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Herbert Rolland (Bill) Percy was born in Burnham, Kent, in 1920. He retired from the Canadian Navy in 1971 with the rank of Lieutenant Commander, 35 years after he entered the Royal Navy in England at the age of 16. In 1942 he married Mary Davina James. Together they raised three children. The author of numerous short stories, Percy has also written novels, biographies, and navy training manuals. He acted as editor of Canadian Author and Bookman from 1963 to 1966, and was involved in a number of professional organizations for writers. Percy died in 1997.

Edith Finch was born to Edward Bronson Finch, a physician, and his wife, Delia, on 5 November 1900 in New York city. She was educated at Bryn Mawr college and St. Hilda's College, Oxford. Returning to Bryn Mawr, she was employed from time to time as an instructor of English literature, but she never became a permanent member of the faculty. She published biographies of Wilfred Scawen Blunt in 1938 and Carey Thomas, a president of Bryn Mawr, in 1947. She was a close friend of Lucy Martin Donnelly, English professor at Bryn Mawr, and a friend of both Bertrand Russell and his first wife Alys. She married Bertrand Russell in December 1952 and supported him in his many social activist causes. She died on 1 January 1978.

E. Togo Salmon, classics scholar, was born in London, England on 29 May 1905. He was educated at the University of Sydney and Cambridge University. He came to McMaster University in 1930 as an Assistant Professor of Classics. In 1954 he was made Messecar Professor of History and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He served as the Principal of University College from 1961 to 1967 when he was appointed Vice-President (Academic) Arts, a position he held until 1968. He retired from McMaster University in 1973 and died on 11 May 1988.

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.

Irving Layton was born in Neamts, Rumania on 12 March 1912. He moved to Canada the next year with his parents Moses and Keine Lasarovitch. He was educated at McGill University. A prolific and controversial poet, he published his first collected poems in 1959, A Red Carpet for the Sun, which won the Governor's General Award for Poetry. His poems have been collected several times since then. Layton died on 4 January 2006.

Henry George Thode was born in Dundurn, Saskatchewan in 1910. He completed his BSc. and MSc. at the University of Saskatchewan. In 1934, he took his Ph.D in physical chemistry at the University of Chicago. For his post-doctoral work, he was given the opportunity to conduct research at Columbia University under the tutelage of Dr. Harold C. Urey, a pioneer in atomic research. Thode's time with Urey influenced much of his later work.

In 1939, Thode came to McMaster University as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. In 1942 he was promoted to Associate Professor. During World War II he was relieved of duties to participate in the wartime work and research of the Canadian Atomic Energy Project. Thode was a consultant for Atomic Energy Canada Limited from 1945 to 1951, and from 1966 to 1981 he was the director and member of AECL Executive Committee. He was also a member of the Defense Research Board from 1945 to 1961. Thode made numerous contributions to the research efforts of his colleagues at the AECL. Perhaps the most notable was his construction of the first mass spectrometer in Canada. The mass spectrometer, housed at McMaster, played a vital role in wartime research and kept Thode traveling back and forth between Hamilton and Montreal to take advantage of McMaster's technological advancements.

Once the war was over, Thode returned to his teaching duties. From 1944 to 1979, he was a Professor of Chemistry; between 1948 and 1952 he was Head of the Department of Chemistry. Thode was Director of Research from 1947 to 1961 and Principal of Hamilton College, McMaster University's early scientific school from 1949 to 1963. In 1957 he became even more involved with the University's development by directing the first nuclear reactor at a university in the British Commonwealth and becoming Vice President of the University, a position he held until 1961 when he became President and Vice Chancellor. Thode occupied this latter position from 1961 to 1972. In 1979, he was given the title of Professor Emeritus, a title held until his death in 1997. Thode was also responsible for organizing and hosting the first post-war international conference on nuclear chemistry, held at McMaster in 1947. He actively participated in and encouraged visits and scientific exchanges between Canada and the Soviet Union, beginning in 1957. Thode received numerous honours during his long scientific career. Thode died on 22 March 1997.

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923), the novelist and short story writer, spent most of her short life in England. Following a very brief first marriage in 1909, she fell in love with and later married John Middleton Murry. She died of tuberculosis in 1923.

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.

Born in Cooksville, Ontario, Emily Murphy (née Ferguson) was educated at Bishop Strahan School in Toronto. A feminist and lawyer, she was appointed to the Women's Court in Edmonton in 1916, the first woman magistrate appointed to such a position in the British Empire. She also wrote several accounts of life and travel in Manitoba, Alberta, and Europe under the pseudonym of "Janey Canuck".

Paul Nash, artist, was born in London on 11 May 1889. He studied art at the Chelsea Polytechnic and then at the Slade School of Fine Art. In 1930 he began his illustrations for Sir Thomas Browne's Urne Buriall and The Garden of Cyrus (London: Cassell's, 1932). Nash was a water-colourist of great individuality although remaining within the fold of the English tradition. He died in Boscombe on 11 July 1946.

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.

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.

Michael Tippett, composer and conductor, was born in London on 2 January 1905. He was educated at the Royal College of Music. In 1933 Tippett was asked to conduct what became the South London (Morley College) Orchestra. He later became the director of music at Morley College. In 1951 he resigned from the college to do broadcasting for the British Broadcasting Corporation, a job which allowed him more time for composition. From 1969 to 1974 he was director of the Bath Festival. He was knighted in 1966. Tippett composed works for the stage, including operas, choral, orchestral, chamber and instrumental music. He died 8 January 1998.

Walt Whitman, poet, was born on 31 May 1819 in West Hills, Long Island, New York. He began to work at age eleven as an office boy. His Leaves of Grass was first published in 1855. He died on 26 March 1892 in Camden, New Jersey. Henry Scholey Saunders (1864-1951) who compiled the photograph album was a Whitman devotee. He wrote a number of privately published books on Whitman, including Whitman Portraits, Toronto, 1922 (9 copies printed) and Whitman Portraits, Toronto, 1923 (4 copies printed). Both of these books, it would appear, were based on the photograph album he compiled. The album was given as a gift to Albert Ernest Stafford Smythe.

James Williams, the son of Francis (née Porter) and Alexander Raymond Williams, was born on 26 December 1955 in Hamilton, Ontario. He completed a degree (AOCA) in new media art at OCAD in 1989 and BFA and MFA degrees in photography from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1990 and 1992, respectively. His photographs, which juxtapose workers in factories and other settings, have been exhibited in many galleries and other venues throughout the world. He currently lives in Salford (Great Britain), where he teaches photography at the University of Bolton.

Ghizi Kirshen-Baras, an actress, was born in Romania in 1935. She graduated from the Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in Bucharest. In 1962 she moved to Israel. She married ca. 1965 Joseph Ijaky, a painter and set designer. She was mainly a stage actress using her birth name and then her married name. She appeared in one short film, “Strange Holiday”, produced by the Women’s International Zionist Organization in Israel in 1963, using the name “Gisella Kirschen”. She died on 31 December 1971.

Don Lake, antiquarian bookseller, was born in Toronto on 11 July 1950. In the late 1970s he was involved in the establishment of a Toronto chapter of the Independent Socialists and in the publication of Workers' Action. In 1978 he began a bookstore called October Books. His current antiquarian business, D. & E. Lake Ltd., houses a large inventory of rare books (especially pertaining to early printed books, voyages and travels, Canadiana/Americana, and illustrated books), antique maps and prints, and modern books on art, architecture, and the decorative arts. In addition to antiquarian books, his company also sells Canadian art and has regular exhibitions of artwork in this area.

Cosmo Gordon Lang, the son of Very Reverend John Marshall Lang, was born on 31 October 1864 and grew up in Fyvie, Aberdeenshire, the seat of his father's country parish. He was educated at Glasgow University and Balliol College, Oxford and ordained in 1890. He served as Archbishop of York, 1908-1928, and Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England, 1928-1942. He played a prominent role in the abdication of Edward VIII. Also an author, Lang published H.R.L. Sheppard: Himself and His Work (1937). Lang died on 5 December 1945.

Jack Winter was born on 19 April 1936 in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. He was educated at McGill University in Montréal and the University of Toronto. He taught at both the University of Toronto and York University. While in Canada, he wrote plays for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as well as for the stage; he published two books of poetry in 1957 and 1973 and one play in 1972. In 1976 he moved to England where he continued to write radio, television and stage plays. He has held the C. Day Lewis Fellowship of the Greater London Arts Association and the Arts Council of Great Britain Creative Writing Fellowship. Presently he lives in Bath and is a tutor of Creative Writing at the University of Bristol. In 1995 he published his first collection of poetry in Britain, Misplaced Persons.

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.