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.

Anne "Annie" Angus (née Anderson) was born in Diyarbakir, Asia Minor. In 1909, her father, who had been in the British Army, retired with his family to the Kettle Valley in British Columbia to grow fruit. Anderson's father was killed during World War I after rejoining the army, and soon after, many of the orchards in the Kettle Valley lost their crops. Anne Anderson eventually moved to Vancouver. In 1923, she graduated from the University of British Columbia in English Language and Literature. The following year, she married Professor Henry Forbes Angus. She was a board member of the Vancouver Children's Aid Society (1940-1941 and 1945-1952) and was a prominent member of the Community Chest and Council of Greater Vancouver, and a founding member of the Children's Foundation. From 1952 to 1958, she was a member of the local Board of School Trustees and acted as chair for the last two years. In 1951, she produced a history of the Children's Aid Society, The Children's Aid Society of Vancouver, 1901-1951

Henry Forbes Angus was born in Victoria in 1891. He studied at McGill and Oxford University before serving with the military during World War II. He joined the UBC Department of Economics in 1919 and was head of the department from 1930 to 1956. He also served as the first Dean of Graduate Studies at UBC from 1949-56.

This donor was a citizen of China and a student who participated in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. The donor wishes to remain anonymous.

Thomas Michael Apsey graduated from the University of British Columbia’s Forestry department in 1961. After graduating, Apsey worked for the Department of Industrial Development, Trade and Commerce. Between the years 1963-1978 Apsey occupied positions at MacMillan Bloedel Limited, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the Council of Forest Industries of British Columbia, and F.L.C Reed and Associates. In 1978, Apsey became the Deputy Minister of Forests for British Columbia a position he held until 1984. While Deputy Minister, Apsey also served as the Vice-Chairman of the British Columbia Deputy Ministers’ committee on Economic Development. In 1984, Apsey left his post as Deputy Minister and took on the role of President and Chief Executive Officer of the Council of Forest Industries of British Columbia, a position he held until his retirement in 1998. In retirement, Apsey remains an active member of the forest industry community, attending numerous speaking engagements and sitting on committees for the Forest History Association of B.C. and the B.C. Forest Service Centeneray Society.
Apsey has been awarded several honours including: the Rielle Thomson Award, the Chevalier de l’Ordre du Merite Agricole from the Government of France, and a Certificate of Appreciation from the Government of Canada. In 2002 Apsey was appointed as a Member of the Order of Canada.

Kenneth Argue was a distinguished member of UBC's Faculty of Education and Department of University Extension from 1946 to 1974, specializing in educational philosophy and intellectual history. Born in Vegreville, Alberta, in 1906, he received a BA from the University of Alberta in 1931, a teacher's certificate the following year, an MA from Oxford in 1936, and a D.Ed. from Columbia University in 1940. Before arriving at UBC, Argue held several teaching positions (elementary, secondary, and post-secondary) in Canada and the United States. He also served several times as a consultant on education matters, notably in commissions of inquiry into the financing of education in Canada (1945) and the reorganization of the education system in Newfoundland (1947-49). He wrote a textbook, The Development of Education Theory, published in 1951, and was instrumental in developing UBC's B.Ed. Curriculum. In addition to his regular teaching duties, he taught summer courses on the history of education. He served as Director of Summer Session from 1954 to 1964. He also served with several education commissions and associations. Although he officially retired in 1971 and was named Professor Emeritus of Education in 1972, he continued to work as a sessional lecturer until 1974. Argue died in 1994.

Tremaine Arkley started playing croquet in the 1980’s and was on the U.S. National Croquet Team. He is an avid collector of material related to the sport. He and his wife Gail live in Oregon.

Dr. Jeannette Armstrong (b.1948) was born and grew up on the Penticton Indian Reserve. In 1978 she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Victoria in creative writing, and in 2009 she earned a Ph.D in Indigenous Environmental Ethics from the University of Greifswald in Germany. She is a Syilx elder, a fluent speaker of Nsyilxcn, as well as an author and professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus. She is a member of the Board of Directors of En’owkin Centre.

William McColl Armstrong was born in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1915 and graduated in Applied Science from the University of Toronto in 1937. Before becoming Dean of Applied Science at UBC, he was the head of the Department of Metallurgy for two years. After ten years in business with the Steel Company of Canada and the Ontario Research Foundation, he was appointed Associate Professor of Metallurgy at UBC in 1946. Between 1964 and 1974, he held the Head of the Department of Metallurgy, Dean of Applied Science, and Deputy President. In 1974, Armstrong resigned his position at UBC to become the first Chairman of the Universities Council of B.C. and was later appointed Executive Director of the Research Secretariat.
He played a vital role in the formation of TRIUMF, chaired the board of directors of the Tri-Nation body to construct a 144-inch telescope on the island of Hawaii, and served as a Director of WESTAR. His honours included an Honorary Doctor of Science from UBC in 1975 and his appointment as Member of the Order of Canada in 1982. Armstrong assumed leadership positions in the Engineering profession, the university community, and this province's educational system. He played an essential role as a member of Canada's Science Council, the National Research Council, and the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. He was committed to the promotion of science and research in the nation's interest. He approached every task as a challenge and an opportunity to improve the quality of life for all Canadians. He died on July 6, 1990.

Stefan Arnason, son of Arni Jonatansson and Gudrun Jonsdottir, was born August 17, 1882 at Fagriskogur in Eyja Fjordur, Iceland. The eldest of 12 children, he was educated at the Gagnfraedaskoli at Mofurvollum in 1900. He immigrated to Canada in 1904 and spent time in Tantallon, Saskatchewan and Winnipeg, Manitoba, before homesteading in Pine Valley (Piney), Manitoba in 1908. He married Gudrun “Sigurbjorg” Einarsdottir (born 1889, Hallson, North Dakota) in 1911, who had settled in the Pine Valley area with her parents.
The Arnasons took over Sigurbjorg’s father’s farm at Piney and had 12 children. Amongst the first settlers in the area, they were active in the community, helping build the first high school and hall. Stefan Arnason was on the school board, and worked for the municipality. The Arnason family were forced to move to the Vancouver area during the depression due to lack of employment opportunities. They moved thirteen family members (the eldest daughter stayed in the Piney area for 2 more years) in a one and a half ton Dodge truck to Burnaby, in April-May 1937.
Stefan Arnason passed away in 1956.
Sources:
Biographical information provided by Richard Arnason. Available for consultation in the accession file

Caroline Astell was educated at the University of British Columbia (BSc 1964, MSc 1966, Ph.D. 1970), returned to teach there, and received tenure in July 1985. The fonds relates to her time as a Ph.D. student in the lab and her work with Nobel prize winner Michael Smith. Astell, a member of many scholarly societies, including the American Society of Microbiology and the American Society for Virology, won the Killam Research Award in 1985. In addition, Astell has served on various organizations on campus, including the Graduate Admissions Committee and the Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship Committee. Astell has studied the replication of parvoviruses since the late 1970s and determined the complete sequence of the first autonomous virus in 1982, later extending the research to include the human B19 parvovirus, a newly recognized pathogen. She has published various works, including a number co-authored with Michael Smith, including Thermal elution of complementary sequences of nucleic acids on cellulose columns with covalently attached oligonucleotides of known length and sequence (1972).

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.

AU Ming Shu (commonly known as AU Ming Lee) was born in China in 1911. He arrived in Newfoundland in 1938, paying the $300 head tax on Chinese entry.

His father was living and working in Boston, Massachusetts, however, its country's Chinese Exclusion Act prevented Ming Lee from joining him.

Ming Lee settled on Bell Island, a small island located off the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland in Conception Bay. There he owned a convenience store, then later a restaurant.

He had left behind in China a wife and a young daughter named Chew (b. 1937) who was born shortly before he left. It would be almost eight years before he returned to China for a visit and fathered his second child, another girl named Sherry (b. 1949).

The family would not reunite until the mid 1950s, after Newfoundland had joined Canada and the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed. In 1955, Ming Lee’s wife and daughter Sherry arrived in Canada; their eldest daughter Chew stayed in Hong Kong to marry and immigrate to Boston in the early 1960s.

Ming Lee and his wife would have two more children, both born in Newfoundland: Janie (b. 1956) and Gary (b.1957). He would eventually live in the capital of Newfoundland, St. John’s.

His daughter Janie Au fondly recalls her father’s generosity towards children. “A memory I have of my father occurred when I was about ten years old, I used to go to a neighbours to play during the summer. They had a farm and about 12 kids so I liked to go there since was always another kid to play with. One day I saw my father coming up the road towards us and I thought he was coming to bring me home. But no, he had a box of popsicles with him (we used to sell them in our store) and he started to give all the kids popsicles. I found out later that he used to do this often.”

Ming Lee passed away in 1999.

AUE Heam Cho was born in China on October 15, 1920. He arrived in St. John's, Newfoundland in 1934 at 13 years old, sponsored by his uncle, AUE Sum, to join him. He would be known in Canada as Hamme.

Hamme was the eldest child in his family. His parents and siblings stayed behind in China to work the land. Times were hard for the family; it was fortunate that Hamme was sent out of China as he ended up being the only child to survive.

In St. John’s, Hamme helped his uncle Sum at his laundry business. By 1942, Hamme ran a restaurant on Water Street. He returned to China to marry on February 21, 1947. The arranged marriage would result in seven children (three sons and four daughters).

From 1949 to 1952, Hamme moved around quite a bit. Besides St. John’s, NL; he spent time in Trenton, ON; Killarney, MB; and Winnipeg, MB.

His wife and oldest son joined him in Winnipeg in 1952. In 1954, the couple returned to Newfoundland and settled on Bell Island, opening a snack bar/confectionary store on Main Street known as Hamme’s Store. In 1960, he bought a restaurant and downsized the store.

In the mid-1960s, he went to Grand Falls for work, while his family stayed at Bell Island.

By 1969, his entire family moved back to St. John’s where he ran the restaurant at Ashton Motel until 1972. They also opened the Pleasant Street Restaurant where his family lived until 1989. His wife ran the Pleasant Street Restaurant while he ran the Ashton Motel Restaurant. All their children helped out in both restaurants.

His eldest daughter, Rita, recalls, “My most prominent memory of Dad was how hard he had to work to support his family of 7 children. Therefore, we all had to do our share to support each other… [A]t times Dad would call for my help and I would have to go, hoping that it would not be dark before I would arrive there. The main reason for my assistance was to have an extra pair of eyes to watch the cash register and the restaurant’s inventory so that nothing would get stolen or vandalized while Dad would go out to board up the large windows for the night… [W]e were often taunted by the neighbourhood boys… who would often throw tomatoes or rotten eggs when Dad would go out to board up the windows. The extra pair of eyes would help to identify the trouble-makers. If boarding up the windows was not done, inevitably the windows would be trashed during the night...”

From 1972-1991, Hamme owned and operated the Mei Mei Restaurant at the Goulds, a rural neighbourhood within the outskirts of St. John’s proper. And between 1991-1997, he helped out at his oldest son’s restaurants, the Hot Shoppe and New Moon Restaurant.

Over this period, Hamme and his wife made many long visits to Oakville, Ontario where many of their children lived.

Hamme's wife helped found the present-day Chinese Association of Newfoundland Labrador (CANL). The couple hosted families who were immigrating or transitioning into their new lives in NL.

Hamme Chow Aue passed away on July 13, 2001.

AUE Sum (known as Sam to his customers) was born in China on December 19, 1894. He came from [開平 Hoiping / Kaiping], a coastal town in the province of Guangdong.

Sum landed in Port aux Basque, Newfoundland in July 1921 and paid its head tax. He may have arrived in Canada previously at a different port of entry, possibly working on the railway in British Columbia.

In 1934, he sponsored his 13-year-old nephew, Hamme Chow Aue (aka Oue Heam Choo) to live with him in St. John’s. Sum arranged for a Mr. Hong to escort Hamme, as his nephew was too young to travel alone.

Sum was a “married bachelor”; he wed in China at a young age but never returned to visit his wife and have children. Sum lived the life of a single man in Canada.

In St. John’s, Sum earned a living running a laundry, perhaps with other business partners. There were workers doing different jobs, including deliveries. But Sum stayed at the laundry serving customers, wrapping laundry in brown paper, and other shop tasks.

One grandniece, Marie, recalls, “As a child, I remember Sum Aue as a very short man with a bald head who worked very hard, non-stop at the laundry. He was always very stoic. He always spoke to us in a matter-of-fact tone, and only occasionally smiled with a twinkle in his eye.”

Another grandniece, Rita, recalls, “[M]y grand-uncle would walk to the dock of St. John’s harbour near Water Street where the local fishermen were selling their daily catch and processing it with cod heads heaping in piles below the dock. [He] would buy a large cod and… drag it home with its tail just barely touching the ground. We would have poached cod with stewed tomatoes, vegetables and rice that afternoon. Then at times, my grand-uncle would give me a nickel to buy a bag of chips or a dime to buy a bottle of coke at the convenience store next door.”

In 1969, upon closing and selling the laundry, he was invited to move in with his nephew’s family on Pleasant Street. Having lived a life as a bachelor, he declined to give up that lifestyle. He continued to live on 5 Bates Hill, known as the Tai Mei Club (a.k.a. the Aue/Au/Oue/Ou clan house). Anyone who was an Aue/Au/Oue/Ou could stay there freely and would enjoy the support of the clan. There, he lived with other bachelors, and enjoyed playing mah jong and sharing news and stories from his fellow clan relatives and friends.

Sum Aue passed away on August 26, 1980.

Bill Backman is a retired forester who worked for Bloedel, Stewart and Welch. He has also served as president of the B.C. Forest History Association.