Darryl Adams was born on September 19, 1947 in Portsmouth, Virginia to parents Harry and Kate Adams. He was the first of five sons. In 1959, the Adams family moved to Poway California, a suburb of San Diego. Adams was a member of the first class to graduate from the newly constructed Poway High School in 1961.

Adams became interested in political activism and social justice at a young age. In particular, Adams became interested in Marxist-Leninist philosophy. While he was still in high school, Adams would attend lectures and meetings at the University of California and other political events around Poway and San Diego. After graduating from high school, Adams was enrolled at the Revelle Campus of the University of California where he studied philosophy. It was there that Adams became more heavily involved in political activism events that were being experienced throughout the United States in the mid 1960s, including the Free Speech Movement and other Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. In 1966, Adams moved to Santa Cruz with several of his high school friends, where he continued to attend anti war rallies. He would also meet with other philosophers in the area who also believed in Marxist-Leninism philosophy.

In late 1967, Adams received a draft notice from the US Government. In order to avoid being conscripted into the US Army, he and Shelia left California and came to Vancouver in March of 1968. Even in Vancouver, Adams maintained his interest in social justice and other political activism movements. He was a core member of the Vancouver American Exiles Association (VAEA), which campaigned against the America's continuing involvement in the Vietnam War, and for amnesty for Americans who came to Canada to escape the draft. In 1976, Adams received amnesty from the United States Government, although he opted to stay in Vancouver.

In addition to this and other Anti-Vietnam War movements in Canada, Adams was also interested in other movements, such as: labour rights for the working class; women's rights; rights for Indigenous people and minority groups; political movements in Latin and South America; and, communist, socialist, and Marxist-Leninist movements in Vancouver, Canada, and the United States.

Adams interest in social justice is reflect through his career as a researcher and consultant. Upon his arrival in Canada in 1969 to 1971, Adams worked as researcher for SFU Instructor John Legget, researching "blue collar consciousness" in East Vancouver. In 1971 to 1973, Adams worked at the Vancouver Public Library, where he also worked as a researcher specifically in the Historic Photographic Section of the Library. From 1975 to 1977, Adams was hired by the Legal Service Commission of BC, where he worked as a Public School Legal Education Advisor. After working a few years as a freelance writer and researcher, Adams moved into the Health Sector, where he worked as a consultant for the Coast Foundation Society from 1980-1985, and then the Canadian Mental Health Association in 1987. In all of these positions, Adams worked as an advocate for the working class and rights for minority groups. In 1999, Adams passed away in his home in Vancouver.

Jeff Adams is a six-time world champion in Wheelchair Sports. He competed for Canada at six consecutive Paralympics (1988-2008), winning three gold, four silver, and six bronze medals. He was inducted into the Terry Fox Hall of Fame in 1997.

Born in 1900 at Ridgetown, Ontario, to Dr. Del and Eunice Marr, Frances was the eldest of three siblings. Although the family was shaken by the death of her younger brother Charles at the age of three, and despite an early problem with stuttering, Frances Marr remained an optimistic person, devoted to her father and fascinated with the piano. Frances began playing the piano at an early age under the tutelage of Whitney Scherer. Later she would study with Thomas Martin at Alma College in St. Thomas. Eventually, Frances moved to Toronto to study at the Conservatory of Music under Paul Wells. Although she felt her study under Wells was unproductive, it was at this time that she had the opportunity to play her first professional accompanist engagement. At this engagement, she met her future husband, Harry Adaskin, whom she would marry in 1926. Initially, Frances would accompany her new husband and his band, the Hart House String Quartet, on their many tours throughout North America and Europe. In 1938, Harry Adaskin quit the quartet. He and Frances began to tour, with Frances' piano the sole accompaniment to Harry's violin. During this period, she would strike out on her own, appearing in the ensemble music and comedy act "The Town Tonics." In 1946 the couple and Harry's younger half-brother Gordon, whom the couple raised as a son, moved to Vancouver. Harry was offered a job with the new Music Department at The University of British Columbia. Frances was to accompany him to every class until his retirement in 1973. Interestingly, Frances Adaskin played her first solo recital at 75 and continued to play until shortly before her 90th birthday.
Frances Adaskin's accomplishments in music are many. However, she was an entertaining writer writing humorous anecdotes and stories. Many of which were published by Saturday Night Magazine in the 1940s. She also wrote her memoirs, entitled Fran's Scrapbook: A Talking Dream, in book form, which, as of 2002, remains unpublished. However, the crowning achievement of a lifetime of artistic achievement occurred in 1976 when Frances was awarded the Order of Canada. Frances Adaskin died in 2001.

Born the brother of musician Harry Adaskin, Gordon was adopted by Harry and his wife Frances at the age of five, after his father's death. Although Gordon's birth mother, Rifle, was still alive, she allowed the Adaskins to adopt Gordon, following the elder Adaskin's dying wish. Gordon moved to Vancouver in 1946 and attended University Hill Junior School. However, he would forego his final year at University Hill to attend the Vancouver Art School. Subsequently, Gordon toured Europe, paying particular attention to the museums and galleries of Italy. Returning to Canada, Adaskin went to the Alberta College of Art and taught at the University of Manitoba in the Faculty of Architecture. He remained there for over twenty-five years. His artwork was regularly exhibited at the university and in touring shows, two of which visited Vancouver, the home of his parents.
Adaskin, a visual artist, was also an interviewer and commentator on art and artists. He interviewed many of the leading Canadian artists of the mid-twentieth century, including B.C. Binning and Jack Shadbolt. In the early 1990s, Gordon moved to Gibsons, British Columbia and married Jan Busch, his second wife, in April 1997. Gordon Adaskin died in December 2001.

Harry Adaskin was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1901 and later emigrated with his family to Toronto. As a child, he learned to play the violin, and at the age of twelve, he entered the Toronto Conservatory of Music. In 1923 he and three colleagues formed the Hart House String Quartet, in which Adaskin played the second violin. Sponsored by Vincent and Alice Massey, it was the first Canadian musical quartet to make an international reputation. The quartet made many concert tours of North America and Europe, and in 1928 played at Maurice Ravel's New York debut. In 1938 he resigned from the quartet, and as a freelance musician, combined musical performance with a broadcasting career. His wife, pianist Frances Marr Adaskin, undertook several concert tours throughout Canada and the United States. For several seasons in the 1940s, Adaskin was an intermission commentator for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra's Sunday afternoon concerts, heard throughout Canada. He also hosted several CBC Radio programmes, including Musically Speaking and, later, Tuesday Night. In 1946, he became head of the new Department of Music at UBC, which he held until 1958. He continued as a professor until his retirement in 1973. His circle of friends and acquaintances included Emily Carr, members of the "Group of Seven," Vincent Massey, Frank Lloyd Wright, and other prominent artists. Adaskin received the Order of Canada in 1974 and honorary doctorates from Simon Fraser University in 1979, and UBC in 1980. He died in 1994.

AFB was born in London, England and raised in Montreal, Quebec. During WWII, he joined the Royal Canadian Armed Forces and served overseas as part of the Bomber Command. After the war, he earned a degree in Chemical Engineering from McGill University in Montreal and subsequently got a job with Cominco Ltd. (currently Teck) in Trail, British Columbia. The job at Cominco involved transfers that took AFB to Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver, where he would live until the end of his life at South Granville Park Lodge.

Italian Renaissance scholar Danilo Aguzzi-Barbagli was born in Arezzo, Italy, in 1924. After completing undergraduate work in Italy, he received his Dottore in Lettere from the University of Florence in 1949 and Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University in 1959. Aguzzi-Barbagli began his teaching career at Vassar College, New York (1955/56), before moving on to the University of Chicago (1959-1964) and then Tulane University (1964-1971). He joined the University of British Columbia's Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies as a professor in 1971. He taught courses, published and lectured in the Italian language, Italian literature (from the late Middle Ages to the seventeenth century), and comparative literature. After retiring from UBC, Aguzzi-Barbagli died in 1995. The following year an excellent collection of sixteenth and seventeenth-century books collected by Aguzzi-Barbagli were donated to the UBC Library by Hannibal Noce.

Art historian, curator, and author Patricia Ainslie was born in England and raised in South Africa. She moved to Calgary in 1977 and began work at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary in 1979, where she worked as a curator until 2006. She was instrumental in building the Glenbow's art collection and organized many of its exhibitions over the years, including Images of the Land: Canadian Block Prints 1919-1945 (which was shown internationally). She also planned exhibitions of the works of Margaret Shelton, Laurence Hyde, Cecil Buller, H.G. Glyde, and Jack Shadbolt. For her important work in printmaking, she was elected to the Print Council of America. As Vice President of Collections at Glenbow from 1993 to 2006, she worked on innovative museological projects, including deaccessioning, grading of collections and repatriation. She has published in scholarly journals and presented lectures on these topics in North America, England and Europe.

Since leaving Glenbow and relocating to the Okanagan in 2006, Ainslie has worked as an independent curator and writer. She co-authored Alberta Art and Artists, published in 2007; Ted Godwin: The Regina Five Years: 1957-1967, published in 2008; and Okanagan Artists and their Studios, published in 2013.

J.C. Ainsworth was born in Springboro, Ohio. He came to Victoria, B.C. as a miner and became an investor and businessman. Ainsworth Hot Springs was named for him.

Born in Calgary in 1913, George Philip Vernon Akrigg received a B.A. (1937) and M.A. (1940) from the University of British Columbia and his Ph.D. from the University of California (1944). He began his UBC teaching career in the Deptartment of English in 1941. The author of many scholarly articles and books, Akrigg continued his research in British Columbia history after his retirement in 1978. He died in 2001.

Helen Manning was born in Prince Rupert in 1921, grew up in Victoria and attended UBC in Vancouver for her third and fourth years. She earned a BA in 1943. At UBC, she met and married Philip Akrigg [1913-2001], who taught in the English Department. Akrigg wrote her Master's Thesis on the History and Economic Development of the Shuswap Area in 1964. The couple had three children, Marian, Daphne and Mark. They owned a lakeshore lot on Shuswap Lake at Celista and spent summers there.

The Akriggs co-authored 1001 British Columbia Place Names and two volumes of British Columbia Chronicle.