The Allison family traces paternal lineage to John Fall Allison (1827-1897), who arrived in what would be named the Princeton area in about 1860. John Fall Allison is the namesake of the Allison Pass, which connects the Similkameen to the Fraser Valley.

Allison married Nora Yakimtikum in 1862. “Nora and John Fall had one girl and two boys, but when in 1868 John Fall found a white partner, Susan Louisa Moir, the daughter of a Ceylon tea plantation owner, he started a second family. Nora’s sons accompanied her to the reserve and remained within First Nations culture, while her daughter Lily stayed within the Allison household as a servant, and after Lily married, her family, from which Scott descends, shifted more towards European culture.” (http://www.vancouver-historical-society.ca/PDF/March2015.pdf)

This portion of the Allison Family fonds is associated with the branch of the family with the surname Thomas, or, the descendants of John Fall Allison’s daughter Caroline Allison, who married William Heald Thomas, and with whom she raised four children.

The Alvey family emigrated from Stralsund, Germany to the United States in the late 1870s. Frederich Alvey (d. 1920) and Sophia Alvey (née Ott, d. 1925) had two children together: William James Alvey (1881-1920) and Ernest Alvey (1883-1974).

William James Alvey served in the United States Army, having enlisted in 1897 and served in the Spanish-American war and the Philippine-American war. En route home to Detroit, he travelled through Seattle, where he worked as a motorman on a cable car, then at the Seattle Police Department. In Seattle he met Eva L. Berneche (1885-1956), a descendant of French Canadians who came west during the gold rush era. William and Eva had two children: Melvin Gerard Alvey (1902-1964) and A. Alexis Alvey (1903-1996). Following the death of her husband, Eva (Richards) worked as a nurse and teacher in Wainwright, Alaska; she published a memoir of her time in the arctic, Arctic Mood: A Narrative of Arctic Adventures (1949).

Melvin Alvey was a lifelong seafarer, and had a long career as a coast guard, stationed at several locations in the Pacific northwest. Together with his wife Edna M. Huntley, he had three children: William Jerard Alvey (b. 1924), Charlene Alvey, and Huntley Darnell Alvey.

A. Alexis Alvey was born in Seattle and attended McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. She led a distinguished career with the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service (W.R.C.N.S.) during the Second World War, having been selected as one of first class of that body, and she served as an officer on several naval bases across Canada.

Ernest Alvey was a seaman in the United States Navy, and served in the Spanish-American war. He later worked as an upholsterer, and retired as a Master Craftsman at General Motors. He married Aileen Casey (1884-1971), an Irish immigrant, and had a son, Maurice Francis Alvey (1903-1985). Maurice married Margaret E. Turban (b. 1911) and had two children: Robert Maurice Alvey (b. 1962) and Maureen Katharine Alvey (b. 1946).

Henry Forbes Angus (1891-1991) was born in Victoria, B.C. While attending high school, he also spent part of the 1906-07 school year at the Lycée Descartes in France. He graduated from McGill University in 1911, and then in 1914, he went to Oxford University. His studies were interrupted by war service, but he returned to Oxford and obtained his MA in 1919. In 1919 Angus joined the University of British Columbia faculty as an assistant professor of Economics. From 1930 to 1956, he served as head of the Department of Economics, Political Science and Sociology. Angus was also a Dean of Graduate Studies from 1949 to 1956. Among his many roles and responsibilities, he was also a member of the Rowell-Sirois Commission on Dominion-Provincial relations, a member of the Royal Commission on Transportation, and Chairman of the Public Utilities of B.C. From 1940 to 1945, Angus was seconded to work in the Canadian Department of External Affairs. He also worked for full rights for Japanese-Canadians in the inter-war years and vigorously opposed their incarceration and suspension of rights during the Second World War.
Annie M. Angus (wife of Henry Angus) was formerly a Trustee and Chairman of the Vancouver School Board and a volunteer worker. Other family members include Henry Dunckley (Angus' grandfather), who was editor of the Manchester Examiner Times (1855-1889), William H. Dunckley (his uncle) and Mary E. Angus (his mother).

William Bamford (b. 3 June 1826) was born in England and immigrated to Canada in 1860. On 26 August 1862, Bamford married Lydia Ann Blackley in Belleville, Ontario. Blackley was a descendent of American Loyalists who fled Boston, Massachusetts, in 1785 and settled in Picton, Prince Edward County, Ontario. William Bamford and Lydia Blackley lived in Ancaster and Burlington, Ontario, where Bamford worked as a manufacturer and later as a store keeper and merchant. The couple had three sons that lived to adulthood: William Blackley Bamford; Charles Harry Sydney Bamford, who became the director of Ashdown Hardware Company; and Thomas Henry Lord Bamford, who was a merchant of the firm of Hicks and Bamford.

William Blackley Bamford (10 Sept. 1863-29 Aug. 1946) was a railroader, beginning his career in 1880 as a telegraph operator. In 1889, he married Henrietta Odell in in Sherbrooke, Quebec, and had at least one son, William Blackley Stanley Bamford, and one daughter, Florence Odell Bamford (d. 7 July 1918). Bamford served as a Canadian Pacific Railway operator, station agent, and later traveling freight agent and district freight agent in several Ontario cities and towns. He moved to St. John, New Brunswick, in 1910 to act as a division freight agent before returning to Ontario in 1916. In 1920 he was transferred to the Kootenay and Boundary Division at Nelson, British Columbia. Bamford’s retirement from the CPR became effective 31 December 1928 after 48 years as a railroader.

William Blackley Stanley Bamford (24 Jan. 1890-9 Oct. 1966) was born in Elora, Ontario, and enjoyed a long career in the banking industry. In 1908, he secured his first position with the Traders Bank of Canada in Tweed, Ontario, and in 1917, he obtained a job as a temporary clerk with the Bank of Montreal. He continued with the company in various roles and through a transfer to Vancouver, British Columbia, until his retirement in April 1952. Bamford married Amy Lauretta Huestis on 26 December 1929 at St. Mark’s Church in Vancouver. The couple had one son, William Huestis Bamford.

William Huestis Bamford (17 Sept. 1930- ) was at born in, Vancouver, British Columbia. After completing his schooling in Vancouver, Bamford worked briefly in the British Columbia forestry sector before joining the Canadian Army. Bamford acted as a driver mechanic, attaining the rank of Lance Corporal, and spent one year overseas in Korea before leaving the service in April 1954. Bamford then worked briefly as a taxi driver before becoming an employee of Canada Post in June 1956. Bamford served as a letter carrier and later as a supervisory letter carrier in Richmond and Vancouver until his retirement. Bamford married Esther Adelina Lasell Blyth in July 1957 in Vancouver. Bamford was step-father to his wife’s four children from a prior marriage: Lynne, Sharon, Roy, and Verne.

William Blackley Bamford, William Blackley Stanley Bamford, and William Huestis Bamford were all avid diarist and kept line-a-day or page-a-day diaries for most of their adult lives.

Sir Edward Belcher (1799-1877) was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Members of the Belcher family moved to New England from England in the seventeenth century and then to Nova Scotia, where Belcher’s grandfather, Johnathan Belcher, became the first chief justice. In 1811, Edward Belcher and his family moved back to England, where he joined the Royal Navy the following year. Belcher gained recognition as a surveyor on a number of voyages, including the Beechey expedition in the mid-1820s, and in 1829 he was promoted to Commander. He married Diana Jolliffe in 1830, but the marriage lasted only a few years. In 1841, in reward for his participation in the conflict leading to the ceding of Hong Kong to Great Britain, Belcher was made a Companion of the Order of Bath. He was subsequently knighted in 1843 for his success in surveying the west coast of America. From 1852 to 1854, Belcher commanded an expedition to the Arctic in search of Sir John Franklin. In 1872 he attained the rank of Admiral.

Emil was born on October 10, 1918 in Wynyard, Saskatchewan to Paul Bjarnason and Halldóra Guðrun Jónsson. Emil attended elementary school up until grade 10 in Wynyard, and completed his high school in Vancouver at John Oliver High School. He won a Royal Institution Scholarship to go to the University of British Columbia. During his summers he worked for the American Can Company, packing tins. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1940 and won a scholarship to attend a Master’s program at Queens University. At the age of 50, Bjarnason enrolled in a doctoral program at Simon Fraser University.

Emil worked with the Dominion Bureau of Statistics in Ottawa, and during the Second World War was seconded to the Department of Labour Mobilization to be the chief statistician to conduct mobilization statistics. After the war, he resigned from civil service and moved to Vancouver to establish his own labour consulting service, the Trade Union Research Bureau. He served as director and president of his company for 44 years. As a life long Communist from a family of communists he dedicated his life to the betterment of working people world wide. Emil distinguished himself for his research on behalf of many unions including the International Woodworkers of America (IWA), the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), Mine Mill and Smelter Workers, United Fishermen and Allied Workers (UFAWU), and many locals of both the Firefighters and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). In 1973 he co-founded the Dogwood Foundation for Socialist Education to further the dissemination of labour-left works and ideas. He was also a member political organizations such as the Peace Council, the League for Democratic Rights, and became a co-founder of the Canada-Cuba Friendship Association in 1961.

During his career, Bjarnason published many pamphlets on topical economics and upon retirement wrote about his family genealogy back to the 900s. He wrote two more books, The Whole Truth, humorous episodes from his youth and a bilingual translation of some of the Icelandic Saga. Bjarnason was also the associate editor of the Icelandic Canadian Club of British Columbia (ICC of BC) newsletter for ten years and has contributed pieces to the Icelandic Canadian, and Lögberg-Heimskringla. He was awarded a Life membership in the ICC of BC. He died on October 12, 2006.

The Brayshaw family has a long history, tracing back to 1379, with a large portion of their lineage found in the Yorkshire area of England. This includes a notable relation to the Giggleswick parish and School, including the Brayshaw Library at Giggleswick School, where generations of the Brayshaws were educated.

Of the more recent family represented in this fonds is Thomas Brayshaw (1854 – 1931), located in Stackhouse, who was employed in the legal profession and served as a governor for the Giggleswick school. He was an avid historian of the Settle area, and published on the topic. His son, Thomas Brayshaw (1886 to 1967), was born in Settle, Yorkshire. He served in World Wars I and II, moved to Canada in 1911, and became a well-known sport fisherman who studied and illustrated fish in multiple publications. His son, T. C. Brayshaw (1919-2014), was born in Yorkshire but lived most of his life in Canada, where he was a botanist.

The Brender á Brandis family is a family of artists and writers with whom Albert and Beatrice Cooke were acquainted.

The Budd family were part-owners of the building known as "The Gables" at 5700-5736 University Boulevard, in the commercial area near UBC known as the "University Village." Henry Budd was involved in the construction of the building and was later a member of the "University Hill Syndicate," which owned the property.

George William Trayton (W.T.) Bush was born in Camberwell (London), England in 1889. In 1910, George immigrated to Winnipeg, Canada, where he was soon employed by the Dominion Express Company (later called the Canadian Pacific Express Company) as a traffic solicitor. He fought in the First World War, serving in the Canadian 1st Division for three and a half years. On January 19, 1922, George married Pearl Mee and settled in Vancouver. The couple’s son, Patrick George Seymour Bush, was born in 1932. George continued working at Canadian Pacific Express, retiring in 1949. At the time of his retirement, he owned two apartment blocks in Vancouver.

Pearl Mee was born in 1898. Pearl was the second child of Charles Mee and Annie Mee (née Seymour), early settlers in North Vancouver. After her marriage, Pearl did not work outside of her home.

Patrick George Seymour Bush studied at the University of British Columbia, graduating with a Bachelor of Laws degree in May 1958.
George, Pearl, and Patrick Bush are now deceased, dying in May of 1965, March of 1996, and August of 2015, respectively.