Hazel Bird was a recognized naturalist known especially for her work in restoring the bluebird population of Northumberland County. Born in Northumberland County, Bird served in World War II where she met her husband, Tom Bird. The couple resided in Harwood, Ontario and had seven children; in the 1950s Tom Bird died due to a boating accident. In the 1960s, Hazel Bird initiated the Eastern Bluebird restoration project in Northumberland County and continued to coordinate and lead this project for almost 40 years; with the help of volunteers, “The Bluebird Lady,” as she was sometimes referred to, erected, monitored, and recorded information about the bird boxes until an accident in 2004 prevented her from doing so and resulted in the termination of the project. Bird was involved in many naturalist organizations in Ontario including the Ontario Outdoors Educator’s Council, The Willow Beach Field Naturalists and the Willow Beach Young Naturalists. She also taught classes, first as a volunteer, and then as a paid employee at the Laurie Lawson Outdoor Education Centre in Cobourg and was recognized for her work in 1996 receiving the Ontario Eastern Bluebird Society Conservation Award. In that same year it was announced by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife of Canada that the Eastern Bluebird, which had been designated as a “rare bird” since 1984, was no longer considered a species at risk. Bird died 1 February 2009. In 2012 the Nature Conservancy of Canada designated the Hazel Bird Nature Reserve in Ontario’s Rice Lake Plains in her honour.
Mossom Boyd was born in India and son of Gardiner Boyd who was Superior Officer to Colonel Blackall, came to the Bobcaygeon region in Verulam Township in 1833. Over the years, he built up a successful lumber mill, and became one of the most prominent men in the community. When he died in 1883, he was survived by two sons, Mossom M. and W.T.C. Boyd who carried on the family business.
Winnett Boyd was born on October 17, 1916 in North Wales where his father, Winnett Wornibe Boyd (of Bobcaygeon, Ontario), was serving in the First World War. His mother, Marjorie Sterne St. George, was American. In 1917, Marjorie and the children moved to Canada. Growing up, Boyd lived in Bobcaygeon, Port Hope, Bermuda and Toronto. In 1935, he began studying Mechanical Engineering at the University of Toronto's School of Practical Science. He graduated with a B.Sc. in 1939 and was offered a staff scholarship by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston. He completed one year of graduate studies at MIT as well as a Teaching Assistantship.
Between 1940 and 1943, Boyd worked in the field of engineering for the Demerara Bauxite Company in British Guiana and the Aluminum Company of Canada Limited in Montreal and Shawinigan Falls. In the fall of 1934, Boyd joined the Royal Canadian Navy, and was soon seconded to the National Research Council. In 1943 and 1944, Boyd studied jet engine design in the United Kingdom on behalf of the National Research Council. In 1944, he began working for Turbo Research Limited and was in charge of the Engine Design Section. Turbo Research Limited had been requested by the federal government to begin building a jet engine for Canada. Boyd and his team began designing the TR.3 in 1945. Soon, this project was abandoned in favour of a smaller design, the TR.4, which was later named the Chinook. In 1946, Turbo Research Limited was sold to A.V. Roe Canada. Boyd was transferred to A.V. Roe, where he continued work on the TR.4 as Chief Designer of the Gas Turbine Division and Assistant Chief Engineer. In March of 1948, the Chinook Engine was officially started for the first time. Concurrently, Boyd designed the TR.5, which was later named the Orenda Engine. He began the design of this larger engine in September of 1946, and it ran for the first time in February of 1949. Boyd resigned from A.V. Roe in 1950.
In 1951, Boyd founded Winnett Boyd Limited as a commission agency of consulting engineers. At about the same time, he started working as a Consulting Engineer for the C.D. Howe Company. At C.D. Howe, Boyd was the Chief Mechanical Engineer, and was responsible for the design of the National Research Universal (NRU) Nuclear Reactor. The NRU is currently operating at the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited plant in Chalk River, Ontario. The NRU is still considered one of the world's finest research reactors and produces a large supply of isotopes used for medical reasons.
In 1956, Boyd began designing the Daniels-Boyd Nuclear Steam Generator (D-BNSG) based on Farrington Daniels' work. After two years of promoting the D-BNSG, the project was dismissed. This led to Boyd's involvement in the nuclear controversy with his paper, "The Promise and the Prospects" in 1959.
In 1959, Boyd became the first President of Arthur D. Little's Canadian affiliate in Toronto. He worked for Arthur D. Little until his retirement in 1981, while maintaining his work at Winnett Boyd Limited. Boyd ran for the Progressive-Conservative Party in the 1972 General Election in the York-Scarborough Riding. He used this campaign to publicly discuss the ideology of his friend, Louis O. Kelso.
Boyd attended the Pugwash Conference in 1965 and 1967. The purpose of the Pugwash conferences is to discuss peaceful alternatives for science and international affairs. Boyd was a founding member of the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome, which is also concerned with world affairs.
In 1974, Boyd co-founded BMG Publishing with Kenneth McDonald and Orville Gaines. BMG published eight books pertaining to Canadian politics between 1975 and 1979.
Boyd began developing a bicycle brake in the 1970s. In the early 1990s he built bicycles called the BMG Suburban, equipped with the back-pedalling brake he invented. Boyd sells these bicycles independently.
In 1948, Boyd was the youngest-ever recipient of the University of Toronto's Engineering Alumni Medal for his accomplishments in the field of jet engine design.
In 1954, he was admitted to the grade of Associate Fellow of the Canadian Aeronautical Institute. He also received a certificate of recognition from the Corporation of Professional Engineers of Quebec in 1959.
In 1981, Boyd was inducted into the University of Toronto's Engineering Alumni Hall of Distinction.
Boyd's writings were published widely in a variety of periodicals. He also had three books published: "Personal Thoughts: A Series on the Canadian Prospect" (1966), "The National Dilemma and the Way Out" with Kenneth McDonald (1975), and "Rebel Engineer" (1998).
Winnett Boyd died in 2017 in Lindsay, Ontario.
Prentice Gilbert Downes, born in 1909, was a school teacher from Concord, Massachusetts. He often travelled to the north during the summer and one such visit is chronicled in his book "Sleeping Island: the Story of One Man's Travels in the Great Barren Lands of the Canandian North" (1943). He died in approximately 1978.
Professor Jennifer Stacey Harcourt Brown was born on 30 December 1940, in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown’s parents, Professor Harcourt Brown of Brown University and his wife Dorothy were good friends of Professor Kenneth and Martha Kidd, who were long associated with Trent University. Her father and Professor Kidd became friends through similar research interests. Their families visited one another throughout the summer months in Providence, Rhode Island, and at their summer island place near Perry Sound. Browns family visited the Kidds in Scarborough and later in Peterborough. Professor Jennifer Brown’s uncle, Quentin Brown, was a generous supporter of the Archives at Trent University and accessioned over 100 records into the collection.
Professor Brown was invited by Professor Kidd to participate in the Serpent Mounds archaeological dig at Rice Lake when she finished high school. She was a student digger for 10 weeks during the summer of 1958. She then went on to complete an archaeological dig in San Carlos, Guatemala, during the summer of 1959.
Professor Brown received a BA Honours in Ancient and Medieval Culture from Brown University in 1962. She received her AM in Classical Archaeology from Harvard University in 1963 and her PhD in Cultural and Social Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1976.
Professor Brown has published many books in which one in particular has received Honourable Mention for the Canadian Historical Association’s Sir John A. Macdonald Prize. This book is titled Strangers in Blood, published by The University of British Columbia Press.
W. Burnett was a merchant and proprietor in Cobourg, Ontario, in the early 1900's.
Robin (Roger) Allan Heineky Buxton was born in London, England on January 28, 1945, the son of Adam and Beetle Buxton. He and his wife, Judy Hazlett, lived in Markham, Ontario. A PhD physicist and Chair of the Ontario Association of Remote Sensing (OARS), Buxton was also a photographer and for a 25-year period beginning in the 1970s, hiked together with his wife into the Canadian and Greenland Arctic taking photographs. Locations visited include Ellesmere Island, Auyuittuq, Soper River, Frobisher Bay, Pond Inlet and Bylot Island, Baker Lake, Clyde River, Grise Fiord, Pangnirtung, and Greenland. Along with also being a pilot, oarsman, published writer, and skater, Buxton was involved with introducing speed skating to children of the Markham area and, in 2005, was awarded the Speed Skating Canada’s National Outstanding Administrators Award for this work. Buxton was also secretary of Markham’s Parkinson Support Group and he and Hazlett trained police forces throughout Ontario to assist those with Parkinson’s disease; for this work, they were awarded the Queen’s Jubilee Medal. Over many years, Buxton accompanied Trent Professor John Wadland on annual trips to Temagami and many of his photographs taken while on these trips are located elsewhere in Trent University Archives. He died on August 18, 2013. (Taken in part from an obituary published by Chapel Ridge Funeral Home, Markham, Ontario, and from information supplied by Professor John Wadland).
The Reverend Michael Andrews Farrar was born in England in 1814. He died in Hastings, Ontario in 1876. He was a Church of England rector in Westwood, Norwood, and Hastings, Ontario, and was an accomplished artist.
Professor Richard Dellamora was born in 1944 in the United States. He received his education at Yale, Cambridge, and Dartmouth College. Dellamora is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Trent University, where he also teaches in the graduate program in Culture, Theory, and Politics. He specializes in Victorian studies; history and theory of gender and sexuality; nineteenth- and twentieth-century cultural studies; critical theory; queer theory; Aestheticism and the Decadence; nineteenth-century comparative arts; and opera. He is the recipient of a number of awards and fellowships including fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Guggenheim Foundation. His publications include Masculine Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism (1990); Apocalyptic Overtures: Sexual Politics and the Sense of an Ending (1994); and three edited collections: Postmodern Apocalypse: Theory and Cultural Practice at the End (1995); The Work of Opera: Genre, Nationhood, and Sexual Difference (1997, co-editor with Daniel Fischlin); and Victorian Sexual Dissidence (1999). In 2004 he published Friendship's Bonds, a study of the attempt by Victorian writers (Eliot, Disraeli, Gladstone, Dickens, James and Trollope) to use the novel as a space in which to explore citizenship and political culture. In 2011, he published Radclyffe Hall: A Life in the Writing.
Bernhard Edouard Fernow was born on January 7, 1852, in Posen, Prussia. He was educated at the University of Kronigsberg, and served in the Prussian army during the Franco-Prussian War. He emigrated to the United States in 1876; and from 1886 to 1898 he was Chief of the Division of Forestry in the United States Department of Agriculture. From 1898 to 1903 he was Director of the New York State College of Forestry at Cornell University. In 1907 he became Dean of the Faculty of Forestry in the University of Toronto, and this position he retained until his retirement in 1919. He died at Toronto on February 6, 1923. In addition to many technical contributions to scientific periodicals, he was the author of Economics of Forestry, 1902; A Brief History of Forestry, 1907; and The Care of Trees in the Lawn, Park, and Street, 1910. He was an LL.D. of the University of Wisconsin and of Queen's University, Kingston. (Taken from: The Macmillan Dictionary of Canadian Biography, fourth edition. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1974.)
Duncan Graham was born October 5, 1845 in the Township of Mara, Ontario County, Canada West, to Archibald Graham and Ann McQuaig. He was the grandson of one of the early settlers, John or James Graham, natives of Scotland. He was a farmer and unmarried. He was also a Councillor, Deputy-Reeve and Reeve of Mara Township and Warden of the County of Ontario in 1896. He was elected to the House of Commons at the by-election of February 4, 1897. He was a Liberal-Independent. (Taken from: "The Parliamentary Guide, 1898-9." Winnipeg: Manitoba Free Press, 1898.)
Andrew Finnie II was born in 1820 and emigrated from Scotland to Canada with his brothers in 1840. Around 1850, Finnie settled on Lot 12 Concession 2 in South Monaghan Township. He and his wife, Jane Chambers, had thirteen children of which eleven lived to adulthood. Some moved to Manitoba and sent photographs over the years to the family who remained on the South Monaghan homestead; the homestead to this day is still in possession of Finnie heirs. Andrew Finnie II died in 1908.
John R. Fisher was the Special Projects Planner, Planning and Research, for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. He is a graduate of Trent University.
Henry Herbert Stevens (Harry) was born December 8, 1878 in Bristol, England. In 1887 he and his father, two older brothers and a sister emigrated to Peterborough, Canada. In 1894 the family moved to Vancouver in British Columbia. A short time after this Harry met and married Gertrude Glover. Together they had 5 children: 2 boys; Francis and Douglas, and 3 girls; Majorie, Sylvia and Patricia. H.H. Stevens served with the American Army in the Boxer Rebellion. When he returned to Vancouver he went into the grocery, real estate and insurance businesses. He was elected, in 1911, to the House of Commons, for Vancouver, and remained there until 1930. He represented East Kooteney from 1930 to 1940. He held the positions of Minister of Trade (Meighan administration) in 1921 and Minister of Trade and Commerce (Bennet administration) from 1930 to 1934. He was Chairman of the Price-Spreads Commission in 1934. Due to a disagreement, with Cabinet about the findings of the commission, H.H. Stevens resigned his position and established the Reconstruction Party. In 1938 he joined the Conservative Party. H.H. Stevens was President of the Vancouver Board of Trade from 1952 to 1953. He died June 14, 1973 in Vancouver, British Columbia. (Taken from: The Macmillan Dictionary of Canadian Biography. 4th ed. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1978.)
His Honour John Elly Harding, County Court Judge, was born in Beverly Township of Wentworth County in Upper Canada on May 29, 1840, son of John Harding and Jane Talbot. In 1866, Harding married Mary Stevenson of Sarnia, Ontario; Mary died in 1905 and Harding married Elizabeth Malcolmson seven years later. Harding was initiated into Masonry in St. John's Lodge No. 73 and in 1868 was elected Worshipful Master. From 1872 to 1874 he served as the District Deputy Grand Master of South Huron District. Harding was educated at the Caradoc Academy and later was privately tutored by Reverend H.B. Jessop. He read law with Richard Bayley, K.C., of London, Ontario and with Eccles and Carroll of Toronto, Ontario. Harding practiced law in St. Mary's and Strafford, Ontario until 1898, when he was appointed Junior Judge of the County Court in Victoria County, Ontario. In 1906, he was appointed Senior Court Judge of Victoria County. Judge Harding died on March 16, 1925 at the age of 84 and is interred in Lindsay, Ontario. (Taken from Who's Who and Why, Vol. 5. Vancouver: International Press Ltd, 1914.; biography further augmented from information received from Ernest Huggins, 2012).
F.W. Haultain, the son of Major General Francis Haultain, was born at Brussels, Belgium, November 7, 1821, and was educated at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, England. He was commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery, March 19, 1839, and after serving many years in Canada, retired as Lieutenant-Colonel in May 1860. He then settled at Peterborough, Upper Canada, in September 1860, and almost immediately became involved in political life. He won the general election of 1861, defeating W.S. Conger by some thirty votes. In 1863, he stood aside while Conger was acclaimed to the seat, but, upon Conger's death in 1864, re-entered the fray to defeat Charles Perry by one hundred and six votes in a rather warm campaign. Haultain died in 1882.
J. Gainey was an international organizer for the Barbers' Union at the turn of the century and held the position for many years. He was born in approximately 1875 and lived until 1937. He resided in Peterborough, Ontario.
Gerald Cantello is a graduate of the M.A. program at Trent University and a former employee (1951-1989) of C.G.E., Peterborough, Ontario. He was recruited from Britain as a machine and tool design draftsman and in 1958 had advanced to the Civilian Atomic Power Department of C.G.E.
David Carley was born in Peterborough, Ontario in 1955 and educated at Trent University and Queen's University Law School. He was editor of the Kawartha Sun newspaper from 1981-1982 and is currently an editor at Scirocco Press. He is a playwright whose work has been staged internationally. His plays include: Susanna, Sister Jude, Writing With Our Feet, Into, After You, A View From the Roof, Losing Paradise (edited), Taking Liberties, South on Bay, Vanishing Point and many others. He was formerly drama editor for the CBC show "Morningside," editor of Stereodrama, and is now senior script editor for CBC Radio Performance. See also Dave Carley's website.
Reverend C.W. Hedley was a minister who was serving in Peterborough, Ontario in 1895 and 1896. Some of his time as minister was served at the Otonabee mission.
John Carleton Grover of "Balsam Farm," Norwood, Ontario married Rachel Elmhurst in 1942. He was a civil servant employed as pay and allowance ledger keeper with the Royal Canadian Air Force Recruiting Centre in Ottawa. In World War II, Grover became a member of 432 Squadron and served as a pilot officer overseas. For his service, he received the following R.C.A.F. decorations: 1939-1943 Star; R.C.A.F. Operational Wings; and the Canadian Volunteer Service Medal and Clasp. Grover was the great grandson of the Rev. Michael Andrews Farrar of Hastings, Ontario.
Gavin Henderson was born in 1911 and raised in England. In his early twenties he visited Canada with a friend. In 1934 Henderson emigrated to Canada and worked in the Eaton's art gallery in Toronto. He attended monthly meetings of the Toronto Anglers and Hunters Association.
Eventually Gavin came to know Frank Kortright and when a conservation council was established Kortright offered Gavin the position of secretary in 1952. Working in the council enriched Gavin's circle of acquaintances in the conservation and preservation fields. As editor of the Council's Bulletin he read everything he could that pertained to conservation and preservation. Throughout all of this he pushed the concern of conservation to the masses. He wrote articles in the Ontario Naturalist, gave lectures and briefs to government agencies, speeches and seminars to espouse his cause. He left the Conservation Council in 1965.
Henderson was appointed a member on a standing committee advisory to the Minister of Lands and Forests 1959-1970. He was also director of the National and Provincial Parks Association of Canada. (Taken from: Wareki, George Michael. "Protecting Ontario's Wilderness: A History of Wilderness Conservation in Ontario, 1927-1973." Doctoral Thesis, McMaster University, 1989.) He founded the National and Provincial Parks Association of Canada and was the first executive director from 1964 to 1974. He has sat on a number of committees and associations involved in the conservation and preservation of Canada's natural resources. In 1985, he received Parks Canada's National Heritage Award. In 1989 he received the J.B. Harkin Medal from the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. His leadership helped save Quetico Park from large scale commercial lumbering and prevented massive resort development at Lake Louise. He helped to establish ten new national parks, two of which, the Nahanni and Kluane, were declared UNESCO World Heritage Sites. For this service to Canada Gavin Henderson was recognized and on October 27, 1993 he was invested into the Order of Canada.
Dorothy Choate Herriman was born in September of 1901 at Lindsay, Ontario, the daughter of William Choate Herriman (Medical Director of the Ontario Hospital, Orillia) and Nellie J. Williams (daughter of Lewis Williams of Johnstown, Pennsylvania). Her family is related to the Choates who were early pioneer settlers in the area. She spent her childhood in Kingston, Toronto and Orillia. She was educated at the Model School in Toronto, Orillia Central School, Orillia Collegiate Institute, Havergal College in Toronto and the Ontario College of Art. She served, for a time, as secretary to the Canadian Author's Association.
She was a poet and published a volume of poetry entitled Mater Silva in 1929 by McClelland and Stewart. She had numerous other poems published in newspapers and literary journals in Canada and England. Dorothy died in 1978.
Katharine Hooke (nee Grier) was born in 1932. She married Harry G. Hooke (1930-2013) in 1954 and they had two children. The family moved to Peterborough, Ontario in 1961 and spent summer vacations at nearby Stoney Lake. Harry (Hal) Hooke became director of part-time students at Trent University. Katharine Hooke served on the board of trustees of the Canadian Canoe Museum and has received Civic Awards for her volunteer work in Peterborough. She is a researcher and writer of local history and is the author of a number of publications: St. Peter’s on-the-Rock, Stony Lake, Ontario: seventy-five years of service (1989); From campsite to cottage: early Stoney Lake (1992); From Burleigh to Boschink: a community called Stony Lake (co-written with Christie Bentham, 2000); The Peterborough Club chronicle (compiled by Niklas Rishor, Danielle Allen, edited by Katharine Hooke, 2009). Hooke is the niece of the late explorer, George Mellis Douglas (1875-1963) of Northcote Farm, Lakefield, Ontario.