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H. G. Wells, novelist, was born in Bromley, Kent on 21 September 1866. After an apprenticeship as a draper, Wells won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in South Kensington.

A prolific novelist, he is perhaps best remembered for his scientific romances beginning with The Time Machine (1895) and followed by The Wars of the Worlds (1898) about the invasion of earth by Martians. In 1934 he published Experiment in Autobiography. He died in London on 13 August 1946.

Katherine May Clarke (née McLay) was born in 1940 in Clinton, Ont. She graduated in 1963 with an Honours BA from Trinity College, University of Toronto, in Art & Archaeology. After graduation, she rented a room in Peace House on the University of Toronto campus, operated by the CUCND (the Combined Universities Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament).

After a few months, she found herself invited to become the secretary at the CCND (Canadian Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament). She worked on behalf of the CCND between 1963 and 1965. In the summer of 1964, she joined a student delegation to Cuba during the 5th year of the Cuban revolution. In 1966 she worked for the Unitarian Service in Ottawa, in 1966-67 for CJOH-TV in Ottawa, and between 1968 and 1979 for the Royal Ontario Museum. She is married to Tom Clarke, and they have two children. Now retired, she resides in North Toronto.

The New Democratic Party (NDP) was founded in Ottawa in 1961 by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), affiliated unions of the Canadian Labour Congress, and New Party clubs. It is a democratic, socialist party.

In 1969 the Waffle was established as a caucus in the New Democratic party. Led by Mel Watkins and James Laxer, it was militantly socialist and nationalist. Forced to leave the NDP in 1972, it operated independently until 1974.

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).

Andrew Gordon Chisholm, K.C., was a London, Ont. lawyer. While still studying law, he joined the 7th Fusiliers and served as a lieutentant in the North-West Rebellion of 1885. He ran for Parliament after that as a Conservative but was defeated.

He was called to the bar in 1888 and made a K.C. in 1921. He acted as solicitor for the Six Nations of the Grand River for about forty years. During that time he recovered for them lands valued at $300,000 and some $35,000 in cash according to a letter of 14 April 1942 to the Deputy Minister of Justice. Chisholm died suddenly on 11 January 1943 at the age of 79 while a Petition of Right was still before the courts.

Anton Koberger was a German goldsmith, printer and publisher, best known for publishing the Nuremberg Chronicle.

Starting as a goldsmith, Koberger moved into printing in 1471. He was very successful, establishing twenty-four presses. His success came from not just from printing, but also owning two papermills and forming business partnerships with booksellers all over Europe.

Bernard Trotter was born in Toronto on June 16, 1890. He attended the Horton Academy in Wolfville and completed his high school work at Woodstock College. In the fall of 1907 he went to California to improve his health, accompanied by his older brother, Reginald. He first worked at a lemon ranch and then taught privately for two years before returning to McMaster University in Toronto in 1910. In the late summer and fall of 1912 he helped design and build "Valhalla", the Trotter summer place on Lake Cecebe. Trotter obtained his B.A. from McMaster in 1915 and began graduate work at the University of Toronto before leaving for England in March 1916. Ill health had prevented him from being accepted for military service in the Canadian army; determined to serve, Trotter won a commission in the British army. After training, he crossed to France with his Leicestershire Regiment in December 1916. On May 7, 1917, he was killed by a shell just as he and his men were completing their final transport convoy of the night. Trotter was buried the next day in the Military Cemetery at Mazingarbe. He was 26 years old.

Trotter had been active in student life, serving for a year as editor of the McMaster Monthly, the journal in which some of his poems first appeared; a poem was accepted for publication in Harper's Magazine in 1914. His themes were often chosen from nature; they evoke the Nova Scotia of his boyhood, California and Northern Ontario. His father, the Baptist minister and McMaster Professor Thomas Trotter, collected his poems and they were published in 1917 by McClelland and Stewart as A Canadian Twilight and Other Poems of War and Peace.

FCB Crompton served with the Army Service Corps as a Lieutenant. He was demobilized on 13 April 1919. After the war, Crompton wrote Glimpses of Early Canadians: Lahontan (1925).

The Book Society of Canada Ltd. was incorporated on 29 May 1945. Its founding president was John C.W. Irwin (1900-71) who worked from 1927 to 1929 as Assistant Manager of the Educational Department of the Macmillan Company of Canada Limited. In 1930 he and his brother-in-law, W.H. Clarke, began Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited. Together they developed and managed the publishing company of Clarke Irwin along with the Canadian branch of the Oxford University Press (from 1936 onwards). Irwin left Clarke Irwin in 1944 to form The Book Society. The latter was a school textbook publishing company. In the 1960s The Book Society published approximately a dozen books per year, many of which were approved by various departments of education across Canada. The founder's son, John W. Irwin, left teaching in 1960, joined the firm, and worked in various capacities of the company. He became President of the firm in 1971. In 1973 The Book Society acquired an educational publishing firm, Bellhaven House Limited (see boxes 56, file 14, and 59, file 1 for authors' contracts and questionnaires), and in 1982, a trade firm, Peter Martin Associates Limited. When Clarke Irwin went into receivership, The Book Society acquired its assets in June 1983. Clarke Irwin was maintained by The Book Society for a short period as a separate entity and reconstituted under the name, Clarke Irwin (1983) Inc. In 1984 The Book Society was renamed as Irwin Publishing Inc. At that time two-thirds of the company's business was in the area of educational publishing and the remainder in trade. The total business sales were {dollar}3 million, 5% of which came from foreign rights revenue.

Henri de Montmorency was born in Chantilly, Oise to Anne de Montmorency and Madeleine of Savoy, 15 June 1534. He was the leader of the Politiques party during the French religious wars. He became the Constable of France in 1593.

John Churchill, military commander, was born in June 1650 in Musbury, Devonshire. He was created the first Duke of Marlborough in December 1702. He died on 17 June 1722.

Alexander Logie was born in Rosefield, Nairnshire, Scotland in 1823. It is not known when he moved to Canada. In 1843, he was admitted as a student at law by the Law Society of Upper Canada and was called to the Bar in 1848. He practiced in Hamilton, Ontario, and later served as a judge with the Wentworth County Court (1854-1873). Logie was active with
the St. Paul's Presbyterian Church in Hamilton, acting as a teacher, elder and trustee. He served on Hamilton City Council from 1857 to 1860. Logie died in Hamilton on 10 December
1873.

Francis Richard Charles Grant was the author, with John Parker Anderson, of a Life of Samuel Johnson (1887).

Reuben Jucksch was born on 5 July 1887 to Ernst August Jucksch and Maria Kalbfleisch of Hanover, Ontario. He volunteered for the army in 1914 at the age of 27 and served with the 20th Canadian Battalion. On his attestation paper, he listed his profession as an artist and painted throughout the war despite prohibitions against it. Jukes’ diaries regularly noted his painting and sketching activities. He was sent to the front on 15 September 1915 and was in hospital when the diaries start, but did not indicate why. He reports the progress of the war, gas attacks, the constant noise of bombardments, and the irritation from lice. He remains in Germany and Belgium until February 1919, when he returns to England, and then is sent back to Canada in May of that year. Following the war he worked in Vaudeville both as a set painter and in various acts. He supplemented his income as a sign painter and in 1940 he founded a sign painting business in Kitchener, Ontario. Jukes died in May 1959 at the age of 71.

The first issue of the Canadian Fiction Magazine (CFM), edited by Janie Kennon and R.W. Stedingh, appeared in 1971 as a student publication at the University of British Columbia. Geoff Hancock took over as editor in summer 1975 after Stedingh retired. Published as a quarterly, CFM was probably the foremost literary vehicle of its kind during this period for the Canadian short story in English and for its specialty issues on Native fiction, magic realism, Latin fiction, and fiction in translation, all of which were later turned into anthologies by Hancock. During its peak years, CFM published works by some of Canada's best-known writers and artists, including: Margaret Atwood, Michael Bullock, Matt Cohen, Mavis Gallant, Alberto Manguel, Eugene McNamara, Alice Munro, Susan Musgrave, Rikki, Leon Rooke, Jane Rule, Josef Skvorecký, Jane Urquhart, Miriam Waddington, bp Nichol, David Watmough, George Woodcock, Ann Copeland, and Sam Tata. Published for twenty-seven years primarily under Hancock's editorship, CFM ceased in 1998 when government grants and other funding were not available as a subvention for publication.

Catherine Wilson attended the University of Western Ontario. She was appointed as copywriter and publicist for McClelland & Stewart Ltd in 1969 and was promoted to Director of Marketing. In 1972 she was a consultant to the Department of the Secretary of State in Ottawa. She joined James Lorimer & Co. where she was General Manager from 1973 to 1976. She was the senior arts producer for the CBC radio program Sunday Morning in its first season from 1976-1977 and Assistant to the Publisher at Clarke Irwin from 1977-1978. From 1978 to 1980 she was a Communications Department consultant for the Government of Botswana, Africa. In 1980 she was appointed Vice-President and General Manager of James Lorimer & Co. Ltd. Wilson has also worked as Director of Publishing for the United Church of Canada from 1990-1996; as General Manager and Director of Human Resources from 1997-2002 and as Policy Consultant for Children’s Mental Health Ontario from 2004-2005.

Sidney Aster is a Canadian historian and biographer. Born in Montreal in 1942, he completed a BA and MA in History and Political Science at McGill University before moving to England in 1964 to pursue a Ph.D. in international history at the London School of Economics and Political Studies. He stayed in England for a total of 12 years before moving back to Canada in 1976 to take up a position with the University of Toronto's Department of History.

In addition to his widespread teaching interests in early modern and modern history, he has researched and published extensively on appeasement and revisionism in the run-up to the Second World War. He has written or assisted with significant biographical treatments of Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Lord (Sir Arthur) Salter, V.V. Tilea, A.P. Young, Sir William Seeds, and Sir Anthony Eden, among others.

William Eric Windridge was born in Bexley, Kent in England on the 17th of July 1895 to Thomas Windridge. His occupation is listed as a clerk when he enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in September 1915 and he served with the 2nd Canadian Pioneer Battalion. He enlisted again in 1942 and served with the Veteran Guards of Canada until September 1945. Between the wars he married his wife, Edith, and they had one daughter, Dorothy, born in 1926. Edith passed away in March of 1943.

Arthur Garner was born in Cambridge, England, on the 22nd of May 1888. At some point prior to the start of the First World War he moved to Hamilton, Ontario, where he lived with his wife Daisy. In February 1916 he enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Throughout the war he served as a Sapper with the 11th Battalion of Canadian Engineers in France. Garner died at the age of 85 on the 9th of March, 1973.