Brown, John Quentin

John Quentin Brown (Quentin), U.E.L., was born in Toronto, Ontario, to Newton H. Brown and Grace Amanda Young, U.E.L. He worked for the Fairchild Aircraft Company between May 1939 and December 1941. In 1941, he joined the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve (RCNVR). On active duty, Quentin served in Prince Rupert on HMCS French, on HMCS Malpeque and on HMCS Ontario demobilizing in December 1945. Correspondence from the War years exchanged between Quentin, his brother Robert and his sister Elizabeth is found in the book The Army's Mister Brown: A Family Trilogy 1941-1952, compiled by Elizabeth, Robert and Quentin in 1982; another brother, Harcourt Brown, was editor. After returning from War, Quentin earned a B.A. from McGill University in 1946 and a M.A. in dramatic art from the University of North Carolina in 1948. He married Myrtle Louise Stumberg of Alabama 28 August 1948 and together they had four children. Quentin worked in Ottawa at Crawley Films for 11 years. He moved to Boston and worked for the Educational Development Centre for 10 years where his main contribution was as producer of the Netsilik Eskimo film series—innovative films that focused on close portrayals of Indigenous people living in their own settings, with Inuit dialogue, and without English-speakers and talking heads. He also held a position at the University of Manitoba as Director of Instructional Media for seven years. In 1976, he moved to the Peterborough area where he was a researcher, amateur historian and writer; he was the editor of This Green and Pleasant Land: Chronicles of Cavan Township produced by the Millbrook and Cavan Historical Society in 1990. For a number of years, Quentin volunteered at Trent University Archives and was an active member of the Friends of the Bata Library at Trent.