Nelson Ball, poet, publisher and book seller, was born in Clinton, Ontario in 1942. He established Weed/Flower Press in 1965 in order to publish Canadian and American poets. He is also the author of several collections of poetry, including Waterpipes and Moonlight (Weed/flower Press, 1969), Force Movements (Ganglia Press, 1969) and The Pre-Linguistic Heights (Coach House Press, 1970). Ball died in Brantford on 16 August 2019.
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.
The Canadian poet John W. Curry (jw curry) created the Curvd H&z Press in Toronto in 1979. Curvd H&z Press continues the tradition of such 1960s Canadian poetry presses as Gronk, Ganglia and Blewointment, and is particularly interested in offbeat, experimental, concrete and sound poetry. The writers include such well-known poets as bp Nichol and Steve McCaffery, and lesser known ones like Peggy Lefler, William Maki and John Curry himself. In addition to the finding aid, see also David Uu, Curvd H&z: A Catalogue ([1993?]), Mills Research Collections Ref Z232.C977U8 1993.
Christopher Levenson - poet, translator, editor, and professor of English and creative writing - was born in London, England in 1934. He lived in the Netherlands, Germany and the United States before moving to Canada in 1968. His first book of poetry, In Transit was included in New Poets (1959). In 1960 he was the first recipient of the Eric Gregory Award. He was co-founder and editor of Arc magazine, and from 1981 to 1991 founded and organized the Arc reading series in Ottawa. Since living in Canada, he has published many articles and books of poetry. He has published two volumes of translations from seventeenth-century Dutch poetry and individual verse translations in European journals. He taught English and creative writing at Carleton University and was Series Editor of Harbinger Poets, an imprint of Carleton University Press, devoted exclusively to first books of Canadian poetry. He was for a year Poetry Editor of the Literary Review of Canada. He lives in Vancouver.
Murray Thomson was born in Honan, China in 1922. His father was a United Church missionary. Thomson came to Canada at an early age. He was a student at the University of Toronto when the Second World War began. He enlisted in the air force and became a pilot although he never flew in a combat mission. Murray received a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Toronto.
As an undergraduate, he co-founded the Humanist Group, a citizen’s group for social change. His first job after graduating was a position in the adult education division of Saskatchewan’s socialist CCF government. Thomson received an M.A. in Sociology from the University of Michigan. In 1955 Thomson went to Thailand on a UNICEF research fellowship. He then spent four and a half years in India working in adult education for the American Friends Service Committee. Upon his return to Canada in 1962 he became peace education secretary for the Canadian Friends Service Committee in Toronto. In 1970 he became director of the CUSO (Canadian University Service Overseas) programme in Thailand. In 1972 he became the Regional Field Director of the South East Asia CUSO Programme. He also worked with the Canadian Friends Service Committee in South-East Asia sponsored by the Canadian Friends Service Committee, the peace and development wing of Canadian Quakers.
Thomson was the co-founder of the inter-church peace group, Project Ploughshares, a founder of Peace Brigades International in 1981 and of Peace Fund Canada. He helped establish the United Nations World Disarmament Campaign. In 1990, Thomson was awarded the Pearson Peace Medal. In 2001 Thomson received the Order of Canada. Thomson has been an active pacifist and lives in Ottawa. He died on 2 May 2019, in Ottawa, Ontario, at the age of 96.
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.
Arthur N. Bourns was born on 8 December 1919 at Petitcodiac, New Brunswick, and educated at Acadia University and then McGill University, graduating in 1944 with a doctorate in chemistry. He joined the Department of Chemistry at McMaster University as an Assistant Professor in 1947, after teaching at Acadia University and the University of Saskatchewan. He had begun his career as a research chemist in 1944 at the Dominion Rubber Company. Dr. Bourns became a full Professor in 1953, and served as both a chairman and a dean before becoming Vice-President, Science and Engineering, in 1967. In 1972 he was appointed president of the university, a post he held until 1980. He had a distinguished academic career, becoming a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1964 and serving as a member of the National Research Council, 1969-1975. Dr. Bourns was awarded four honorary degrees. He married Marion Blakney in 1943 and the couple had four children.
Gisela Commanda was born Gisela Almgren in England on 9 December 1908. Her father was a Swedish artist, Per Johan Hugo Almgren and her mother was Antonia, née Cyriax (1881-1927). Her parents married when both were art students in Sweden; they separated in 1912. Known as “T” (for Tony/Antonia), Gisela’s mother was a friend of David Garnett and D.H. Lawrence; she adopted the pseudonym “Mrs. Anthony” or “Antonius” after separating from Almgren, in the belief that he was pursuing her. Under the name Tony Cyriax she published Among Italian Peasants in 1919, illustrated with her own watercolours. She and her daughter Gisela stayed close to the Lawrences in Italy in 1913 (see The Letters of D.H. Lawrence, ed. James T. Boulton. Cambridge University Press, 1979, vol. 1, 520; vol. 2, 139).
Gisela’s life was no less dramatic, although entirely different from that of her mother. Trained as an artist, she was inspired by hearing Grey Owl speak about the aboriginal peoples of Canada during a tour of England, likely during his first British tour in 1935-6. She travelled first to a USA reservation for indigenous people in 1939 and then came to Canada the following year. Wanting to learn Ojibwa, she had been in touch with Grey Owl’s canoe man in the making of his 1937 Mississagi River film, Antoine Commanda (see Donald B. Smith, From the Land of the Shadows: the Making of Grey Owl, 1990, 308). She visited Commanda at Bisco and married him in 1942. The couple seem to have separated after a short time (although they were not divorced until 1975) and Gisela Commanda, now afforded First Nations status as a result of her marriage, lived on a series of reserves, including Brantford, Ontario and Cardston, Alberta, documenting her travels and the stories of those she met in her lengthy series of notebooks. She worked as an advocate for and promoter of native culture, teaching native crafts and often dressing as an aboriginal person, just as Grey Owl had done.
None of her written work seems ever to have been published and much of it seems to have been lost during her frequent moves. Always prone to “nervous indisposition” (a depressed state which descended whenever she lacked stimulation), she was restless, rarely living in one place for long. After some years at a nursing home in Cornwall, Ontario during the 1970s, she moved to Woodlands Villa, Long Sault, Ontario, where she died on 22 March 1993.
Boyd Neel, conductor, was born in London England on 19 July 1905. He first trained as a naval officer in 1918, but then left the navy to study for a medical career at Cambridge University in 1923. He became House Surgeon and Physician at St. George's Hospital, London. During this period he conducted amateur orchestras and choirs. He eventually decided to establish a professional orchestra. It had its debut on 22 June 1933 in London. The Boyd Neel Orchestra performed in England, throughout Europe and also in Australia and New Zealand. After a concert tour of Canada, Neel was offered the position of Dean of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto which he held from 1953 to 1971. He founded the Hart House Orchestra in 1955. He died in Toronto on 30 September 1981. His memoirs, edited by J. David Finch, were published posthumously as My Orchestras and Other Adventures (1985).
Charles Hamilton Mitchell was a noted civil engineer and decorated World War I intelligence officer. He was born in Petrolia, Ontario in 1872 to the Reverend George A. Mitchell and Agnes Mitchell (nee Beckett). He had a brother, P. H. Mitchell, with whom he later went into business. Mitchell was educated primarily at the School of Practical Science at the University of Toronto. After his graduation in 1894, he worked as a city and consulting engineer in hydraulic and hydro-electric power plant design and construction until 1906. In 1901 he married Myra Ethlyn Stanton. They had one son, Donald Russell Mitchell, who died in infancy.
In 1899 Mitchell joined the Canadian Militia as a Lieutenant. He served in the 44th Lincoln and Welland Regiment and the Corps of Guides prior to the outbreak of World War I. From 1914 to 1915, he served as an intelligence officer in the 1st Division under Lord Byng. He continued to occupy increasingly senior intelligence roles in the Canadian Corps (1915-16); in France (2nd Army, 1916-1917); and in Italy (British Forces HQ, 1917-1918). He received numerous decorations, including a DSO, CMG, CB, VD, Legion of Honour (France), Order of Leopold (Belgium), Croix de Guerre (Belgium), Order of the Crown of Italy, and the Order of Bath. In 1918 he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General and became a senior intelligence officer at the War Office in London.
In 1919, Mitchell returned to the Canadian Army. Shortly thereafter he was appointed Dean of Engineering at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering. He continued to serve both in this role and as an influential consulting engineer until his death in 1941. At the time of his death he was reportedly newly involved in World War II intelligence work.
Harold Hamilton Leather was born on 23 May 1893 in Hamilton, Ont., the son of Thomas Edwin Leather and the former Helen McIntyre Skinner. He was educated at Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ont. He served in World War I, joining the Imperial Service Corps in England as a private. He returned to Canada in 1919 with rank of captain.
While in England he married Grace C. Holmes, of Toronto, in 1918. They had one child, Edwin. Harold Leather established his own company, Leather Cartage in 1924 in Hamilton, which was sold in the 1950s, with Leather remaining a director until his death in 1981. During World War II, he was in charge of the Canadian Red Cross parcels scheme. For this service he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire and received medals from six foreign countries.
After the war, he became chairman of the Canadian Red Cross for six years, and subsequently was named an honorary counsellor of the national organization. Among many other activities, he served on the board of directors of McMaster University and the Stratford Festival until his retirement at the age of 80. He died in Hamilton in 1981.
Grace C. Holmes, of Toronto, married Harold Leather in 1918 while in England. They had one child, Edwin.
Sir Edwin Hartley Cameron Leather was born in Toronto, Ont. on 22 May 1919, the son of Harold Hamilton Leather and the former Grace C. Holmes. He was educated at Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ont. and the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont. He married Sheila Greenlees on 9 March 1940; the couple has two daughters. During World War II, he served overseas with the Canadian Army.
After the war he remained in England, becoming a parliamentary candidate in 1945. He was Conservative Member of Parliament for North Somerset from 1950-1964. He was knighted in 1962. In 1973 he succeeded the murdered Sir Richard Sharples as Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Bermuda and remained in this position until 1977. He was for several years an executive and then director of Hogg Robinson Ltd. as well as serving on the board of directors of several other companies. He died in Bermuda on 5 April 2005.
Sir Edwin wrote on politics, business and religion for many newspapers and magazines, as well as being a public speaker and broadcaster. He was also the author of three novels.
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.
Marjorie Stibbards Harris Batten, freelance writer, editor, and noted Canadian gardening authority, was born in Shaunavon, Saskatchewan, in 1937, the eldest of Bernard and Kay Stibbards ’s three children. Her father was a Baptist minister and the family moved frequently across Canada. She was tragically orphaned in her teens, losing her mother to cancer and her father soon after in an airplane crash. Harris graduated from McMaster University in 1959 with an Honours BA in English, and began graduate studies at University of Toronto, studying with Northrop Frye.
She married musician and TV producer Barry Harris with whom she had two children, Christopher and Jennifer. After separating from Harris, she met fellow writer Jack Batten, to whom she has been married since 1968. The couple still reside in the Toronto Annex home in which they raised her children and Batten’s son and daughter, Brad and Sarah.
In the early 1960s Harris worked for Toronto art dealer Dorothy Cameron which led to a position as modern-living editor and writer at Maclean’s magazine. Well into the1980s, Harris continued as a freelancer, writing on a wide range of topics for nearly every major Canadian magazine. In the early 1970s Harris was also a writer, producer, and commentator for CBC Radio on such shows as “Gerussi,” “This Country in the Morning,” and “Ideas”. In addition, she wrote and co-authored numerous general interest books in the 1970s and 1980s.
What Harris describes as her “epiphany” occurred in 1988 when she combined her writing talents and passion for gardening to create The Canadian Gardener. Published in 1990, it launched Harris into a new career, and was the first of nearly 20 gardening monographs she has written. Recognition for her expertise led to gardening columns in Chatelaine and The Globe & Mail, and to editorship roles with Toronto Life Gardens and Gardening Life. She continues to be much sought-after for speaking engagements, public appearances, and garden tours, and is a regular garden commentator on television and radio programs and online forums.
Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Jackie Washington (1919-2009) was the grandson of a Virginia slave. The second of thirteen siblings, Washington began his musical career at age five when he started singing with The Four Washington Brothers. By the early 1930s, Washington and his brother Ormsley became a self-taught musician, learning the guitar and piano. Before serving in World War II, he worked as a porter for Canadian Pacific Railroad, which inspired his lifelong interest in trains. During this time, the Washington family played host to many talented touring musicians including Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Lionel Hampton.
After obtaining a medical discharge from the army, Washington worked in Hamilton at the American Can Company, eventually forming a musical duo with Sonny Johnston. The two soon developed a weekly radio show on CKOC and in 1948 Washington became Canada’s first black disc jockey for CHML radio. His career showed continuing promise in the 1960s when the musician took full advantage of the burgeoning coffee house scene in order to establish himself as a folk musician. When folk festivals gained popularity in the 1970s, Washington became a fixture at such events as the Home County Folk Festival in London, Ontario and the Festival of Friends in Hamilton, Ontario.
In spite of health problems (Washington was diagnosed with diabetes in 1970), he continued to work, recording his first album, Blues and Sentimental, in 1976. In the late 1980s, Washington continued to tour as part of a trio “Scarlett, Washington and Whitely,” with Mose Scarlett and Ken Whitely. During his later years, Washington was upheld as an important musician both locally and nationally. He was recognized with an honorary doctoral degree conferred by McMaster University in 2003. The Jackie Washington Rotary Park was named in his honour in 2004.
Antonio D'Alfonso was born in Montreal in 1953. He attended English and French schools and studied at Loyola College where he earned a B.A. in Communication Arts in 1975. He completed an M.Sc. in Communications Studies from Université de Montréal.
In1978 he founded Guernica Editions, where he edited 450 books by authors from around the world. The company is dedicated to the bridging of cultures in Canada and publishes both original works and translations in three languages: English, French, and Italian. In 1982 in collaboration with three writers he founded the trilingual magazine Vice Versa and in 1986 they founded the Association of Italian-Canadian writers. As an author himself, he has published over 20 books in French and English. He has won the Trillium Award for his novel, Un vendredi du mois d'août in 2005. He is also an independent filmmaker and scriptwriter. In 2010 his film Bruco won the Best Foreign Film and Best International Director of a Feature Film at the New York International Film and Video Festival (Los Angeles). He has lived in Mexico City, Rome and Toronto. He has taught at University of Toronto and University of California, San Diego and presently teaches film in the French Department at McGill University.
Paul Becker was active in many student organizations. In 1960 he was President of the Student United Nations Association in Canada and served as National Federation of Canadian University Students (NFCUS) Chairman at the University of Western Ontario. For the academic year 1961-1962, he was the Vice-President for International Affairs of NFCUS. His predecessor in the job was Jacques Gérin, whose files he inherited. Gérin's files form a separate fonds. Becker's portfolio brought him in contact with the Coordinating Secretariat of the International Unions of Students (COSEC) in The Netherlands. In 1962 Becker served as the NFCUS representative on the World University Service of Canada (WUSC) and then became Vice-Chairman of WUSC. Working for WUSC, he organized an appeal for funds for the National Union of Israeli Students. He served as secretary of the Canadian Committee for the World Assembly of Youth (WAY) and of the Advisory Committee to the Department of the Secretary of State, Canadian Citizenship Branch. He was active as a conference organizer. In 1963 he was the conference secretary for the Conference on Student Mental Health; in 1964 he organized the Canadian Student Journalists conference. He was also on the Board of Directors for Jeunesse Canada Monde/Canada World Youth. He was on the National Executive Council for the International Year of Cooperation (ICY) in Canada in 1965. He was also a member of the Preparatory Youth Committee and Youth Advisory Committee for EXPO 1967 in Montreal. Becker remained in correspondence with NFCUS after it was re-organized as the Canadian Union of Students in 1964.
Cyrus Eaton was born in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, Canada in 1883 and educated at McMaster University, receiving a B.A. in 1905. After moving to the United States, he had a successful business career in steel, coal, railways, public utilities and agriculture. In the 1950s he agreed to finance the Pugwash conferences, named after his birthplace. The conferences brought together scientists who were trying to diminish the threat of nuclear war. In 1964 Eaton travelled to the Soviet Union and met with Nikita Khrushchev in an attempt to bring more understanding between capitalism and communism. Mr. Eaton was the recipient of many honorary degrees and awards. He died in 1979.
The son of the prolific writer Leslie McFarlane, Brian McFarlane was born in New Liskeard, Ontario on 10 August 1931, and raised in various towns and cities such as Haileybury, Whitby and Ottawa. He accepted a hockey scholarship to St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y. and graduated in 1955. McFarlane is perhaps best known as a commentator on Hockey Night in Canada for 25 years. He made similar broadcasts on NHL games for the major American networks CBS and NBC. His contribution to hockey also includes the creation of the character Peter Puck.
McFarlane is an expert on hockey history and has written more than 50 books on the sport, many for young readers, with such publishers as McClelland and Stewart, Methuen, and Scholastic. In 1995, after a lengthy career in broadcasting and journalism, McFarlane was inducted into the media section of the Hockey Hall of Fame. McFarlane has also been admitted into the St. Lawrence University Hall of Fame, the Ontario Sports Legends Hall of Fame, the Ottawa Sports Legends Hall of Fame and the Whitby Sports Hall of Fame and. His memoirs, published by Stoddart, Toronto in 2000, are entitled Brian McFarlane's World of Hockey.
More recently, he has turned to writing the Mitchell Brothers books, a series of young adult fiction, the first volume of which was issued in 2003. McFarlane currently resides in the Toronto area. He is married to Joan Pellet, also a St. Lawrence graduate, and the couple have three children: Lauren, Brenda and Michael.
