.

Hans Sinn's wife Marion, a teacher who specialized in early childhood development and who worked with children with learning disabilities, was book reviewer for Sanity. In the summers of 1965, 1967 and 1968 Sinn was a staff member and participant at the Training Institute for Nonviolence, at Grindstone Island, Portland, Ont. This institute was sponsored by the Canadian Friends Service Committee, the peace and development wing of Canadian Quakers. The focus of the Grindstone Island Training Institute for Nonviolence was to explore non-violent ways in which a civilian population can defend itself from tyranny, from without or within, to maintain the cherished values and ways of the community. In 1976, when Diana Kingsmill Wright decided to sell the island, the Grindstone Co-operative was formed to take over the ownership and operations of the property. This led to Grindstone's transformation into a non-profit, cooperatively owned and operated peace education centre. Hans and Marion Sinn were members of the co-operative and on the co-operative's Board of Directors. Both were actively involved on the programming committee. On February 5, 1983, Hans and Marion Sinn resigned from the administration of Grindstone, citing other interests and a lack of time to devote to the co-operative's administration. The Grindstone Co-operative ceased operations in 1990. Hans Sinn became involved with Peace Brigades International, an organization founded in the summer of 1981 on Grindstone Island by Hans Sinn, Murray Thomson and ten others. Peace Brigades International is a unique grassroots organization which, when invited, sends volunteer peace teams to areas of conflict or political repression.

Norman Frederick Simpson, playwright, was born in London on 29 January 1919. He was educated at the University of London and for many years made his living as a teacher. He established his reputation as a playwright in the Ionesco line with two productions in the late 1950s: A Resounding Tinkle, produced in 1957 and published in 1958 and One Way Pendulum, produced in 1959 and published in 1960. These plays present the absurd in a deadpan manner. Simpson has also written for radio and television and published one novel Harry Bleachbaker (1976). From 1976 to 1978 he was literary manager of the Royal Court Theatre. He died on August 27, 2011.

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