Mary F. Bishop (née Fraser) was born in Cobourg, Ontario on July 29, 1913, the only child of James Kenneth Fraser and Anna Beeman. In 1935 she received a Bachelor’s Degree in History and Literature from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. She married Joseph (Joe) Bishop in 1937 and had three children: Charles Walter Fraser (Chuck) Bishop, Ann Josephine Louise Bishop, and James Kenneth Branson Bishop.

Over the following decades, the Bishop family relocated several times, corresponding to Joe’s duties within the Canadian Military. They lived in Washington, D.C. (1952–1962), where he served as Commander Canadian Army Staff and Canadian Military Attache, then in Vancouver (1956–1962) where he was Commander of the Canadian Army’s B.C. Area. Between 1962 and 1964, they lived in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where Joe served as a consulting engineer. While in Sri Lanka, Mary began what would become a long-term dedication to voluntary service in family planning movements: she worked as a clinic volunteer, and served on the national executive committee for the Family Planning Association of Sri Lanka.

After her return to Canada, Mary dedicated her efforts to groups concerned with reproductive rights, family planning, and population planning. She served on the board of the Planned Parenthood association of B.C. (PPABC) from the mid-1960s, and was its president between 1971–1973. She also served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada (PPFC), was involved in the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), and served on the IPPF Panel on Population Laws and Policies (Western Hemisphere Region). Her other volunteer involvements include the Canadian Institute of International Affairs; the University Women’s Club of Vancouver’s human rights committee; the University of British Columbia (UBC) Alumni Association heritage committee; Girl Guides of Canada (where she served as National Director from 1939–1949); and the Norman MacKenzie Scholarship Award jury at UBC. In 1984, Mary’s longstanding volunteer service was recognized when she received the Lifestyle Award from Hon. Monique Begin, Minister of National Health and Welfare in Ottawa.

Mary completed a Masters degree at UBC in 1971, her thesis titled “From ‘Left’ to ‘Right’: A perspective on the role of family planning in the West and in South Asia.” She subsequently worked as a research associate with the Department of Health Care and Epidemiology in the Faculty of Medicine, where she was later appointed an honorary lecturer. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Mary pursued a project of writing a history of the birth control movement in Canada, which she aimed to publish as a book. While her book project never came to fruition, she did publish several articles, including “The Early Birth Controllers of B.C.” (BC Studies, 1984), “The Politics of Abortion: Trends in Canadian Fertility by Larry Collins—Revisited” (Atlantis, Fall 1983), and an entry on “Birth Control” in the first and second editions of the Canadian Encyclopedia. She also contributed a chapter to Not Just Pin Money: Selected Essays on the History of Women’s Work in British Columbia on the life of B.C.-based birth control activist Vivian Dowding.

Mary died on November 1, 1997 in Vancouver at the age of 84.

Chiyoko Szlavnics was born in 1967 in Toronto and is a composer and visual artist currently residing in Berlin. Her parents, maternal grandfather, and experiences from her childhood have greatly influenced her musical and graphical works. Born to two artists, her mother, Aiko Suzuki, worked with painting, textiles, sculpture, and designing dance sets, and was of Japanese descent; her father was a highly analytical artist, something Szlavnics says she inherited, and was of half-Serbian and half-Hungarian descent. Her maternal grandfather was an avid nature lover, and when Szlavnic would visit him they would often spend time at the beaches on the north shore of Vancouver where they would explore the life cycle of salmon. This time on the beach would influence her interest in beating sounds within her compositions, as she often reflected on how the light bounced and reflected on water.

Her musical endeavors started at the University of Toronto where she originally studied flute and saxophone in the Faculty of Music where she graduated in 1989. Post-graduation, she worked under the direction of Nic Gotham at Hemispheres, an improvising ensemble based in Toronto. In 1993, she was asked to compose a piece for Hemispheres, and that is when she used her line drawings for the first time to organize and create the sound. In 1994, she took private composition lessons from James Tenney, and during this time she began to start her own composing. She moved to Berlin in 1997 after winning a scholarship to attend the Akademie Schloss Solitude. There she began collaborating with various other musicians and developing her unique, experimental compositional approach to music. In her compositions she explores: states of harmonicity, beating and rippling sounds, exceptionally slow glissandi (gliding between pitches), intonation, and combing musical instruments with sinewaves. Her compositions are composed for violin, cello, flute, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, percussion, among others and can be found throughout her 30+ works. Szlavnics says her main goal when composing is to take risks and be surprised by her music.

As a visual artist, she predominately creates line drawings using a fine line pen. Drawing is an integral part of her compositional process, as a way to map her preliminary ideas for the music. The lines represent how the tones are extending though time, or could also represent specific instrumental intervals. These lines are an abstract way for her to represent her imagined sound world since she is not inclined towards the traditional graphic score. Similar to her musical compositions, the unexpected is central to Szlavnics’ drawings. The drawings consists of lines, dots, and how they connect; there are some drawings that are in a in a moiré fashion as well. Later in her drawing career, she focused more on the visual arts aspect of the drawings instead of drawing for musical composition.

Lori Freedman was born in 1958 in Toronto and is a composer and clarinetist. Having parents who were both musicians, from a very early age Freedman began to learn numerous musical instruments: piano, guitar, drums, and trombone. It is her mastery of the clarinet that has catapulted her to international acclaim and what she is most notably sought after and known for playing. Her compositions and performances have led Freedman to become a member of the international group known as “the renaissance musicians.”

Freedman studied clarinet at the University of Toronto, and after graduating in 1977 she continued her studies at the Academy of Woodwinds at the Banff Center for the Arts in Alberta. In 1981, two musicians, Pauline Oliveros and Eric Dolphy, would inspire her with their spontaneity and improvisation that would change her outlook on music completely. Their comfort with taking risks in their music would inspire her to begin studying with Larry Combs at the Chicago Civic Orchestra when she first started improvising with her own music. Improvisation would become a central component in her compositions and live performances of the clarinet and would bring her high acclaim.

Freedman has performed in over 100 cities in over 20 countries all around the world. With a packed touring performance schedule, it is not uncommon for her to have more than 75 shows in a single year. In the midst of her own full performance schedule tour, recording, and workshops, she also has been commissioned by numerous contemporary artists to create music for them to perform. She also composes musical scores for dance, theatre, cinema, and other visual arts. One of her accolades includes the Freddie Stone Award in 1988 for the “demonstration of outstanding leadership, integrity and excellence in the area of contemporary music and jazz.” In 2003, 2004, and 2006 she was awarded "Clarinetist of the Year" at the National Jazz Awards. Most recently, in 2017, she was elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada for “outstanding artistic achievement.” In addition, she has taught at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University in Montreal where she conducted classes on bass clarinet and coached the contemporary/improvised music ensemble.

Elizabeth Raum is a prolific composer and oboist. She lived with her husband in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she was principal oboe with the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, until 1975 when they moved to Regina, Saskatchewan. She was an oboist with the Regina Symphony Orchestra from 1975 onward, and principal oboe with the Chamber Players from 1986 until 2010.

Her composition repertoire includes: four operas, 90 chamber pieces, 18 vocal works, and a variety of choral works, ballets, concerti, and major orchestral works. Three of her operas have been filmed for the CBC. She has been commissioned as a composer by orchestras and music organizations across Canada, the US, Europe, China, and Japan, and has received numerous Canadian achievement awards for her work, including an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Mt. St. Vincent University, Halifax, in 2004 and the Saskatchewan Order of Merit in 2010.

Alan R. Sawyer (1919-2002) was an art historian, curator, museum director, collector, professor, author, and consultant specialising in pre-Columbian and Northwest Coast art. He was born in 1919 in Wakefield, Massachusetts, and enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1942. In 1946 he married his childhood friend Erika Heininger Sawyer (1922-2012) and together they had five children (Dana, Diane, Brian, Lynn, and Carol). Alan and Erika were avid collectors, and their collection of pre-Columbian and Northwest Coast pieces was often consulted by researchers and exhibited across Canada and the US.

Sawyer received an undergraduate degree in geology from Bates College in 1941 before studying at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from 1946-1948 and earning his MA in Art History from Harvard in 1949. That same year, Sawyer became an instructor for the art department at the Texas State College for Women. He was employed as the assistant to the Curator of Decorative Arts at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1952, and in 1956 was promoted to Curator of Primitive Art. While at the Art Institute of Chicago, he also worked as director of the Park Forest Art Center and taught courses at University of Chicago and the University of Notre Dame. From 1959 to 1971, Sawyer served as the Director of the Textile Museum in Washington, DC. He joined the faculty at the University of British Columbia in 1974, where he was a professor of art history until his retirement in 1984—when he was named Professor Emeritus of Fine Arts.

In addition to his teaching and writing activities, Sawyer traveled to South America to conduct field work and acted as an expert lecturer on study and leisure tours in Peru. As part of his research into Northwest Coast art and artifacts, he traveled to First Nation communities and assisted North American and European museums with determining artifacts’ provenance. He was the author of several works including Ancient Peruvian Ceramics : the Nathan Cummings Collection (1966) which was published through the Metropolitan Museum, and Mastercraftsmen of Ancient Peru (1968) that accompanied an exhibit at the Guggenheim which he curated. In 1969, Sawyer was awarded an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Bates College.

In addition to running Editions de la revue Fontaine, Clarisse Francillon, Lowry’s Swiss-French translator was an editor and author of 20 novels.

She had written to Harold Matson (i.e. Malcolm Lowry’s agent) in February 1947 to ask for the French rights to Under the Volcano and while nursing the novel and Lowry through the translation process she had become a close friend and supporter of his work.

Clarisse Francillon has been involved in the French translation, in most cases in collaboration with others, of most of Malcolm Lowry’s works, including: Under the Volcano (with Stephen Spriel), the two version of Lunar Caustic (one with Michèle d’Astorg), Ultramarine (with Jean-Roger Carroy), Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place (with Georges Belmont), etc.

Major French literary critic, revue director, editorial director and independent publisher, Maurice Nadeau (1911-2013) was the editorial director of “Le Chemin de la vie” collection at Buchet/Chastel (Corrêa) when Under the Volcano was first published in France.

He then moved to Julliard and afterwards to Denoël where he published Malcolm Lowry’s works in French (Lunar Caustic, Ultramarine, Écoute notre voix, Ô Seigneur, Sombre comme la tombe où repose mon ami, Choix de Lettres, En route vers l’île de Gabriola).

He also published in his revue, Les Lettres Nouvelles, a short story (Brave petit bateau, the French translation of The Bravest Boat) in November 1953 and two special issues about Malcolm Lowry in July 1960 and May-June 1974 respectively.

Dr. David Wells Narver received a PhD in Marine Biology from the University of Washington in 1966. He worked as a researcher at the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo, various positions in fisheries research, management, and administration, including as Anadromous Fisheries Coordinator and Acting Chief of Fisheries Management for the BC Ministry of Environment, and became Director of the British Columbia Fisheries Branch in 1977, which position he held until his retirement in 1994. During his career he published many reports and papers about his area of expertise, the effects of habitat degradation on salmonids, and he was responsible for the ongoing Carnation Creek study.

Archibald Murchie (1853-1930) was born in Scotland and immigrated to Victoria, BC as an adult on the recommendation of his brother John. John Murchie established Murchie’s Tea in 1894 and named his own son Archibald Murchie (1892-1925, and not to be confused with his uncle). Following his calling to become an evangelist minister for the Spiritualist Church (an off-shoot of the Church of England), he set off into the interior of BC to preach as a missionary.

Murchie’s photographic career began when he arrived in Williams Lake, BC, in 1893. Wherever his missionary calling took him, Murchie brought along his camera. Marcus Smith, CPR engineer and previous associate of Murchie’s via the Spiritualist Church, hired him to photograph the creation of a bridge over the Fraser River at Sheep Creek. Work on this project was slow enough to afford Murchie to engage in side trips to Quesnel, BC, and farther north. Here he made a connection with the Reverend A. H. Cameron who suggested he establish a parish in Princeton. After this failed, Murchie returned to the Cariboo and set up a photography studio in Ashcroft, BC.

In 1911 Murchie moved again to the Okanagan Valley and in 1916 at age 64 he married Amy Wood. His last attributed photograph was taken in 1918.

Eugen Ruus was born in Pärnu, Estonia in 1917. He graduated from the Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia with a degree in engineering. Ruus escaped to Finland during World War II, and in 1950 emigrated to Canada with his family. He then returned to Europe in 1957 to complete his Doctor in Engineering at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany. He joined UBC’s Department of Civil Engineering in 1958 as a lecturer, and became an assistant professor the following year. In 1972 Ruus was made a full professor, and remained a faculty member until his retirement in 1985, when he was named Honorary Professor. Outside of his civil engineering work, he was an ordained clergy member for the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church. Ruus died in 2000.

Leah Edelstein-Keshet was born in Israel in 1953, and earned both her Bachelor and Master of Science at Dalhousie University. She completed her PhD in 1982 at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, specializing in applied mathematics. Edelstein-Keshet was employed as a visiting professor at Brown University and Duke University before being hired as an associate professor in the University of British Columbia’s Department of Mathematics in 1989. Her research began in mathematic biology, and evolved to include cell biology and biophysics.

Edelstein-Keshet has published numerous articles and written several books, including Mathematical Models in Biology, an influential text for the field of mathematical biology. She has also won various awards: the Canadian Mathematical Society’s Krieger-Nelson Prize, the Arthur Winfree Research Prize of the Society for Mathematical Biology, the Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society Research Award, and the John von Neumann Prize from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). From 1995 to 1997, she served as the Society for Mathematical Biology’s first female President; in 2017, the Society created the Leah Edelstein-Keshet Prize to recognize notable contributions by women to the field of mathematical biology. Edelstein-Keshet retired in 2023 after 34 years as a professor at UBC.

Leonard Jay Angel was born in Montreal in September 1945, and received his Bachelor of Arts from McGill University in 1966. Angel then moved to Vancouver to study at the University of British Columbia where he completed an MA in Philosophy in 1968, an MA in Creative Writing and Theatre in 1970, and a PhD in Philosophy in 1974. He was an associate fellow in UBC’s Department of Philosophy in 1992, and taught philosophy at Douglas College from fall 1993 through 2012. Angel maintained a close relationship with UBC throughout his career, working on and off as a sessional lecturer for philosophy and creative writing courses, and participating in student study groups and departmental colloquia. He also produced at least two plays (“The Ballad of Etienne Brule” and “Eleanor Marx”) through UBC’s theatre department.
Angel was a poet, playwright, philosopher, and author, with 17 plays produced and 7 published books. He was an active figure in the Vancouver theatre scene from the 1970s through the 1990s, with plays produced and performed by Vancouver’s Street Theatre, Terrific Theatre, and the New Play Centre. Angel also had several of his plays produced in theatres in Toronto and Seattle. Outside of his academic writing on philosophy, he practiced and wrote at length about Jewish theology as well as Zen practices. He was connected to Vancouver’s Jewish community through his involvement in Or Shalom Synagogue and founded the Integral Studies Institute in 1987 to provide instruction on meditation and spirituality. Angel was also an advocate for World Federalism and was president of the Vancouver branch of World Federalist Movement Canada from 1996 through 2013. Leonard Angel passed away in August 2022.

David Whittaker attended the University of British Columbia for his bachelor’s degree, graduating in 1960 with a Bachelor of Education. He obtained his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, where he conducted psychological research with the Center for Research Development in Higher Education (CRDHE). During his time at UC Berkeley, Whittaker and other researchers carried out extensive questionnaires, interviews, and studies involving the Free Speech Movement and the associated nonstudent and “fringe” populations at Berkeley. Whittaker completed his thesis in 1967, and in 1968 become the co-coordinator of the CRDHE.

In 1971, he left UC Berkeley along with his wife, Elvi Whittaker, and was employed at the University of Hawaii as the chairman of Educational Psychology in 1973. He became a visiting lecturer at UBC at the start of the 1975-76 school year, working in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Psychology. The following year he was named an associate professor, and taught in Educational Psychology until his retirement in 1997. His research while at UBC also focused on students in higher education, and included analysis of student’s personality profiles and studies of multicultural policies and international and exchange students. In 1997, Whittaker was named Associate Professor Emeritus of Educational Psychology and Special Education.

Henry Lock Tin Lee (李樂天, 李濟寬) was born in Taishan county, Guangdong, China. In October 1926, Lee officially enlisted in the Kuomintang (KMT), otherwise known as the Guomindang (GMD) or the Chinese Nationalist Party. He briefly attended the Republic of China Military Academy (黃埔陸軍軍官學校) in 1927 as part of the infantry division. With an academic background in education, Lee taught in elementary schools from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s in China.

Lee arrived in Canada in 1937. His wife, Gin Shew San (甄秀珊), remained in Taishan with their two children, both then recently born. Upon arrival, Lee served as a teacher in the Vancouver Chinese Public School; he also taught at the Chinese Public Schools in Nanaimo and Victoria, moving between cities as needed. In 1944, Lee remarried and settled with Annie Lore (羅巧鶯), a Chinese Canadian who resided in British Columbia. Together, they had four more children. On December 20, 1952, Lee formally received Canadian citizenship.

In 1952 and 1957, Lee was consecutively elected as a representative for the 7th and 8th National Congresses of the Kuomintang. He further served as a delegate for the overseas Chinese at the National Assembly, the constitutional convention and presidential electoral college of the Republic of China, in 1954 and 1960. Prior to his successful election as a National Assembly representative, Lee fulfilled numerous positions related to the KMT, public school education, and various associations for the overseas Chinese. Some of these included: standing committee member of the Chinese Nationalist League of Canada (Vancouver Branch); executive committee member of the Chinese Nationalist League of Canada (Western Branch); managing director for the Canadian branch of the Overseas Chinese Education Association; teacher and Disciplinary Officer for the Vancouver Chinese Public School; Director of Lee's Benevolent Association of Canada and Chairman of the Association’s Vancouver branch. He also worked as a secretary and publicity officer for the Chinese Nationalist League of Canada and was an editor of the newspaper The New Republic (新民國報).

Ever prolific in his roles, Lee was additionally a member of the Chinese Nationalist League of Canada (Headquarters) executive committee and a member of the Chinese Benevolent Association of Canada. He also served as part of the KMT central renovation committee and was the Chairman of the Victoria Chinese Benevolent Association. Furthermore, he was the executive director for the Federation of Overseas Chinese Association and an honorary director for the Free China Relief Association.

Lee was also a traditional Chinese medicine doctor. He was a lifelong learner and practitioner of the discipline, advancing his studies well into at least his fifties despite having already obtained numerous diplomas and certificates prior. In 1964, he was appointed as an honorary consultant for the National Research Institute of Chinese Medicine.

Despite his deteriorating health in later years after suffering a stroke, Lee persisted in many of his duties and was an active presence both abroad and in the overseas Chinese Canadian community. Lee passed away on January 21, 1980. His death received formal condolences from the KMT and was mourned by many in the local community. His funeral was held on February 1, 1980 by the funeral committee jointly formed by Lee’s Benevolent Association of Canada and the Chinese Nationalist League of Canada.

Ken Heibert was an organizational member of the Vancouver branche of Socialist Challenge/Gauche socialiste, acting for over ten years as the minute taker at branch meetings and evidently keeping many documents and records related to the organization and its activist activity. Socialist Challenge/Gauche Socialiste was an organization dedicated to building popular revolutionary socialism in the Canadian state in the tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, while also embracing socialist feminism, democracy, and other progressive social movements like gay and lesbian rights. In particular, as evidenced in this collection, the organization was partial to the separatist movement of Quebec, understanding this movement as a right to political sovereignty and arising, as this organization saw it, in response to political opression within an Anglophone dominated Canada. The Vancouver branch, as evidenced in this collection, was predominately active in the 1990's and were involved in a number of political campaigns on issues such as anti-capitalist protest against expansion of international free trade, Clayoquot protests ("War of the Woods"), pro-choice abortion campaigns, and anti-fascism. Involvement included production of promotional materials, protest attendance, convening conferences and other educational events.

Len Bawtree (1924-2014) was born and raised in Ashton Creek, east of Enderby, BC. After enlisting in the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II and marrying Ruth Swaby in 1944, Bawtree came back to the Okanagan and logged and raised cows for beef on his farm. He was a founding member of the North Okanagan Livestock Association and the long-time director of the BC Cattleman’s Association. When regional districts were created in the 1960’s, Bawtree was appointed the first representative from rural Enderby to the North Okanagan Regional District. He was elected to the BC Legislature in 1975 when Bill Bennett’s Social Credit Party defeated Dave Barrett’s NDP government. He was re-elected in the next election but lost the nomination in the following election.

Jean Rands (born Mary Jean Rands) was raised in Saskatchewan in the 1950s. Her parents, Stan Rands and Doris Rands (née Fraser), were both prominent figures in social activist circles in the province. She had two siblings: an older brother, Brian Rands, and a younger sister, Ailsa Curiel (née Rands). Jean attended high school in Regina at Sheldon-Williams Collegiate, and was politically and socially engaged from an early age. A member of the Young Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), Jean regularly participated in peace marches and joined picket lines in support of striking workers during her school years.

In 1963, Jean moved to Toronto with her long-term partner, Al (Allan) Engler. There she was a member of the League for Socialist Action (LSA), a Trotskyist socialist organization. In 1968, at age 19, Jean relocated to Vancouver, and began work as a typesetter for the student newspaper at Simon Fraser University. She became involved with the SFU Women’s Caucus, and grew increasingly active in feminist labour organizing, especially in sectors with high participation of women workers which the Canadian labour movement had historically neglected. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Jean was active as a labour organizer, particularly with SORWUC (the Service, Office, and Retail Workers’ Union of Canada) and several of its local chapters. She was a founding member of both AUCE (Association of University and College Employees) and SORWUC, and served in executive positions in both organizations. She maintained a lifelong interest and commitment to labour and feminist issues, which are reflected in her speaking and writing.

Over the course of her life, Jean worked in typesetting and clerical positions with several employers in Vancouver and Toronto. She retired in Vancouver in 2010.

Rudolph “Rudy” Wurlitzer was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1937. He is married to photographer Lynn Davis, and they split their time between homes in New York state and Nova Scotia, Canada. Wurlitzer is an author and screenwriter. His first novel, Nog, was published in 1968 and his most recent, The Drop Edge of Yonder, in 2008. His first screenplay, Glen and Randa, was produced in 1969, and his most recent, Little Buddha, in 1993.

A. Alexis Alvey was born in Seattle, Washington on November 22, 1903. She attended McMaster University in Hamilton (1932-33). Following University, she was employed as a special technician in charge of photography at the University of Toronto's School of Medicine. Alvey also helped organize the business women's company of the Toronto Red Cross Transport Corps and commanded it for two years, and served as lecturer to the entire Transport Corps for Military Law, Map Reading, and Military and Naval insignia. In 1942, the Womens Royal Canadian Naval Service (W.R.C.N.S., Wrens) selected Alvey for its first class for training in Ottawa. Having passed a selection board to become one of the first commissioned officers, Dorothy Isherwood, W.R.C.N.S., appointed Alvey acting Chief Petty Officer Master-at-Arms. Her other assignments included duty as Deputy Unit Officer H.M.C.S. Bytown (Ottawa), duty with the Commanding Officer Pacific Coast H.M.C.S. Burrard (Vancouver), assignment as Unit Officer, Lieutenant H.M.C.S. Bytown, and Unit Officer to H.M.C.S. Stadacona (Halifax). Following her career with the W.R.C.N.S., Alvey rejoined University of Toronto in 1945. Eventually, Alvey returned to Seattle to work for the University of Washington Libraries as an acquisitions technician, but retired in 1969. Alvey died on June 5, 1996. Throughout her life, Alvey took special care to collect and preserve memorabilia related to the activities of the W.R.C.N.S. She regularly accepted donations from former W.R.C.N.S. to aid her documentary activities.

Elvi W. Whittaker received her bachelor's and master's degrees in sociology from UBC in 1955 and 1957, respectively, and later earned a second M.A. (1971) and doctorate (1973) in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. She returned to UBC as a visiting assistant professor of anthropology in 1973; she was appointed associate professor in 1975, and full professor in 1991. Dr. Whittaker has served as the President of the Canadian Anthropology Society / Société canadienne d’anthropologie (CASCA) and as President of the Social Science Federation of Canada (SSFC) (1993-94) and was a Member of the Board (1989-95). She also served as a Chair of the Scientific Steering Committee of Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Programme, UNESCO (1994-97) and consultant to UNESCO. Dr. Whittaker also served in the following positions: Anthropological representative on Aid to Scholarly Publications (1991-93) and on SSFC Women's Issues (1991-93), on the Task force on the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies, and chair of Scholarly Book Awards (1992). She retired in 1997 and received an honorary degree (LL.D.) from UBC in 2005. Dr. Whittaker has been awarded the Weaver-Tremblay Award for Distinguished Service (2004) and Women’s Network’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2011) by CASCA. She was awarded the UBC School of Nursing Centenary Medal of Distinction in 2019.

Rachel Epstein has been involved in activist work since at least the 1960s. While living in Vancouver, she worked with and for the International Committee Against Racism, helped found the Labour Advocacy and Research Association (LARA), did typesetting and publishing work for New Star Books and Press Gang (both activist publishers), worked with and for the Women’s Research Centre (WRC), and helped organize events for International Women’s Day (1977 and 1979). She was also involved with various feminist groups, including Act Up, a participatory theatre group.

Epstein later moved to Toronto where she worked for the Participatory Research Group (PRG), with which group she served as the North American coordinator for an international conference on the impact of micro-technology (microchips) on women’s work. After leaving the PRG, she worked as a coordinator for Second Look Community Arts, specifically with their Theatre of the Oppressed program, then as a teacher at Seneca Community College in the women in trades and Ontario basic skills programs. She received her Masters of Arts in Sociology from York while working at Seneca. She helped develop the Dykes Planning Tykes program for The Queer Exchange; with her female partner, Epstein had a daughter, Sadie, in 1992 using a sperm bank at a fertility clinic, an experience which she used along with interviews and research to help build up a community for LGBTQ+ prospective parents in Toronto. She started working for the LGBTQ (then LGBT) Parenting Network circa 2001 and was still working for them at the Sherbourne Health Center in 2015. She also partnered with a researcher at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) on several projects surrounding LGBTQ+ parenting and fertility clinics, and through that research became involved with the Assisted Human Reproduction Agency; she has served on several committees for that group.

Throughout her career, Epstein has published papers, articles, and contributed to various books and anthologies. Her book Who’s Your Daddy, a collection of writings on LGBTQ+ parenting and family planning, was published in 2009. She was the recipient of the Steinert Ferreiro Award (Community One Foundation) in 2008.

Clarence Malcolm Boden Lowry was born on July 28, 1909, in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, to parents Arthur Lowry and Evelyn Boden Lowry. He was the youngest of their four sons, preceded by brothers Russell, Wilfrid, and Stuart Lowry.  

From 1924 to 1927, Lowry attended the Leys Public School, and it was here his writing career began. He published several short stories, among other non-fiction writing, in the school’s publication, the Leys Fortnightly. After graduating from the Leys School, Lowry joined the crew of a merchant ship bound for Asia and the subcontinent; while he only worked on the S.S. Pyrrhus for six months, the experience formed the foundation for his first book, Ultramarine. After his brief career at sea, Lowry attended Cambridge University, graduating in 1932 with a Bachelor’s degree in English. 

Lowry traveled for several months in France and Spain during 1933. He met his first wife, Jan Gabrial, during this tour while in Spain visiting Conrad Aiken. Lowry’s first book, Ultramarine, was also published in this year. In early 1934, Lowry and Gabrial were married, and the couple moved from continental Europe to the United States where, between 1934 and late 1936, they would live in several cities, including New York City, Los Angeles, and San Diego. In late 1936, they settled in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where Lowry began work on his second and more famous novel, Under the Volcano. Lowry remained in Mexico until July 1938, though his relationship and cohabitation with Gabrial ended in late 1937 (they were not formally divorced until 1940). In July 1938, Lowry left Mexico for Los Angeles, where he stayed for most of a year; during this stay in the United States, he met second wife Margerie Bonner Lowry. Lowry left Los Angeles for Dollarton, British Columbia, Canada, in July 1939 and was joined soon after by Margerie.  

Malcolm and Margerie Lowry resided primarily in Dollarton between 1940 and 1954, with short excursions to the United States, Mexico, and Europe throughout. During the Dollarton years, Lowry completed work on and published his second book, Under the Volcano, in 1947, and began work on and published many short stories, poems, and essays. Lowry’s third novel, October Ferry to Gabriola, a short story collection titled Hear Us O Lord From Heaven Thy Dwelling Place, and fourth novel, Dark as the Grave Wherein my Friend is Laid, were also begun during the Dollarton years, though all would be completed and published posthumously through the efforts of Margerie. The Lowry’s left Dollarton for the final time in August 1954 and travelled through the United States, from Los Angeles to New York City, back to Europe; late 1954 and early 1955 were spent in Italy before the couple returned to Lowry’s birth country, England, where they settled in Ripe, Sussex. Lowry and Margerie remained in England until Lowry’s death on June 27, 1957.

Zonia “Zo” Sekora (1936-2022) attended UBC as an undergraduate in the Faculty of Arts and Science in 1954. In her first year at UBC, she was nominated to run as Vice-President of the Frosh Undergraduate Society Executive. Sekora later went on to study at Simon Fraser University, graduating with honours.

William E. Willmott was born in 1932 in Chengdu, China, to Canadian Methodist missionaries. During the Second World War he was sent to India, with other missionaries’ children, to avoid the Japanese invasion. He later attended Oberlin College in Ohio (B.A., sociology), McGill University (M.A., anthropology), and the London School of Economics (Ph.D., social anthropology) – for the latter degree, his research focusing on the Chinese diaspora in Cambodia. His first academic appointment came in 1961, teaching anthropology at the University of British Columbia. While at UBC (1961-1973), Willmott researched the history and social development of the Chinese community in British Columbia. In the course of that research he conducted interviews with prominent members of the local Chinese-Canadian community. He later moved to New Zealand, where he spent the rest of his career as professor of sociology at the University of Canterbury. His teaching and research continued to focus on China and the international Chinese community. He died in 2021.

Lois Cudmore (née Still) was born in 1915. She attended UBC from 1934 to 1938, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree. While at UBC, Lois was an active member of the Biological Discussion Club and UBC Players Club. After graduating from UBC, Lois received a Master of Sciences in Zoology and Botany from the University of California, Los Angeles. Lois lived with her husband Ralph Cudmore in New Westminster and Montreal. After Ralph passed away in 1980, Lois moved to Guelph, Ontario to be closer to family and had retired from her career by 1988. Lois was an artist, passionate gardener, field naturalist and environmentalist. In her later life, she took a special interest in Carolinian forest preservation. Lois passed away on September 5, 2010.

Ralph Cudmore attended UBC from 1933 to 1937, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Horticulture. While at UBC, Ralph was president of the Ice Hockey Club from 1935-1936 and president of the Agriculture Club. Ralph lived with his wife Lois in New Westminster and Montreal, where Ralph worked for CIL Chemicals Division, and then Windsor and Port Credit where he worked for Ford Motor Company of Canada, eventually becoming General Manager of the Tractor and Equipment Division.

George Van Wilby was a University of British Columbia student who completed his BA in 1921 and an MA in 1924. While on campus, he was well known for documenting various aspects of campus life through his photographs. Some of his photos were used to illustrate the UBC student yearbook, The Annual. Wilby was later a zoology instructor at UBC and did post-graduate work in biology at the University of Toronto. He also compiled the 1925 Alumni Directory.

The Reverend Betty Atwater (née Carol Betty Osborne) was born in 1915 near Great Falls, Montana, the fifth of seven children. Her father was a travelling Baptist minister. Atwater married Charles Phillips at age 15; by the time she met Lowry in 1939, she was divorced and living in Long Beach with her two young daughters.

Atwater was Malcolm Lowry’s typist during the spring and early summer of 1939 when the author was in Los Angeles. Without steady employment, Atwater did freelance typing work; her brother, Jimmy Osborne, was a friend of Lowry’s and recommended his sister when Lowry mentioned he needed a typist. Atwater assisted Lowry first with The Last Address and then for several weeks with a very early draft (possibly the first) of Under the Volcano. The two never met again after Lowry abruptly left Los Angeles for Vancouver, him having met his future second wife Margerie that July, but they maintained a limited correspondence until September 1939, when Atwater mailed Lowry the draft Volcano manuscript and what work she had managed to complete of it to that point.

After her brief relationship with Lowry (they were lovers, according to Atwater, during work on the Volcano typescript), Atwater became a Baptist minister, piano teacher, and student and teacher of astrology. She also continued to write poetry, plays, and novels. She married Dwight Edward Atwater in 1942.

Einar Neilson was born in Stavanger, Norway sometime in the early 1900s. He moved as a child to Manitoba, where he came of age and worked in the Grain Exchange for several years. As an adult, Neilson moved west, settling on Bowen Island with first wife Patricia Fitgerald. The couple purchased a 10-acre plot in the Eaglecliff area and built a house, which became “Lieben”. Neilson married second wife Muriel James in 1947, and together they opened “Lieben” as a retreat for writers and artists of all sorts. Malcolm Lowry was among the many artists, writers, and creatives who visited “Lieben” during its years of operation, roughly 1946-1960. Neilson and Muriel closed up the “Lieben” house in the early 1960s, once visitors had stopped coming, and built a house for themselves farther up the hill on their property.

William Loftus Templeton was born in Tipperary, Ireland, in 1889 to parents James Bradley Templeton and Kathleen Anne Denroche Templeton. He emigrated to Canada some time in 1912 and already had one child with wife Frances Smart by 1915. Templeton had five children: daughters Kathleen, Doris (who went by “Mickey”), and Norah, and sons Charles and William. The family moved from Toronto to Regina in early 1916, where they stayed for eleven years, then back to Toronto in 1927. Templeton left the family to find work (he was a department store manager) and moved alone from Montreal to Saskatoon to Edmonton, settling finally in Vancouver sometime before 1940. He worked as a manager for the Vancouver Better Business Bureau from 1940 to 1963. He and his former wife, Dorothy Burt, were friends of the Lowrys at Dollarton. Templeton died at Vancouver General Hospital on 19 April 1972.

William C. McConnell was born on February 12, 1917, in Vancouver, one of six children. He served as a Seargent in the Canadian Armed Forces during the second World War, and he was in one of the first cohorts to pass through UBC’s Law School post-war. He graduated and began practicing in 1949. He continued to practice law full time from 1949 until retirement in 1983; during his career, worked mostly as a barrister as was by all accounts highly successful and well respected in his field.

McConnell married first wife Alice in the early 1940s. Alice passed away after a long illness in 1981, and McConnell remarried many years later. Alice was a writer, and McConnell likewise was a respected and well-known writer of short stories. In addition to his full-time law career, McConnell assisted in establishing the journal Canadian Literature and the creative writing magazine Prism International. He founded Klanak Press in 1958 and served as its general editor until the mid-1970s.

McConnell was introduced to Malcolm Lowry by mutual friend Earle Birney sometime during Lowry’s Dollarton years. They remained friends for at least as long as Lowry was in Vancouver; Lowry relied on McConnell’s law expertise when working on October Ferry to Gabriola, as evidenced by McConnell’s name appearing on the frontispiece of at least the 1970 edition of that book in thanks for his help (“I wish to express my thanks to William C. McConnell, barrister, solicitor, and friend, for his help in all the legal matters in this book. M.L.“). He remained an admirer of Lowry’s writing, and he was invited to present at the 1997 Malcolm Lowry Conference in 1997 at the University of Toronto. McConnell passed away on December 6, 2001, in Vancouver.

David Merrill Markson was born December 20, 1927, in Albany, New York, to parents Samuel and Florence Markson. He served in the US Army from 1946 to 1948. After the war, Markson attended Union College, New York, graduating with a BA in 1950, and then Columbia University for his MA, graduating in 1952. His master’s thesis was on Lowry’s Under the Volcano, and it was during his work on his thesis that he began corresponding with Lowry. That correspondence evolved into a close personal friendship which lasted until Lowry’s death in 1957. Markson’s 1952 thesis was later expanded and republished in 1978 as Malcolm Lowry’s Volcano: Myth, Symbol, Meaning, the first major study of Lowry’s Volcano.

Markson married his wife, Elaine Kretchmar, in 1956, and the couple moved to Mexico in 1958. They stayed there until 1961, during which time Markson finished a draft of his first novel, then moved back to New York where they had their two children, Johanna Lowry Markson (b. 1963) and Jed Markson (b. 1964). After selling the rights to another of his books, the Marksons moved to Spain, where they lived for some time between ca. 1970 and 1972, before returning once again to New York. Markson separated from Elaine in 1982 and later took up a relationship with Joan Semmel which lasted for ten years.

During his career, Markson worked as a journalist, book editor, and as a college instructor at Columbia University, Long Island University, and the New School, while also writing and publishing works of genre fiction (mostly westerns), poetry, plays, and, later in life, experimental novels. He passed away on June 4, 2010, in New York.

Margerie Lowry (née Bonner) was born on July 18, 1905, in Adrian, Michigan, to parents Mr. and Mrs. John Stuart Bonner. Her father was a diplomat, newspaperman, and manager of a wire fence company, and reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the AEF during the first World War. By the end of the war, he had lost much of the family’s money, and so daughters Margerie and Priscilla were encouraged to work. Both girls went into the film industry in Hollywood and did well. Margerie began starring as a horsewoman in Westerns, among other roles, at age 14, after completing only one year of high school. Between 1919 and 1923, Margerie did well enough as an actress that she was able to support herself, her sister, and her parents; her acting career largely ended with the advent of “talkies”.

Margerie was briefly married to Jerome Chaffee, from 1923 to 1925. After her divorce from him, Margerie continued working in various positions in film and radio, including as an animator for Disney, over the subsequent decade. She also wrote novels during this period, though none were published.

Margerie met Malcolm Lowry in Los Angeles, California, in 1939, and the two immediately took to each other. When Lowry moved to Vancouver later in 1939, Margerie followed him. The two were married, after Lowry’s official divorce from Gabrial, in 1940 and remained so until Lowry’s death in 1957. Lowry assisted Margerie with the publication of several of her novels, and Margerie likewise helped Lowry with the many works he began and published during their marriage.

After Lowry’s death in 1957, Margerie eventually moved back to Los Angeles, where she passed away in 1988.

Victor Doyen (b. 1942, d. 2018) was one of the preeminent Lowry scholars. He had a long and successful career in academia with a particular focus on Lowry’s work. His master’s thesis, Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry: An Ergocentric Approach, unpublished, was completed in 1963. His doctoral thesis, Fighting the Albatross of Self: A Genetic Study of the Literary Work of Malcolm Lowry, was published in 1973. He was a professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven from 1974-2002, reaching Professor Emeritus status and serving as vice-dean of the Arts Faculty and head of the English Department there before retirement. He received a grant from the Belgian Foundation for Scholarly Research to study the Lowry manuscripts at UBC in 1970, visited the University of California, Berkeley, as a Fullbright scholar in 1984, taught a graduate seminar on Lowry archives manuscript research in 1987, and presented at the 1987 Lowry Symposium (UBC), the 1997 Lowry Conference (University of Toronto), and 2017 Lowry Conference in England. He also published, co-wrote, and edited many landmark works of Lowry scholarship, including, but certainly not limited to, the critical editions of Lunar Caustic and Swinging the Maelstrom.

Douglas Turner Day III was born May 1, 1932, in Colón, Republic of Panama, to parents Bess Turner Nelson Day and Douglas Turner Day II. After an early academic career marked by demerits, Day enlisted in the US Marine Corps, where he achieved the rank of second lieutenant and served as a pilot until an automobile accident in 1955. After, he was a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve.

Day took a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and PhD from University of Virginia (1952, 1959, and 1962 respectively) and joined the Department of English there as a professor of English and Comparative Literature in 1968; he retired in 2000. Day was a respected academic in his field, and he published several books of criticism, including Swifter than Reason: The Poetry and Criticism of Robert Graves (1963), a biography of Malcolm Lowry which won the 1974 National Book Award in Biography, and two novels, Journey of the Wolf (1977) and The Prison Notebooks of Ricardo Flores Magon (1991). Day also traveled and lectured extensively in Spain and South America, and he was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1995.

Day was married five times. First to Mary Hill Noble, from 1954 to 1967, with whom he had two sons and two daughters (one of whom died in infancy). Second to Elisabeth Marie Holscher, from 1967 to 1978, with whom he had one son. Third to Gay Allis Rose Clifford from 1979 to 1982. Fourth to Nancy Ellen Willner from 1982 to 1988. And finally, to Sheila Marie McMillen from 1990 until his death by suicide in 2004. Day had a debilitating stroke in February 2004 and died in his home in Charlottesville, Virginia, in October. His children are Douglas Turner Day IV, Ian Day, Patrick Day, and surviving daughter Emily Day Whitworth.

Terry Allen Simmons was born 12 April 1946 in Butte, California to parents Daniel F. Simmons and Jeanne Marlow. He had one twin brother, Gary, and a sister, Deborah. After growing up in Yuba City, Simmons earned his undergraduate degree in Anthropology in 1968 as one of the first graduates of the University of California, Santa Cruz. He then moved for his graduate studies at the Geography Department of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., earning his Master of Arts in Geography in 1974. Afterwards, under the supervision of the humanistic geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, Simmons wrote a doctoral thesis at the University of Minnesota and in 1979 was awarded a PhD in Geography. While studying for these degrees, Simmons worked as a teaching assistant and lecturer of geography at various programs, including Simon Fraser University, the University of Minnesota, Lakehead University, and the University College of the Fraser Valley. In 1989, Simmons graduated from the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1988 and 1989, Simmons worked as a law clerk in the Land and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Francisco and as a staff member for the Alaska Supreme Court in Anchorage, Alaska. Afterwards, he worked in Reno, Nevada both as an environmental and natural resources policy consultant and as an attorney practicing primarily in the areas of environmental, natural resources, water, land use, real estate, and business law. Simmons also became a Nevada Supreme Court Settlement judge, mediating appellate cases and actively arbitrating in Nevada trial level courts. After completing his academic degrees, Simmons continued his education by attending short courses and seminars focusing on cultural resource management, hazardous materials handling, and civil mediation. He also regularly taught courses and seminars in natural resources law, civil and criminal prosecution of environmental crimes, and similar topics.

Throughout his life, Simmons was highly involved in environmental activism. The summer of 1968, Simmons spent the summer as a research assistant in the national office of Sierra Club in San Francisco. After moving that fall to Vancouver to undertake graduate studies in the Geography Department of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., Simmons was struck by the lack of similar environmental groups in B.C. He contacted local Sierra Club Bulletin subscribers and convened a meeting that led to the incorporation of the Serra Club of B.C. (SCBC). In fall 1969, Simmons was elected the first chairman of SCBC, as well as vice-president of the newly-formed B.C. Environmental Council. At SCBC’s first meeting, two of the one hundred members that signed up for the organization were Jim Bohlen and Irving Stowe, who alongside Paul Cote would later become recognized as co-founders of Greenpeace. In 1971, Simmons sailed as one of twelve crewmembers on the boat known as “Greenpeace” for its voyage from Vancouver, B.C. to Amchitcka, Alaska to protest U.S. nuclear tests. Then 25 years old, Simmons acted as the group’s geographer and legal advisor. This trip is now understood as the founding event of the environmental organization Greenpeace. Simmons did not remain actively involved in Greenpeace after this trip, instead taking part in other environmental activism efforts. In 1970, he acted as the Secretary of the Run Out Skagit Spoilers (ROSS) Committee that fought against Seattle City Light’s proposal to raise the Ross Dam by 125 feet. After leaving the role of Secretary, Simmons continued his involvement in ROSS as a member. In 1972, Simmons participated in an anti-war protest in Minneapolis at the University of Minnesota. Charged with aggravated assault against a police officer and rioting, Simmons received a one-year probation. In 1973, Simmons was interviewed as the SCBC vice-chairman on Alaskan pipeline construction activity and later appeared at a hearing of the BC Energy Commission to cross-examine statements made on behalf of the Canadian Petroleum Association. Simmons was appointed as one of six directors to the Forest Research Council of B.C. in 1981 and was a founding member of the Forest History Association of British Columbia in 1982. Simmons stayed an active member in the Forest History Association of British Columbia, serving as director at the time of his passing in fall 2020.

In addition to his involvement in various environmental efforts, Simmons was also Treasurer of the Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Society, an advisory board member of the Berkely Canadian Studies Program, and an active member of the Vancouver St. John’s Anglican Church Learner’s Exchange. Simmons passed away in Vancouver on November 14, 2020.

Anthony “Tony” R. Kilgallin was born in London, England, in 1941. He emigrated to Toronto in 1951, then moved to Mexico in 1958. During that time, and before moving to North Vancouver in 1967, Kilgallin wrote a master’s thesis on Lowry, entitled “The use of literary sources for theme and style in Under the Volcano” (1965). Kilgallin was briefly a professor of English at UBC; he is noted as an assistant professor in the Summer 1970 roll. In 1973 he published Lowry, his biography of the same, with Press Porcepic (Ontario).

Arthur Harvey Burt, born in 1920, and wife Dorothy were part-time neighbours of the Lowrys at Dollarton. Burt was a schoolteacher, and he and Dorothy stayed at their Dollarton shack on weekends and in the summer months. They met and became close friends with the Lowrys in the early 1950s, frequently spending their Dollarton excursions in their company. By the time the Lowrys relocated to England in 1954, the couples were close enough that Burt was entrusted with the Lowrys’ shack, the boat with it, and the papers and books left inside. Burt would later donate many of the books to the UBC Library (the bulk of the Malcolm Lowry Personal Library Collection).

Burt was active with the North Shore Historical Society and a font of anecdotal information on Lowry and Margerie much sought after by Lowry scholars. Burt and Dorothy lived in Deep Cove, North Vancouver, until Burt’s death in 2003.

George Bluman was born in Vancouver in 1943, and completed his Bachelor of Science at UBC in 1964 with an honours degree in Physics and Mathematics. After finishing his PhD in Applied Science at Caltech, he joined the UBC Math Department in 1968 and worked as a professor until his retirement in 2014. During this time, Bluman served as the first undergraduate chair in Mathematics, the Head of Mathematics for five years, the co-founder of the Institute of Applied Mathematics, and a member of various UBC committees and task forces for admissions and recruitment. His mathematics research interests include symmetries and differential equations, and he has authored and co-authored numerous papers and books on these subjects, including Similarity Methods for Differential Equations (1974) and Symmetries and Differential Equations (1989).

Bluman has taken an interest in math education and readiness in secondary schools throughout his career, publishing studies and reports on mathematics competency in B.C. school systems, holding local workshops, and organizing aspects of the Euclid Mathematics Contest. In addition to this work, he has also served in various capacities for the Canadian Mathematics Society, including as Chairman of the Education Committee and a member of the Board of Directors. In 2001, he was the recipient of the Society’s Adrien Pouliot Award for his leadership and educational advocacy. He is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mathematics.

Charles Hou is a Canadian educator and writer. He was born in North Vancouver in 1940 and earned Bachelor and Master of Education degrees from the University of British Columbia.

Hou is well known as an innovator in education. He taught high school in Burnaby, British Columbia, for thirty-four years, where, in his drive to engage high school students with Canadian history, he regularly incorporated week-long hikes, mock trials, costumed debates, and music video and film production into his courses. He has received a number of teaching awards, including the Hilroy National Award for Great Merit in 1986, and the Governor General's Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Canadian History in 1996.

In 1993, Hou, along with a group of other BC teachers, established The Begbie Canadian History Contest, a competition designed to raise the popularity of Canadian History among high school students and the wider public. The contest has been enormously successful and has expanded from its provincial roots to become an annual national competition that is offered in both French and English. Contest materials are now routinely used in classrooms across Canada.

Early in his career, Hou developed an interest in political cartoons as a vehicle for teaching history. He has spent decades consulting the archives of hundreds of different newspapers and magazines published across Canada and, to a lesser extent, the United States, in an effort to compile a comprehensive collection of Canada’s most important political cartoons. The result of this work is a series of books, co-authored with his wife, Cynthia Hou. The first volumes in the series, Great Canadian Political Cartoons, 1820 to 1914 and Great Canadian Political Cartoons, 1915 to 1945 were published in 1997 and 2002. A third volume, which will cover the years from 1946 to 1982, is forthcoming.

Hou has written or edited several other books, including The Helping Hand: How Indian Canadians Helped Alexander Mackenzie Reach the Pacific Ocean (with Sister Mary Paul Howlitt, 1971), The Riel Rebellion: A Biographical Approach (with Cynthia Hou, 1984), The Art of Decoding Political Cartoons: A Teacher's Guide (with Cynthia Hou, 1998) and The Begbie Canadian History Contest: The First Ten Years (2004). He has also published articles in various Canadian History journals and created print and online lesson aids and other materials to support the study and teaching of Canadian history. Most recently, he created the teacher’s guides to the award-winning 2007 multimedia production, From The Heart: The Freeman Legacy, a joint project of the City of Burnaby and SFU’s Learning and Instructional Design Centre.

Hou is now retired from teaching and lives in Vancouver, where he continues his research and his involvement with the Vancouver Historical Society and the British Columbian Historical Federation.

Larry Wong was born in Vancouver’s Chinatown on August 14, 1938, one of the last babies to be delivered by a midwife in Chinatown. Wong is the sixth and youngest child of Wong Mow and Mark Oy Quon [Lee Shee]. Wong’s mother died when he was 18 months old and his father died when he was 28. Wong had five older siblings, Yung Git, Ching Won, Yung Wah, Mee Won, and Won Jin Lee (Jennie). Ching Won and Mee Won died before Wong was born. Yung Git died of tuberculosis when Wong was only four years old. Wong was closest to Jennie despite their seven-year age gap. Wong’s father was a tailor and the family lived in a small space in the back of his father’s shop on Main Street between Hastings and Pender.

Wong attended Strathcona School and Vancouver Technical High School. His first job was in a bowling alley, working as a pin boy. Later, Wong earned cash in a used car lot, washing cars inside and out. After graduation from high school, Wong did not have enough money to go directly to university. He worked for an English language news magazine called Chinatown News for two years. He started out selling advertising, and was later promoted to head of layout and design. Eventually Wong saved enough to enroll at the University of British Columbia where he studied psychology and creative writing; however, he dropped out after only two years. Wong decided that although he wanted to become a writer, university wasn’t the best way to approach it. Unsure of what he wanted to do, he accepted a job at Canada Post. He started as a clerk, filling out order forms, moved up to sorting mail, and later worked the front counter. When Wong was 34 years old, he was hired to work as an auditor for Canada Post in Toronto. After twelve years, Wong left Canada Post and began working with Employment and Immigration Canada. He was transferred back to Vancouver in the 1980s, retiring in 1994 after thirty years of service. After retirement, Wong threw himself into volunteering with various history groups. He helped establish both the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia and the Chinese Canadian Military Museum Society, interviewing elderly Chinese residents and war veterans to record their stories. Wong appeared in several documentaries and wrote articles for newspapers and magazines. He arranged for exhibitions of artifacts and photographs to help showcase the story of Chinese Canadians. In retirement, Wong became a member of the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop and wrote a one-act play, Siu Yeh (Midnight Snack), which was produced at the Firehall Art Centre in 1995. In 2001, he gave a workshop at Historic Joy Kogawa House on writing family stories, with former writer-in-residence Susan Crean. Wong was also the writer, researcher and co-host, along with Nancy Li, for Rogers’ Cable Chinatown Today and served on the boards of Tamahnous Theatre, the Federation of B.C. Writers, the Westcoast Book Prize Society and the Vancouver Public Library, One Book, One Vancouver.

In 2011, Wong published his book Dim Sum Stories: A Chinatown Childhood in which he writes about growing up in Vancouver’s Chinatown in the 1940s and 1950s. Dim Sum Stories started off as a the one-act play called Sui Ye (Midnight Snack) before fellow Vancouver writer Jim Wong-Chu encouraged him to turn it into a book of short stories.

Larry Wong passed away on September 2, 2023 in Vancouver.

Philip Bridgman Lind was born August 20th, 1943, in Toronto, Canada to parents Susan Bridgman and Walter (Jed) Lind. He attended McGill University and later transferred to the University of British Columbia. He earned his Bachelors of Arts in Political Science and Economics, and then attended the University of Rochester to complete a Master’s in Political Sociology. In 1969, he began working for Rogers Communications Inc. alongside founder Ted Rogers. He continued work with Rogers for more than 50 years in various capacities, rising in the organization to become vice-chairman of the company, a position he held for over 30 years.

In 2002, Mr. Lind was awarded the Order of Canada for his career and input into Canadian culture and broadcasting. That same year, he received an LL.D, honoris causa, from the University of British Columbia. In 2012, he was inducted into the U.S. Cable Hall of Fame, only the third Canadian to be so honoured. In 1992, Mr. Lind was a founder of CPAC, the Cable Public Affairs Channel, Canada’s only privately owned, commercial-free, not-for-profit bilingual licensed television service. He has served on the CPAC board for almost 30 years. He is also a director of the Atlantic Salmon Federation, Vancouver Art Gallery and Art Gallery of Ontario. He funds The Phil Lind Initiative at UBC, an annual dialogue series and course hosted by the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, as well as other cultural endeavours such as the Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize, the Phil Lind Multicultural Artist in Residence and the Phil Lind Scholarship Fund.

Phil Lind’s paternal grandfather, John Grieve (Johnny) Lind, traveled to the Yukon in 1894, two years before the gold strike and three years before the international gold rush. While there, he successfully mined for placer gold in Fortymile River, and then, in late 1896 with news of the gold-strike, travelled to Dawson City and Bonanza Creek. Together with his partners, Johnny Lind bought and sold claims and successfully mined a significant amount of gold. He returned with his fortune to St. Mary’s, Ontario, where he used the money to begin St. Mary’s Cement, which grew to become the largest independent cement company in Canada. Inspired by his grandfather’s Yukon adventure, Mr. Phil Lind began collecting materials related to the Klondike Gold Rush. He compiled the collection over 50 years, and soon became known by Canadian booksellers and dealers as a collector of Klondike items. Mr. Lind donated the comprehensive collection to the University of British Columbia Library in 2020. He passed away on August 20, 2023.

G.F. Turner was involved in the construction of new buildings in Peking at the time of the Chinese Revolution (1911-1912).