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Bertrand Arthur William Russell, philosopher, logician, peace advocate and social reformer, was born at Trelleck in Monmouthshire on 18 May 1872, the younger son of Viscount Amberley, and the grandson of Lord John Russell, the first Earl Russell. Educated at Cambridge, Russell was a prolific author, publishing his first book, Germany Social Democracy, in 1896, quickly followed by his dissertation, An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry (1897). His principal work, Principia Mathematica, written with Alfred North Whitehead, was published in three volumes, 1910-1913. In addition to philosophy, he wrote books about education, marriage, religion, politics, and many other subjects. He was an active campaigner against World War I, nuclear weapons, and the Vietnam war. For a time he owned and operated his own school, Beacon Hill, together with his wife, Dora. He was a recipient of many awards and honours, including the Nobel Prize for Literature (1950) and the Order of Merit (1949). He married four times. Russell published an Autobiography in three volumes, 1967-1969. He died at Plas Penrhyn, Merionethshire, Wales on 2 February 1970.

Harold Brownlee Stuart, draughtsman, field engineer and soldier, was born in Mitchell, Ontario on 31 January 1889. He was educated at the University of Toronto where he trained in Practical Science and received his B.Sc. Degree in 1909. Stuart was employed as a surveyor, fire ranger, and road diversions designer before becoming a draughtsman and eventually designer for Hamilton Bridge Works in 1912.

In 1913 he joined the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders as a Private. He transferred from the 1st Field Troop to the 2nd Canadian Pioneers as a Lieutenant on active service in 1915 and served in France and Belgium, attaining the rank of Captain in 1916 and Major in 1918. Stuart returned to Hamilton in 1919 and rejoined Hamilton Bridge Works as an expert in the construction of bascule bridges. He assisted in designing the Burlington Beach Ship Canal and also designed numerous railway bridges, overpasses, public buildings and factories in Western Ontario.

Stuart served in England from 1941 to 1944 as consulting engineer and officer, commanding the 7th Canadian Construction Company Royal Canadian Engineers. His civilian experience in bridge design allowed him to design bridges and similar structures that could be quickly constructed and readily transported. He was awarded the Member of the British Empire in 1943. In 1944 Stuart returned to Canada where he was affiliated with the Directorate of Works and Construction in Ottawa. Stuart died in Ottawa on 14 October 1946 and was posthumously appointed an Officer of the British Empire.

Edward Joseph Frappier (1918-2006) served in the Canadian Forces during the Second World War. A resident of Ontario, Edward Frappier served in the Royal Canadian Navy. In 1945 he served on the Flower class corvette, the HMCS Kenogami and the coastal defense vessel, the HMCS Glace Bay. The couple married in 1945. In 1947 they moved to his hometown of Sudbury. For more biographical information, consult Edward Frappier’s obituary in the Sudbury Star, dated 14 March 2006.

Blanche (Hutchinson) Frappier (1918-2002) served in the Canadian Forces during the Second World War. Blanche Frappier was born in Nottingham England. She immigrated to Canada in 1938 and joined the Canadian Women's Army Corp shortly thereafter. The couple married in 1945. In 1947 they moved to his hometown of Sudbury. For more biographical information, consult Blanche Frappier's obituary in the Sudbury Star, dated 8 May 2002.

James F. Westhead (1907-1995) was a member of the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps in 1941, commanding “C” Squadron of the Lord Strathcona Horse. He was promoted to the rank of Major around 1943. In the final years of World War II, Westhead was Deputy to the Military Governor of the Netherlands. In 1947, he re-enlisted with the Militia, eventually becoming Brigadier General of the 18th Militia Group in Northern Ontario. For more biographical information consult Westhead’s obituary, published in The Globe and Mail on 13 November, 1995.

James Wreford Watson, geographer and poet, was born on 8 February 1915 in Shensi, China, and educated at George Watson's College, Edinburgh, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Toronto. He became a naturalized Canadian citizen in 1953. He joined the McMaster University faculty as the first regular appointment in geography in 1939. He left for Ottawa in 1949, becoming chief geographer for the Government of Canada and holding a concurrent appointment at Carleton University, 1951-1954. He returned to Scotland and the University of Edinburgh in 1954 and held a number of appointments there, including Dean of the Faculty of Social Science and Director of the Centre of Canadian Studies. He returned to Canada over the years, serving as a Visiting Professor at Queen's University, University of Manitoba, University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and the University of Calgary.

Elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1954 and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1957, he received the Canadian Association of Geographers’ award for service to the profession in 1978. In addition to writing books about geography, he was also a published poet, beginning with Of Time and the Lover (1952). Watson died in September 1990 in Scotland.

Mark Krakowski was born in Kazakstan on 16 September 1943, the son of Jewish Holocaust survivors from Poland. His family fled Poland at the end of 1939 and survived the war in the Soviet Union, including an internment of 18 months in a Soviet gulag. His parents reached Kazakstan after they were released from the gulag in December 1941. His father then joined the Soviet army as a member of the Wanda Waszilewska brigade, a unit of Polish nationals in the Soviet red army. After the war, Mark and his mother were re-patriated to Poland, and, at the end of 1946, they re-united with his father. A period in refugee camps in Austria followed until the family, which included another son, were accepted as refugees in Sweden where they lived for 6 <U+00BD> years. They immigrated to Canada in May 1954. Mark graduated from the University of Western Ontario with a BA in history (1962-65). He attended Western's Faculty of Law for one year (1965-66). He also has a Master of Arts from the New School University (1968-70).

He has varied work experience as a senior research assistant for the Addiction Research Foundation, a parole officer, a human rights officer with the Ontario Human Rights Commission, a labour staff representative for various organizations, and a regional representative of the Public Service Alliance of Canada. Now retired, he currently resides in Toronto, and serves or has served as a board member on the Skyworks Charitable Foundation, Foodshare, and the Labour Community Services. He also completed nine years as a workers' representative on the Board of Referees, a quasi-judicial agency of the federal government's Employment Insurance Commission, which hears appeals of claimants who have been denied employment insurance by Service Canada.

Vera Brittain, writer, lecturer, pacifist, and feminist, was born on 29 December 1893 at Newcastle-under-Lyme. She went up to Somerville College, Oxford in 1914 but left to serve as a VAD in World War I. She returned to Oxford after the war where she became friends with Winifred Holtby, a budding novelist. She married George Catlin in 1925 and became the mother of two children. Her most well-known book is Testament of Youth (1933) about her experiences in World War I. During World War II she was a leading member of the Peace Pledge Union. She died in London on 29 March 1970.

Bruce Cockburn is a well known Canadian singer and songwriter. He was born in Ottawa on 27 May 1945. After playing in Ottawa rock bands (The Children, Esquires, 3’s a Crowd), Cockburn became a folk singer with a humanist, poetic style combining elements of jazz, rock and reggae. His recordings include Sunwheel Dance (1971), In the Falling Dark (1976), Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws (1979), Stealing Fire (1984), the singles collection Waiting for a Miracle (1987), The Charity of Night (1996), and Breakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu (1999). Cockburn has written songs in English and French; among his signature pieces are “Goin’ to the Country,” “Musical Friends,” his 1980 hit “Wondering Where the Lions Are,” “The Trouble with Normal”, "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" and “Lovers in a Dangerous Time.”

Concert touring and regular album releases in the United States, Australia and Europe have given Bruce Cockburn a solid international reputation. All 31 of Cockburn's albums were recorded on the Canadian label True North Records, while some distribution has been managed by the American companies Columbia Records and Rounder Records.

Cockburn is also well known as a social activist. His song “If I Had a Rocket Launcher” (1984) was inspired by a visit to Central American refugee camps on behalf of Oxfam. In 1986 he performed two benefit concerts that raised funds to help the Haida in their land claims struggle. He has also worked with the Unitarian Services Committee, Friends of the Earth and World Vision Canada. “If a Tree Falls” (1989) calls for an end to destruction of the world’s rain forests. The 1996 song “The Mines of Mozambique” documents the deadly impact of anti-personnel mines. After addressing the land-mine issue in dozens of interviews, Cockburn and singer-songwriter friend Jackson Browne headlined a fundraising concert in Ottawa on 3 December 1997 that marked the signing of a United Nations treaty banning their use.

Environmentalist David Suzuki and musical peer Gordon Lightfoot inducted Cockburn into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2001. Cockburn is also the recipient of numerous other awards, including the Order of Canada. Bruce Cockburn continues to actively write and record music as well as support his humanitarian interests and causes. This biographical sketch has been adapted from The Canadian Encyclopedia.

Benjamin Franklin Meyer, author and professor, was born in Chicago, Illinois on 5 November 1927. On 27 March 1969, he married Denise Oppliger. He was educated at the University of Santa Clara, California, the Biblical Institute, Rome and the Gregorian University, also in Rome. Meyer was assistant professor of religion at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley from 1965 to 1968. From 1969 until his retirement in 1992, he taught in the Department of Religious Studies at McMaster University.

He earned the respect of scholars around the world for his extensive work on the historical Jesus, and was the author of numerous books including The Man for Others (1970), The Aims of Jesus (1979) and Christus Faber (1992). Meyer was also the author of the television documentary "Christianity" (1973). Among the many honours and awards he received was a Fulbright fellowship in Germany from 1964 to1965 and Canada Council fellowships in Greece and Switzerland in 1976 to1977 and 1983 to1984. He resided in Burlington, Ontario and Les Verrières, Switzerland. Meyer died at Les Verrières on 28 December 1995.

Alan Walker, Doctor of Music, F.R.S.C., university professor and writer, was born in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, England on 6 April 1930. He was educated at the Guildhall School of Music and at Durham University, where he specialized in piano, theory, harmony and counterpoint. In his early career, he lectured at the Guildhall School of Music from 1959 to 1961, and at London University from 1954 to 1970.

Walker was a producer at the British Broadcasting Corporation from 1961 to 1971, and has contributed to programmes at the BBC and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He served as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Music at City University in London from 1984 to 1987 and has been a Professor of Music at McMaster University since 1971, where he was Chairman of the Department from 1971 to 1980 and again from 1990 to 1993. Walker is the recipient of numerous honours, including the Hungarian Liszt Society Medal in 1980, the American Liszt Society Medal in 1984, and the Pro Cultura Hungaria Medal in 1995. He was awarded an honorary doctorate, D. Litt (honoris causa), from McMaster University in 2002. In January 2012, he received the Knight's Cross of Merit of the Republic of Hungary, one of Hungary's highest honours.

He is the author of A Study in Music Analysis, 1962, An Anatomy of Musical Criticism, 1968, Franz Liszt, 1971, Robert Schumann, 1976, Franz Liszt: Volume One, 1983, (for which he won the James Tait Black Award in 1983, and Yorkshire Post Music Book of the Year Award in 1984), Franz Liszt: Volume Two, 1989, Franz Liszt: Volume Three, 1996, and The Death of Franz Liszt, 2002. He co-authored, with Gabriele Erasmi, Liszt, Carolyne, and the Vatican: The Story of a Thwarted Marriage, 1991, and was the editor of Symposium on Chopin, 1967, Symposium on Liszt, 1970, Symposium on Schumann, 1972, The Diary of Carl Lachmund: An American Pupil of Liszt, 1995, and Hans von Bülow: a life and times, 2009. He has written over 100 articles for learned journals including a major entry on Franz Liszt for the latest edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2001. His biography, Fryderyk Chopin, was launched in October 2018 to much acclaim and has subsequently been translated into numerous languages.

Duncan Alexander MacGibbon, economist, was born in Lochaber Bay, Quebec, on 12 March 1882. He was educated at McMaster University and then went to Brandon College, Manitoba, to teach. He left Brandon to enrol at the University of Chicago where he received his Ph.D. in economics in 1915. He began to teach at McMaster University but his teaching career was halted by World War I. After the war he joined the University of Alberta as professor and head of the Department of Political Economy. He served as Commissioner for the Alberta Government on banking and credit with respect to the industry of agriculture in 1922. He was a member of the Royal Grain Inquiry Commission, Canada, 1923-1924. He left the University of Alberta in 1929 to become a member of the Canadian Board of Grain Commissioners, a post he held until his retirement in 1949. In 1930 he was attached to the Canadian delegation to Imperial Conference, London; in 1932 he served the same role at the imperial Economic Conference in Ottawa in 1932. After his retirement, he returned to McMaster University to teach part-time. Among his many writings, MacGibbon published two definitive books on the grain trade: The Canadian Grain Trade (1932) and The Canadian Grain Trade, 1931-1951 (1952). He died in Hamilton, Ont. on 10 October 1969.

Marian Engel, novelist, was born Marian Searle in Toronto on 24 May 1933. She was educated at McMaster University and then McGill University where she wrote her M.A. thesis, under Hugh MacLennan's supervision, on the English-Canadian novel in 1957. After teaching briefly in Montreal and at the University of Montana, she travelled in Europe, marrying fellow McMaster graduate and author, Howard Engel, in 1962. She spent a year in Cyprus and finally returned to Canada where her twin children were born. Her first published novel, No Clouds of Glory appeared in 1968 and was followed by The Honeyman Festival (1970), Monodromos (1973) and Bear (1976), for which she received the Governor General's Award for Literature. She also wrote short stories and children's books. Her last published novel was Lunatic Villas (1981). Engel died in Toronto on 16 February 1985.

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.

Joseph Robert Janes was born in Toronto in 1935, middle son of Henry Franklin Janes, a pioneer in public relations, and his wife Phyllis Hipwell, an artist. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1958 with a B.A.Sc. in Mining Engineering, his undergraduate thesis winning the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Award in the Petroleum and Natural Gas Division. After work as a petroleum engineer for Mobil Oil (1958-1959) and a research engineer for the Ontario Research Foundation (1959-1964), Janes return to the University of Toronto to study geology under J. Tuzo Wilson and to attend teacher’s college. He also taught high school mathematics, geology and geography for the North York Board of Education (1964-1966). Janes graduated with a M.Eng. in Geology in 1967. After further graduate studies in geology at McMaster University, he then lectured in geology at Brock University (1968-1970), conducting an innovative field course across Canada.

Thereafter, he completed the first year of a Ph.D. program at Queen’s University in association with Brock University but, in 1970, decided instead to become a full-time writer. His early work consisted of books and other media presentations on the topic of geology for grade-school children, senior high schools, universities and the general trade market. He also wrote travel and other articles and supplied photographs for newspapers and periodicals, often with a geological focus, and sold geological specimens to schools under the name Rocks and Minerals of Canada. He later turned to writing children's novels and, ultimately, mystery novels for the adult market. He is now world-renowned as the author of the St. Cyr-Kohler mystery series. He has received grants from the J.P. Bickell Foundation, the Canada Council, and the Ontario Arts Council. Janes has long been concerned with the environment and politics, especially in the area of his home in the Niagara Peninsula. He also has an interest in Stephen Leacock, a cousin of his paternal grandfather. J. Robert Janes and his wife Gracia (Lind) Janes have four children. Janes died on February 28, 2022.

Leendert ("Alex" or "Lex") Aronson was born in Amsterdam on 20 December 1934. In 1943, Aronson was deported together with his mother, Sara van Straten-Cohen, to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Although over two thirds of the Dutch Jews deported to Bergen-Belsen did not remain alive at the end of the war, Aronson and his mother survived.

Upon his return to Amsterdam, Aronson attended the Jewish Secondary School from 1948 to 1951. In 1952 he received a certificate in chiropody and also studied nursing at the Jewish Hospital in London. He emigrated to Israel in 1955 and spent most of the next six years traveling in India, The Middle East, Europe and Africa before returning to Amsterdam in 1962. In 1964 Aronson married Elisabeth van Dieigen, and their son Alwin was born the same year. He worked for The Red Cross during the latter part of the 1960s in Africa, returning to Holland in 1970, but returned to India at the end of the year. In August 1974, he traveled to Kurdistan where he was arrested in March 1975 by the Iraqis on charges of spying for Israel. On 15 March 1976, the Iraqi Embassy admitted that Aronson had been executed in Baghdad although the exact date of his death was never revealed. In April 1976 his mother was able to obtain his remains, and Aronson was buried on 26 May 1976 in the Jewish Cemetery in Muiderberg, Holland.

Alan Mendelson, co-editor of From Bergen-Belsen to Baghdad : The Letters of Alex Aronson, was a student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem when he met Aronson in 1962. They traveled together, and Aronson later visited Mendelson, who is Alwin's godfather, in 1970 when the editor was a graduate student at the University of Chicago. Their last meeting took place in the spring of 1974 when Mendelson visited Aronson in Holland. Alan Mendelson was a professor of Religious Studies at McMaster University.

Denis Martin Shaw, Professor Emeritus, McMaster University School of Geography and Geology, was born on 20 August 1923, in Lancashire, England to Norman Wade and Sylvia (Shackleton) Shaw. He attended the King Edward VII school in St. Anne’s and continued his education at Emmanuel College in Cambridge. There, he received his BA in 1943 and later in 1948 his MA, after having served as a Signals Officer for three years. In 1946 Shaw married Doris Pauline (Paula) Mitchell. They had 3 children: Geoffrey, Gillian, and Peter Shaw. Soon thereafter he enrolled at the University of Chicago for a doctorate. By 1951 he had joined the Department of Geology at McMaster University. Shaw divorced Paula Shaw in 1975, and married Susan Evans in 1976. He died in Hamilton on 6 October 2003.

Boris Brott, conductor, violinist, and producer, was born in Montreal on 14 Mar 1944, the son of renowned conductor and composer Alexander Brott and cellist Lotte (Goetzel) Brott. He studied violin with his father and performed at the age of five with the orchestra of the Les Concerts symphoniques de Montréal (Montreal Symphony Orchestra). He studied at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal and the McGill Conservatory. In 1959 he founded the Philharmonic Youth Orchestra of Montreal and led it in his conducting debut in that city. His first international success came in June 1962, when he won third prize at the Liverpool Competition.

Brott has held the following positions:
1963-1965 Assistant conductor to Walter Susskind with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra
1964-1968 First conductor of the Northern Sinfonia at Newcastle-on-Tyne.
1964-1967 Principal conductor for the touring company of the Royal Ballet Covent Garden.
1968-1969 Assistant conductor to Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
1967-1972 Directed >Lakehead Symphony Orchestra
1971-1973 Directed Regina Symphony Orchestra
1969-1990 Artistic director and conductor of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra; under his leadership the orchestra grew from an amateur ensemble to a professional one with a 42-week season and 16,000 subscribers.
1972 Appointed conductor of the BBC Welsh Orchestra
1975 Assumed directorship of the CBC Winnipeg Orchestra
1982 to 1985 Artistic director and conductor of Symphony Nova Scotia
1983-1991 Led the Ontario Place Pops Orchestra
1987-1989 National president of the Youth and Music Canada (Jeunesses musicales du Canada)
1988 Founded (with his wife, author and attorney Ardyth Webster Brott) the Boris Brott Summer Music Festival in Hamilton
1989 Appointed associate director of Alexander Brott’s McGill Chamber Orchestra
1989 Founded the National Academy Orchestra of Canada, a mentor-apprentice program.
1995 Appointed music director of the New West Symphony, California
2002 Assumed leadership of McGill Chamber Orchestra
2004 Appointed principal conductor of youth and education concerts for the National Arts Centre

In addition, Brott has been guest conductor of symphonies and opera companies throughout Canada, Europe, the U.S., Israel, central and South America, Japan and Korea. Brott has produced, conducted, or hosted a large number of television and radio programs for the CBC, and the BBC and ITV in the UK, and recorded with various orchestras for CBC, Mercury, Pro-Arte and Sony Classical. In 1986 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada, and received an American Music Award. In 1988 he received an honorary doctorate from McMaster University. He was named Knight of Malta (1990), International Man of the Year (Cambridge, England, 1992), and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts of Great Britain (1996). In 2000, he conducted the Vatican premiere of Leonard Bernstein's controversial Mass before Pope John Paul II.

Anna Porter (née Szigethy), publisher and author, was born in Budapest during World War II. In 1956, at the age of 12, she and her mother immigrated to New Zealand to escape the Soviet presence in Hungary. She has B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Canterbury. In the late 1960s, she worked as a proofreader with Cassell’s in England and in sales and as an editor with Collier Macmillan. In 1969 she was hired as an editorial coordinator with McClelland & Stewart and then became Vice-President, Editor-in-Chief, until 1978. From 1978 until 1992, she was the President of McClelland-Bantam Inc. (Seal Books). From 1986 until 1991, she was the Executive Chairman of Doubleday Canada Ltd. In 1979, with Michael de Pencier, she established Key Porter Books. She was the CEO and publisher of Key Porter Books from 1981 until July 2004 when she sold a majority interest in Key Porter Books to H.B. Fenn Limited.

Porter is the author of three novels: Hidden Agenda (1985), Mortal Sins (1987), and The Bookfair Murders (1997). She has also written three works of non-fiction: The Storyteller: Memory, Secrets, Magic and Lies (2006), Kasztner’s Train: The True Story of Rezso Kasztner, Unknown Hero of the Holocaust (2007; awarded the Canadian Jewish Book Award for History and the Nereus Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize), and The Ghosts of Europe: Journeys Through Central Europe's Troubled Past and Uncertain Future (2010; awarded the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize). She has also written numerous pieces for magazines and newspapers. Porter serves on the boards of many companies and organizations. In recognition of her varied achievements, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1991. In 2003, she was awarded the Order of Ontario. She has been awarded honorary degrees from Ryerson University, St. Mary’s University, and the Law Society of Upper Canada. She is married to Julian Porter, Q.C. and has two daughters, Catherine and Julia, and three grandchildren. She currently lives in Toronto.

Raymond Knister, poet and novelist, was born in Windsor, Ontario on 27 May 1899. He was educated at Victoria College for one year until poor health forced him to leave. In 1929 his first novel, White Narcissus appeared, and he began work on a biographical novel about John Keats, eventually entitled My Star Predominant. While on holiday at a cottage on Lake St. Clair, Knister accidentally drowned on 29 August, 1932. My Star Predominant was published posthumously in 1934 and his Collected Poems appeared in 1949.