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Greta Kraus was a harpsichordist, pianist accompanist, and teacher. Born in Vienna on August 3, 1907, she studied at the Vienna Academy of Music, from where she received her Music Teacher's Diploma (1930). After graduation, her teachers included Hans Weisse (1924-1931) and Heinrich Schenker (1931-1934).

In 1938, Kraus immigrated to Hawkesbury, Ontario, before moving to Toronto in 1939 to teach at Havergal College. From 1943 to 1969, she taught at the Toronto Conservatory of Music (renamed the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto in 1947), and then at the University of Toronto (1963-1976, part time after 1976). She coached lieder and taught harpsichord, accompanying, and Baroque performance practice. She was also the director of Collegium Musicum (Toronto).

Kraus was a prominent harpsichord player, known for her performances of Bach and twentieth-century composers. She performed as a soloist and in collaboration with many musicians, including Arnold Walter, Robert Aitken (in the Aitken Kraus Duo, 1965-1986), Lois Marshall, and Sir Ernest MacMillan (in performances of the Messiah, St. Matthew Passion, St. John Passion, and Mass in B Minor, 1942-1956). In 1958, she founded the Toronto Baroque Ensemble (1958-1963) with Elizabeth Benson Guy, soprano; Nicholas Fiore, flute; Donald Whitton, cello; and Corol McCartney, violin.

Kraus received many awards for her contributions to music performance and education, including a citation from the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (1973); Outstanding Woman of the Province of Ontario (1975); Toronto Arts Award (1990); the Order of Ontario (1991); and, the Order of Canada (1992).

She was married to chemist Erwin Dentay.

Maria Elena Diaz Barriga de Valdés (27 Feb. 1934 – 23 Mar. 2023) was a researcher, professor, language instructor, translator, and administrator who worked at multiple North American institutions including the University of Toronto, York University, and the University of Illinois. Her academic interests covered comparative literature and key figures such as Miguel de Unamuno and Gabriel García Márquez, projects she often worked on collaboratively with her husband, Mario Valdés. Her own research and publishing concentrated on women writers of Latin America, feminist and post-colonial literary theory, and testimonial literature.

De Valdés was born in Mexico City. She received both her M.A. (1973) and PhD (1976) from the University of Toronto. Her thesis was entitled, "A conceptual analysis of the domain of Spanish studies and its application in the curriculum of university education in Ontario". Both prior to and following the receipt of her doctorate, she worked in language acquisition, both teaching Spanish language (York University and Middlebury College) and serving as Director of the Bilingual Multicultural Center at the University of Illinois.

De Valdés actively published articles, edited publications, and presented her work through the 1970s to the 2000s. She served as the editorial assistant for Revista Candiense de Estudios Hispanicos from the journal’s founding in 1976 until 1992. She co-authored and edited six books including An Unamuno Source Book (1973), Comparative and critical edition of “San Manuel Bueno, mártir” (1974), and New Visions of Creation: Feminist Innovations in Literary Theory (1993). In 1998, de Valdés authored The Shattered Mirror: Representations of Women in Mexican Literature.

Returning to Toronto from Chicago in 1979, de Valdés accepted another administrative role at UofT’s School of Graduate Studies (1980 – 1988), despite her interest in continuing her academic research full-time . In 1988, she returned to her research, studying the development of a feminist genre in Latin America, and in the following years took on various research positions. Beginning in 1995, she served as the Administrative Director for the SSHRC-funded Literary History Project and, in 2002, was a Fellow at the Latin American Studies Program of Cornell University.

Judith Teichman is a professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto Scarborough, and with the Munk School of Global Affairs. Her research interests focus largely on the politics of economic policy making in Mexico, Argentina and Chile. Teichman was born 19 July 1947 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She began her undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto in 1965, obtaining her B.A. in Political Science in 1969, her M.A. in Political Science in 1971, and her Ph.D. in Political Science in 1978.

Over the course of her career, she has held numerous academic positions within the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (Department of Educational Administration), as a lecturer at Trent University (Comparative Development Studies and Department of Political Studies), an instructor at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University, Politics Department), Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo (Department of Political Science), and Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto’s Scarborough and St. George campuses.

Her main areas of research include Latin American politics; especially the politics of market reform in the Southern cone and Mexico. She is the author of several books, notably Social Democracy in the Global Periphery: Origins, Challenges, Prospects (Cambridge University Press, 2007), The Politics of Freeing Markets in Latin America (University of North Carolina Press, 2001), Privatization and Political Change in Mexico (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996), and Policymaking in Mexico: From Boom to Crisis (Allen and Unwin, 1988).

In addition to her academic duties, Professor Teichman has been President of the Canadian Council of Area Studies, Learned Societies (CLASLS), an Executive Board Member with the Canadian Association of Latin and American and Caribbean Studies, an Advisory Board Member with the Canadian Association for Mexican Studies, and former editor of the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

Teichman retired from the University of Toronto in 2012 and continues to live and work in Toronto.

Ian Cronyn Parker (1945-2017) was a political economist and professor at the University of Toronto, born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. His work centred on Marxist economics and the influence of communication media on economic development, and he was closely affiliated with the Harold Innis school of thought.

After leaving Winnipeg, Parker received a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from the University of Waterloo before attending the University of Toronto, where he received a Master of Economics and English in 1968. During this degree, his studies focused on the work of seventeenth-century English poet Andrew Marvell. As a volunteer with Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO), he worked with the National Development Corporation of Tanzania for three years. He then pursued a PhD in Economics at Yale, submitting of his thesis Studies in the Economics of Communication in 1977. Parker began teaching in the Economics Department at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) campus shortly thereafter in 1981, where he continued until his retirement in 2016. He regularly taught courses on the history of economic theory and thought, and on Marxist economics. Parker has stated that he considered teaching his “true calling” (“Ian Cronyn Parker.” Dignity Memorial. March 2017).

Parker authored numerous publications as both a student and a professor, ranging from reports for the Government of Manitoba, conducted during his master’s degree at U of T, to several editions of the textbook Microeconomics and Behaviour in the 2010s. Much of his work focused on specific research interests such as Keynes's theory of probability in relation to economics, the economics of the Internet, and implications of fixed capital for the economics of communications systems. Later in his career, from the early 2000s until his retirement, he returned to writing predominantly about Andrew Marvell and early modern poetry.

Parker had been a student and friend of William Thomas James Easterbrook, an influential chairman of the U of T Department of Political Economy and protegé of Harold Innis. Prior to his passing, Easterbrook had been working on a book, North American Patterns of Growth and Development: A Continental Approach. Parker adopted Easterbrook’s manuscript and acted as editor to publish this project posthumously in 1990.

The ways in which the creators of archival records identify themselves and are identified by others is a key contextual aspect of understanding their perspectives and approach. Ian C. Parker identified as a Caucasian, heterosexual man of Scottish and English descent. This information has been sourced from Parker’s partner.

Linda R. Ziegler is an elementary school teacher and amateur paper marbler and calligrapher from Pennsylvania, USA. She developed an interest in paper marbling in the early 1980s, which lead her to attend seminars, symposiums, talks, and classes by notable artists such as Karli Frigge, Christopher Weimann, Richard Wolfe, Eileen Canning, Don Guyot, Nedim Sönmez, and Iris Nevins. She also met and corresponded with other marblers, book artists, printers, bookbinders, and booksellers and visited antiquarian book fairs and exhibits of marbled paper at libraries and museums throughout America. Between 1983 and 1996, Ziegler kept scrapbooks that documented these activities and her marbling and calligraphy research.

Russell Smith was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and grew up in Halifax, Canada. He began his career as a writer in Toronto after studying at universities in France and Canada.

His first novel, How Insensitive, was published in 1994 and nominated for the Governor General's Award, the Trillium Award, and the Chapters/Books In Canada First Novel Award, and became a bestseller in Canada. He is also the author of the novel Noise (1998), an illustrated fable, The Princess and the Whiskheads (2002), and story collection, Young Men (2011).

He has written for The New York Review of Books, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, NOW, and many other publications. He has also appeared on television and radio programs, including serving as the host of CBC Radio One program “And Sometimes Y.’

He has taught creative writing in the MFA in Creative Writing program at the University of Guelph, and at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies. Several of his former students have published novels and memoirs. He has been writer-in-residence at the Toronto Reference Library and at Berton House in Dawson City, Yukon.

He is currently an acquiring editor of fiction and non-fiction at Dundurn Press.

Margaret Adele Fairley (née Keeling) was an activist, author, editor, and member of the Communist Party of Canada and the Labor-Progressive Party. She was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England on 20 November 1885. She attended St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, and graduated with first class honours in English; however, she was not awarded a degree because Oxford did not grant degrees to women at that time. She subsequently worked as a tutor in English at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford. While at St. Hilda’s, she met Henry Marshall Tory, president of the University of Alberta. Tory invited Fairley to be the newly established university's first dean of women and offered her a B.A. for the work she had completed at Oxford. She moved to Edmonton in 1912, where she met Barker Fairley, a professor of German studies. They married in Edmonton in 1914 and subsequently moved to Toronto. The Fairleys had five children together.

Margaret Fairley edited several publications including Spirit of Canadian Democracy (1945), The Selected Writings of William Lyon Mackenzie (1960), Highways to Peace: A Challenge to Youth (1961). She also edited a quarterly magazine called New Frontiers from 1952 to 1956. At the time of her death, Fairley was working on a book titled ‘With Our Own Hands,’ which sought to document the creative contributions of settlers to Canadian culture.

In the 1950s Fairley participated in two Canadian cultural delegations. In the summer of 1954, Fairley led a delegation of Canadians on a cultural tour of Hungary, Poland, and Romania. The tour was organized by New Frontiers and was led by Fairley in her role as editor. A 1959 delegation to the People’s Republic of China included Fairley, archeologists Paul Sweetman and Frank Ridley, and two other Canadians. As guests of the Republic, they visited numerous historical and archaeological sites.

Towards the end of her life Fairley was instrumental in the creation of a park at Brunswick and Ulster in Toronto’s Sussex-Ulster neighbourhood (now Harbord Village). Fairley began petitioning the city for a park in 1965. Following her death in 1968, friends and neighbours petitioned the city to name the park the “Margaret Fairley Park.” The park was officially dedicated to her on 23 June 1972 and a bronze bust of Fairley was installed at the park in 1973.

References
• James Doyle, “The Canadian Worker Poet: the Life and Writings of Joe Wallace,” Canadian Poetry, Volume 35 (Fall/Winter 1994). https://canadianpoetry.org/volumes/vol35/doyle.html
• June Ridley and Doris Ridley, “Frank Ridley, 1904-1985,” Arch Notes 89-3 (May/June 1985), https://ontarioarchaeology.org/wp-content/uploads/an1985-03.pdf
• Canada’s Early Women Writers. Margaret Adele Fairley. Canada’s Early Women Writers, 18 May 2018.https://cwrc.ca/islandora/object/ceww%3A30d7deab-101f-4778-bb20-a0645e4654a4

Mario James Valdés San Martín (January 28, 1934 - April 26, 2020) was Professor Emeritus at UofT’s Centre for Comparative Literature and a recognized specialist in hermeneutics, the writing of Miguel de Unamuno, Paul Ricoeur, and comparative literary history. As one of the initial faculty members of the Programme in Comparative Literature, Valdés later advocated for the creation of a research centre, the Centre for Comparative Literature, and became its first director in 1978.

Prof. Valdés was of Mexican descent, born in Chicago in 1934. Following studies in history, law, philology, and philosophy, he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, Chicago in 1962. His dissertation, Death in the Literature of Unamuno, was published the following year and quickly established Valdés as an authority on Unamuno’s writing.

In 1963, Valdés accepted a position at the University of Toronto as an Assistant Professor of Spanish Literature. He joined Northrop Frye in 1969 for the foundational year of the University’s graduate programme in comparative literature. Valdés continued at UofT until 1976, leaving briefly for Columbia University (1967) and Odense University in Denmark (1973) in visiting professor positions. He then returned to Chicago to become the Head of the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at the University of Illinois (1976 - 1978).

During these early years of Valdés’ academic career, he continued his research on Unamuno. In the late 1960s, Prof. Valdés and his wife, María Elena de Valdés, worked with the author’s family to secretly photocopy his papers, which were restricted from public access under Spain’s Franco government. The copies were then smuggled out of the country and sent to Canada to be made available at UofT’s Fisher Rare Book Library. In 1973, the couple co-authored and published An Unamuno Source Book.

Prof. Valdés returned to UofT in 1978 as the first Director of the Centre for Comparative Literature, a condition of his acceptance being the development of the Programme in Comparative Literature into a broader research centre. During his time at the Centre (1978 – 1983), he invited major figures to present and provide guest lectures. Invited theorists included Paul Ricoeur, Hans-Robert Jauss, Wolfgang Iser, Frederic Jameson, Tzvetan Todorov, and Gérard Genette. Similarly, colleagues note how his active participation in and organizing of international conferences developed the reputation of the Centre1, alongside the continued dedication to mentoring students and colleagues2.

While Valdés maintained his interest in Unamuno throughout his career, his writing covered a broad range of topics within comparative literature. He authored Shadows in the Cave (1982), Phenomenological Hermeneutics and the Study of Literature (1987), World-Making: The Literary Truth-Claim and the Interpretation of Texts (1992), La Interpretación Abierta: Introducción a la Hermenéutica Literaria Contemporánea (1995) Hermeneutics of Poetic Sense (1998), and Cultural Hermeneutics (2016).

During the 1990s, Valdés spearheaded multiple collaborative projects through the SSHRC-funded Literary History Project, where María Elena de Valdés also served as Research and Administrative Director.

Prof. Valdés actively participated in a variety of professional associations, including serving as President of the Modern Language Association (1991), founding editor of the Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos (1976-92), and as a long-standing member of the Editorial Board of the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, amongst others. His continued work with associations, such as the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA), included organizing many conferences and academic gatherings. In 1986, Valdés was recognized as Miembro Correspondiente de la Academia Mexicana and in 1983, he was elected as a member of the Royal Society of Canada.

Prof. Valdés retired from the University of Toronto in 1999, however continued his work publishing, presenting, and mentoring colleagues and students alike. He died in April 2020.

References:

• Linda Hutcheon Remembers Mario J. Valdes: https://complit.utoronto.ca/mario-j-valdes/
• In Memoriam: Professor Mario J. Valdés: https://complit.utoronto.ca/in-memoriam-professor-mario-j-valdes/
• In memoriam: Mario J. Valdés, 1934–2020: https://www.ailc-icla.org/in-memoriam-mario-j-valdes-1934-2020/

In 1967, Professor Howard Rapson of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, University of Toronto, outlined the Effluent-Free Mill (EFM) and Salt Recovery Process (SRP). This technology aimed to facilitate the elimination of effluent from bleached kraft pulp mills by using the wastewater from pulp bleaching in the chemical recovery cycle whereby the organics would be destroyed in the kraft recovery boiler and spent bleaching chemical (sodium chloride) would be removed from the collected recovery boiler flue gas dust.

In recognition of the commercial potential of the EFM and SRP technology, a joint venture company, ERCO Envirotech Ltd., was formed in 1972 between ERCO, a Canadian chemical company supplying chemicals and equipment for pulp bleaching and Envirotech, an American company manufacturing equipment suitable for the SRP. In 1974, ERCO Envirotech Ltd. presented a proposal to Great Lakes Paper Company in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Great Lakes agreed to the proposal and integration of EFM and SRP technology into the design of the mill began.

Professor Douglas W. Reeve of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry at the University of Toronto collaborated with ERCO Envirotech Ltd. and the Great Lakes Paper Company as the lead process engineer for the EFM and SRP during the process pilot plant development, mill design, mill construction and the extended start up. The mill, also referred to as Closed Cycle Mill, started up in late 1976 and the SRP in March of 1977. The Closed Cycle Mill faced many operational challenges in bleaching, in bleach plant effluent recovery, in salt recovery and in the recovery boiler. Ultimately, owing to poor environmental performance, high costs, and poor reliability, Closed Cycle operation was shutdown.

Dr. Reeve is Professor Emeritus in the University of Toronto, Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry. He served as Department Chair from 2001 until 2011 and as the founding Director of the Troost Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering (Troost ILead) from 2010 until 2018. He was also the founding Director of the University of Toronto Pulp & Paper Centre serving from 1987 until 2001.

Dr. Shahrzad Mojab (June 27, 1954/6 Tir 1334) is an Iranian scholar, activist, and educator who held positions at the Department of Leadership, Higher, and Adult Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) and the Women and Gender Studies Institute (WGSI) at the University of Toronto. She served as former Director of WGSI (2003 – 2008, 2022), Director of Studies in Equity and Solidarity at New College (2018 – 2021), and Interim Principal of New College (2009 – 2010).

Dr. Mojab’s scholarship encompasses diverse subjects including educational policy, global perspectives in adult education, gender relations in context of wars and violence, political resistance and persecution, diaspora studies and transnationalism, Kurdish resistance movements, Marxist feminism, and anti-racist pedagogy. Her work can be grouped into three inter-related areas: (1) women and revolutionary social movements in the Middle East, (2) the global politics of education and learning, and (3) student movements and the state-university relations in Iran.

Born in Shiraz, Iran, Dr. Mojab began her academic career training as a teacher (Teacher Training Certificate, 1974) and translator (B.A., 1977) in Tehran. In 1979, she received her Master of Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in both Comparative International Education and Administration in Higher and Continuing Education. Returning to Iran in 1979, Mojab spent the following four years being involved in the post-revolution women’s movement, leftist activism, and the Kurdish nationalist autonomous struggle, while also serving as a Lecturer at the National University of Iran (1979 – 1980). By 1983, Dr. Mojab was forced into exile and returned to the United States and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to pursue her PhD, completing her dissertation, The State and University: The ‘Islamic Cultural Revolution’ in the Institutions of Higher Education of Iran, 1980-1987 in 1991.

Dr. Mojab held academic positions in both Ontario and Quebec, including at the University of Windsor (1990-1993), Concordia University (1993-1996), before accepting a faculty position at OISE’s Department of Adult Education and Counselling Psychology (now the Department of Leadership, Higher, and Adult Education, LHAE) in 1996. Her tenure at the University of Toronto now spans multiple decades and departments, including WGSI and LHAE. In addition to her teaching and research roles, she has undertaken significant senior administrative responsibilities at WGSI and New College. Her directorship at WGSI was crucial for establishing the institute as an internationally recognized, self-governing centre for excellence in feminist research and teaching. She was able to raise funds to develop both the Shahidian Endowment and Heydarian Award for Social Justice. During this time, she was a five-time recipient of the Dean’s Award for Merit from the Faculty of Arts and Science, for outstanding contributions to scholarship, teaching, and service. She also contributed to many committees within the university including OISE Council (2019), UofT’s Equity Advisory Board (2005 -) and Status of Women Advisory Council (2001), and the University of Toronto Faculty Association Executive (2001), among numerous others.

From 1986 to1993, Dr. Mojab was involved in the implementation of the Federal Government Employment Equity Act in Canadian universities and served on five professional organizations: the Council of Ontario Universities, the Ontario Confederation of Universities Faculty Associations, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, the Ontario Employment Equity Network, and the Canadian Employment Equity Network. In the course of this work, she developed a comparative perspective on state-education relations in the West and in the Middle East, later analyzing some of these relationships in her research project Quebec Universities and the Challenges of Diversity (funded by Multiculturalism Citizenship Canada) and Immigrant Women and Adult Education (Connaught Fund, University of Toronto).

Dr. Mojab’s scholarship in educational policy studies, women’s studies, and comparative and international education is interdisciplinary and geographically located throughout the Middle East, Europe, and Canada. In blending transnationality and interdisciplinarity, she has contributed to building research networks intended to transcend teaching approaches, initiate rigorous methodologies, and diversify knowledge mobilization. A notable instance of such effort is her participation in the SSHRC-funded Women in Conflict Zones Network (WICZNET) and The Kurdish Women’s Studies Network (now the Kurdish Gender Studies Network-KGSN) a multi-ethnic, inter-regional, and transnational network of researchers and activists.

A prolific author and editor, Dr. Mojab’s publications span a broad range of topics though broadly call for greater understanding of the importance of education as a critical tool for social mobility, political participation, justice, equity, and democracy. She challenges relationships between states, capitalism, and education, noting that education alone cannot reshape the unequal division of power. Titles include Kurdish Women Through History, Culture and Politics (editor, 2024); Women of Kurdistan: A Historical and Bibliographical Study (co-authored with Amir Hassanpour, 2021); Revolutionary Learning: Marxism, Feminism and Knowledge (co-authored with Sara Carpenter, 2017); Women of a Non-State Nation: The Kurds (editor, 2001).

Similarly, her interdisciplinary interests are represented through her membership on variety of editorial boards, including Teresa L. Ebert and Mas’ud Zavarzadeh Books in Marxist Social and Cultural Theory, Routledge (2021-); Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures (2000-); Convergence, Journal of International Council of Adult Education, (1999-2002); Resources for Feminist Research (1999-2003); and Nimeye Digar, Persian Language Feminist Journal (1992-1999).

While at the University of Toronto, Dr. Mojab’s work has focused on questions of war violence and learning, raising awareness of women political prisoners in the Middle East through writing, conferences, and exhibitions. This work is archived and curated on the website of The Art of Resistance in the Middle East. In 2023, she created and curated The Archive of Defiance, an aesthetically inspired resource for transnational feminist teaching, research, and activism.

Components of Dr. Mojab’s research findings have also been incorporated into artistic works as a method to translate her research into accessible formats and further engage the social and political ideas expressed. Her collaborative work with Shahrzad Arshadi, feminist photographer and filmmaker, has included the documentaries Samjana: Memoirs and Resistance (2007) and Dancing for Change: Kurdish Women of Iran (2015). Similarly, the animation, Marx & I (writer and narrator, 2022) and dance performances Behind the Stained Walls (choreographed and performed by Roshanak Jaberi, 2010) and No Woman’s Land (in collaboration with Dr. Doris Rajan and Roshanak Jaberi, 2019) are examples of the creative partnerships that Dr. Mojab pursues in her work.

Dr. Mojab has served in numerous executive positions, including President of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education, Member at Large of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, and Chair of the Status of Women Committee in the University of Toronto Faculty Association. Dr. Mojab was awarded the Royal Society of Canada Prize in Gender Studies (2010) and the CASAE/ACÉÉA Lifetime Achievement Award (2020), among other honours in recognition of her numerous academic achievements. Readers are encouraged to reference Dr. Mojab’s CV (B2024-0029_df002 in Series 1: Personal and biographical) for a full listing of awards, publications, grant funding, and courses).

Dr. Mojab’s lifetime intellectual and political partner was Professor Amir Hassanpour (1943 – 2017), a Kurdish-Iranian Marxist scholar and a professor at the Department of Middle and Near Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto.

John Brownell taught percussion and music education at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music (1984-2025).

Frank Harbutt was born on October 22, 1892, in Leicestershire, England. At the age of 15, he started to work in the optical glass trade and he would stay for 7 years until he joined the army to fight in World War 1. When he returned from the war in 1918 he married Lilian (1894-1972). In 1919 they moved to Spain where Frank worked in an import-export business but they soon left for the United States and immigrated to Rochester, New York where Frank worked for 10 years doing estate work and landscaping. Frank, Lilian and their young daughter Joyce then moved to Alliston, Ontario in 1929 as Lilian had an aunt living in the area. Frank established a greenhouse and worked landscaping jobs for farmers, although many farmers at the time did not have lots of work for him. In 1946 Frank and Lilian moved to the Highland Creek Valley when Mr. E.L. McLean offered him a job as a landscape gardener for the McLean estate. Frank was given free housing in the gardener’s cottage east of the Miller Lash House and a starting salary of $150 per month. Through his work he cared for a variety of different plants, built a swimming pool and pool house, and built a rock wall and gate posts at the entrance to the driveway to the house.

When Mr. McLean sold this property to the University of Toronto in 1963, Harbutt continued to work on the grounds as a gardener for Scarbrough College. He was also allowed to continue living in his cottage rent-free for as long as he wished. He was forced to retire as a gardener at the age of 65 and was awarded a small pension from Scarbrough College, but would occasionally do part-time work for the Miller Lash House until 1978. He continued to live on the property until 1992 when he moved to West Hill Legion Valley Senior’s home at the age of 99. Frank died on March 24th 1993 in Sunnybrook Hospital at the age of 100.

Mary Jane Norris Gormley was a copy editor, calligrapher, and prominent member of the Society for the Preservation and Advancement of the Harmonica (SPAH).

Born on March 3, 1940, in Milton, Massachusetts, Gormley attended the Milton Academy in the greater Boston area for her elementary and high school education. She then completed an honors degree at the University of Toronto in History and Philosophy in 1961. After her graduation, she spent a year working for the Catholic missions in Angleton, Texas.

In 1965, she and her husband Dexter Gormley moved to Bloomington, Indiana, where she worked at the Indiana University typing up dissertations for graduate students and faculty members. Her typing experience lead to her pursuing a career as a copy editor for Indiana University Press, and then later, the Journal of American History, where she worked at until medical issues forced her retirement in late 2005.

Due to her difficulty breathing caused by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Gormley came up with the idea of using a harmonica to exercise her lungs and strengthen them. Accordingly, she became a member of SPAH to promote a general appreciation for harmonicas as musical instruments but also as potential medical aids.

Mary Jane Gormley died on December 9, 2022.

Born in 1955 in the village of Awehang in Rojhelat (Eastern Kurdistan) into a large family, Faithi spent much of his early years working the fields and farms of Kurdistan. At the age of 19, he joined the Society of Revolutionary Toilers of Iranian Kurdistan (commonly referred to as Komala), a political party which advocates for self-determination of Kurdish people.

After the Iranian revolution in 1979, the Islamic regime, which gained power, did not accept the Kurdish demands for autonomy, leading to an uprising in Rojhelat. An active Komala member, Faithi, who by this time was also known by his fighter name, Satar Awehang, took to documenting life of the Peshmerga resistance fighters he served alongside, as well as their families and daily life in Rojhelat, through photography.

As the Islamic regime in Iran suppressed the resistance, Faithi fled to Istanbul in 1985, where he sought asylum. During his time there he continued to document the Kurdish people in exile. In the early 1990s, he came to Canada as a refugee, after settling in Toronto, he worked primarily in construction, but continued to work with his archive of photographs, video and audio from the Kurdish resistance, delivering “night shows on the archives of Komala in Kurdistan”, where he presents material from his archive on a certain topic. These home movie presentations were often presented on Facebook to his followers. He also continued to capture photographs of protests and other events in Canada.

Faithi's life and archive were filmed as part of a 2025 documentary, "Guerilla Archive", done in collaboration with Chowra Makaremi and Shahrzad Mojab.

David Lewis Stein (1937-2019) was a journalist, novelist, adjunct professor at the University of Toronto, and a Toronto political activist. Stein’s journalism and other writings often centred around civic politics and life in Toronto, which positioned him at the forefront of local political movements throughout his career. He was a founding member of The Writers Union of Canada.

Stein graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and English in 1960, after which he began a long career in journalism. He wrote for Macleans Magazine in the early 1960s before moving to Paris to write for The International Herald Tribune from 1965-1967. In 1969, he moved back to Toronto and began working for The Toronto Star, where he would write as a municipal affairs columnist for over 30 years. He also returned to U of T to begin a Master of Science, Urban and Regional Planning, which he completed in 1974. During his Master’s degree, he became a Fellow and part-time lecturer at Innis College, where he would return to teach as an adjunct professor after his retirement from The Toronto Star in 2001.

Through his work and personal life, Stein became a central figure in Toronto’s municipal politics, reporting on issues such as the development of the Spadina Expressway and the Eaton Centre. He had served as a board member for the Housing Design Council of Canada, the Annex Ratepayers, the Jewish Community Centre, the Southern Ontario Newspaper Guild, and was an active member of the Shaarei Tzedek Synagogue.

Outside of journalism, he authored both fiction and non-fiction, including four novels, numerous short stories, three non-fiction books, and a play.

Grace Butler Yeats (fl. 192-) was a student of McGill University’s Institutional Administration class at Macdonald College, now known as Macdonald Campus. She was president of the Administrator class during her junior year, and graduated in 1923.

Frank Butler Yeats was a student of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, Chemical Engineering program, graduating in 1924. He was a member of the North House University Residences from 1922-1924.

Flora MacDonald Denison (née Merrill) was born in 1867 in a mining community near Bridgewater, Ontario, the sixth of eight children to George Merrill and his wife Elizabeth MacTavish Thompson. Denison's father, the former master of the Picton grammar school, had decided to seek his fortune in a mining venture, which later failed. Denison was educated in Belleville and Picton schools until the age of fifteen. She tried teaching in a rural school, but finding life in a small community stifling, she moved to Toronto. Here she took a business course and worked in an insurance company. In the late 1880's she moved to Detroit, where her life changed considerably. While working in an office she began her career as a journalist, writing for The Detroit Free Press. She married Howard Denison in 1892 and gave birth to her son Merrill, later a well-known Canadian writer, in 1893. The family moved back to Toronto shortly afterwards, and Mrs. Denison took up the occupation of dressmaker.

After a short period on her own, Denison worked for Simpson's department store, managing their custom dress department. While she was there, she began to write for the magazine Saturday Night, primarily writing about the exploitation of women working in the clothing industry. When in 1905 she went into business on her own as "Mrs. Denison-Costumer," her position as champion of women's rights became ambiguous. As she was herself employing seamstresses, she was caught between the need to support her family and any socialist convictions which she might have had. She avoided the problem by stressing the dignity of labour and adopting a Whitmanesque belief in equality. This interest later caused her to establish the Whitmanite Fellowship of Canada.

Denison had met activist and physician Emily Howard Stowe not long before Stowe's death in 1903. Stowe introduced her to the women's movements and befriended her in the rather elitist atmosphere of Toronto of the day. By 1906 Denison was secretary of the Dominion Women's Enfranchisement Association and was the official Canadian delegate to the Third World Conference of the International Suffrage Alliance. She became aware of the strength of the suffrage movement, and advocated for militancy among women demonstrators, something she had never done before. In 1906 she began to contribute articles to the Toronto Sunday World, a "people's newspaper” with a large circulation, in support of the cause. In 1909 she became a weekly contributor, writing on women's suffrage and other social issues. She was also instrumental in bringing the noted suffragettes Anna Howard Shaw and Emmeline Pankhurst to Toronto and contributed financially to the cause by paying her own way to conferences and providing or paying for suffrage office headquarters.

Denison's social status may have contributed to her eventual loss of leadership in the Canadian suffrage movement. Up until 1910 the leading suffrage workers in Toronto were women doctors, and Denison was accepted by them partly through her initial friendship with Dr. Emily Stowe and her daughter, Dr. Augusta Stowe-Gullen. However, Denison disagreed with the more conservative elements of the movement, causing friction in her social spheres. Most women's activism of the time was related to social reform rather than equal rights; temperance and aid to the poor through private and public charities were the usual goals. The Local Council of Women in Toronto did not espouse suffragism until 1910. Denison had criticized its conservatism in her journalism, further alienating her from the movement. Despite this, she remained president of the Canadian Suffrage Association for another 4 years until she was forced to resign in 1914, having become a member of the Women's Social and Political Union. As the latter's militancy was at its height, she was rejected by her Toronto supporters. Her finances appear to have foundered at about the same time. 1914 saw Denison working as a seamstress in Napanee to help support her son at university. In 1916 she moved to New York state and worked as a paid speaker and organizer for the New York State Women's Suffrage campaign.

After her return from N.Y. in 1916, Denison turned much of her energy to her northern property, "Bon Echo.” She turned it into a summer hotel and a spiritual community dedicated to the memory of Walt Whitman. Her interests in Whitman and Theosophy at this point began to predominate. She had avoided anything more than a cautious interest in socialism until this time but was influenced by Horace Traubel and other socialist Whitmanites. In 1918 she helped to organize the Social Reconstruction Group of the Toronto Theosophical Society, where she was honorary president and attended the 1918 Convention that launched the Ontario section of the Canadian Labour Party. In 1918 and 1919 the Canadian Labour Party advertised her as an official speaker.

Denison died in 1921 of pneumonia. Her career as a writer and speaker had greatly helped the cause of feminism; ironically, her force and enthusiasm had popularized the suffrage movement, so that it came to include the people who later rejected her.

The Religious Institute of the Sisters of Service (SOS) are a community of Roman Catholic religious women established to work with newcomers to Canada and bring the Church to rural communities. They were founded on August 15, 1922 in Toronto, and have 124 permanent members.

Unlike most other Catholic women religious at the time in traditional habits and large convents, the SOS wore simple grey uniforms and hats and lived in small communities. The simple and flexible nature of their Institute allowed the Sisters, as a domestic missionary community, to more easily adapt to the ways of life in the communities in which they lived. Their motto was "I Have Come To Serve" and the Sisters lived this charism by serving in many communities across Canada. In Western Canada, they worked as teachers, nurses and social workers. In larger cities, they operated hostels/residences for working women, particularly recently arrived immigrant women. The Sisters also maintained a presence at Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, assisting newcomers in the transition from the ports to their homesteads. The SOS also provided catechetical instruction via religious correspondence schools and religious vacation schools during the summer months.

In 2011, after deciding to accept no new applicants to the novitiate, the Sisters signed a sponsorship agreement with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto, who have assumed their administration.

John J. Welsman, (1955, Toronto), is a composer and arranger for films and television. Welsman studied music at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto and at the University of Western Ontario. Prominent projects include: Krieghoff (1980), Mary Silliman’s War (1993), Road to Avonlea (1989-1996), and West Wind: The Vision of Tom Thomson (2011). Welsman has been nominated for, and won, multiple Gemini, Genie, and Canadian Screen Awards. In his early career he performed and recorded with Laura Smith, Available Space, Jane Siberry, and Cherie Camp.

SarahRose Black is an adjunct professor of Music and Health at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music (2023-present).

Manuela Scarci was an associate professor of Italian studies and Italian diction for University of Toronto Opera (2007-2019).

Marilyn Gronsdal Powell was a stage director with University of Toronto Opera (1997-2001).

Gage Averill was Dean and Graduate Chair (2004-2007), and Professor of History and Culture of Music (2004-2011) at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music.

Scarboro Missions, known formally as the Scarboro Foreign Mission Society, is a Society of Canadian Roman Catholic priests dedicated to mission work domestically and abroad. The Society was founded in Almonte, Ontario, in 1918 by Msgr. John Mary Fraser as the "China Mission College" in order to train and send priests to China. Moving to Scarborough, Ontario, in the 1921, the Society became the "St. Francis Xavier China Mission Seminary". The new seminary opened in 1924. With Vatican approval of the Society's Constitutions in 1940, the Society became the "Scarboro Foreign Mission Society".

Complications arising from the Second Sino-Japanese War, WWII, and the Communist Revolution in China forced Scarboro to begin missions elsewhere, starting in the Dominican Republic in 1943. The Society has has missions in Asia, Africa, and Central and South America.

The Second Vatican Council (1962-65) greatly impacted the Society. In addition to traditional evangelical missionary work, the Society engaged in social and economic justice work, ecumenical efforts, and were a large supporter and educator in interfaith dialogue in the Toronto-area. The Society also began to accept lay members to work in mission - singles and married couples - beginning in 1974.

In November 2017, the Society announced that due to aging and declining membership they would stop accepting new candidates for the priesthood or lay program.

Born 21 June 1911 in Montreal; daughter of William Zink and Margaret Moore; entered 21 January 1938; first vows 15 August 1940; final vows 15 August 1946; died 25 October 1992.

A Montréaler, Ella, an only child after death of an infant brother, grew up in the city's English-speaking parishes of St. Ann's and St. Gabriel's. She studied at St. Ann’s Academy, Villa Maria Convent and Marguerite Bourgeoys College before training as a nurse at St. Vincent de Paul Hospital in Brockville, Ontario. A singer, Ella appeared regularly on local radio broadcasts, both while a teenager and later as a young nurse. For three years, she worked as a public health nurse with the Montreal department of health. At 26, she entered the Sisters of Service, professing first vows on August 15, 1940 and final vows on August 15, 1946.

For the first 15 years of mission appointments, she nursed at the two rural Alberta hospitals of St. John’s hospital in Edson (1939-1941; 1946-1949) and Our Lady’s Hospital in Vilna (1941-1946; acting superior 1951; superior 1952-1954).

Remaining at the Motherhouse after the Chapter in 1954, she enrolled at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, studying photography for future assignments. When appointed as editor of The Field at Home (1955-1974), she also embarked on a career in religious promotional work, primarily for the Sisters of Service. During five summers of study, she earned a masters of arts degree in journalism and theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Later, she studied philosophy of social communications at St. Paul’s University in Ottawa. As editor, she documented the changes of the community through the 1950s and the 1960s, presenting illustrated articles of the founding and early missions. In the magazine, she emphasized individual sisters through their own words or Sister Zink’s profiles to celebrate jubilees and to memorialize after death. Special issues were devoted to vocations, Chapter deliberations and the contributions during the 1967 Canadian centennial. At the same, Sister Zink travelled to parishes, giving illustrated slides of the sisters’ missions to promote interest in vocations.

In the wake of the Second Vatican Council and the consequential changes for religious life, Sister Zink joined the Canadian Religious Conference (CRC) in Ottawa, (1965-1968), as a member of the permanent secretariat office and later assistant general secretary. Remaining in Ottawa, Sister Zink was the first woman director of public relations of English sector (1968-1973) for Catholic Conference of Bishops (CCB). In that capacity, she attended some of the synods of the bishops in Rome.

Continuing in public relations, Sister Zink returned to the hospital field as assistant executive director for public relations and publications (1973-1975) of the Catholic Hospital Association. She was employed by a non-religious organization as public relations director (1975-1980) of the YM-YWCA. During those years (1965-1981) in Ottawa, she also assisted other organizations, including as a member of the publicity committee of the Ontario Heart Foundation, campaign publicity committee of the United Way of Ottawa-Carleton, publicity committee of the social planning council of Ottawa-Carleton and a board member of the Catholic Family Services of Ottawa. For the profession of public relations, she served as chief examiner for the Canadian Public Relations Society of Canada (1973-1987), which approved the accreditation of public relations practitioners and its chair (1980-1982), receiving an award of merit from the society at the end of that term.

Upon returning to Toronto, Sister Zink resided at the Motherhouse (1981-1982), in a nearby house on Broadview Avenue (1983-1987) and a downtown apartment on De Grassi Street (1987-1992) with Sister Agnes Sheehan. Diagnosed with cancer, Sister Zink underwent treatment and joined the retired sisters at Scarborough Court for the six months before she died in St. Michael’s Hospital on October 25, 1992. The wake service was held at Scarborough Court and the funeral mass with celebrant Fr. Edward Dowling S.J. at nearby St. Boniface church. Her body is buried in the community's plot at Mount Hope cemetery, Toronto.

Born 9 March 1902 in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec; daughter of Alfred Deland and Mary Ann Dixon; entered 21 January 1935; first vows 15 August 1937; final vows 15 August 1942; died 24 December 2000.

Growing up in a large family of English and French heritage in Quebec provided Ella with an early experience of two cultures. Her father, who was born on a farm, became a notary. He met her mother, the Irish-English daughter of the town pharmacist while teaching Latin to her brother. Following the death of their father, she and her twin sister, Edna, attended a retreat in Montreal with the Franciscan Sisters of Mary.

Ella became aware of the Sisters of Service through the local Catholic Women’s League, of which their mother was a charter member and The Field at Home, the community's quarterly magazine. Her sister Mamie, a nurse in Montreal, cared for Father Daly’s brother, William, and his family. Entering at the age of 33 in January 1935, Ella professed first vows on June 2, 1937, and final vows on August 15, 1942 in Edson.

Like her twin sister, Edna, Sister Ella received most of her appointments to the community's women’s residences: Montreal (1936-1937); Toronto (1937); Edmonton (1937-1942); Ottawa (superior 1944-1950 and 1961-1968, superior 1962-1968); Regina (1950-1955); Vancouver (superior 1955-1961) and Halifax (1968-1978). Only in the residence in Edmonton (1940-1942) were Sisters Edna and Ella Deland assigned to the same mission. Taking a leave from the Halifax residence, Sr. Ella with Sr. Nora FitzPatrick cared for the dying Sr. Edna in the community's Montreal house on Elm Avenue.

In 1978, Sister Ella retired from the Halifax residence and moved to live with the SOS retirement community in St. Catharines, Ontario (1978-1989) and Scarborough Court (1989-2000). She died on December 24, 2000 at Scarborough Court. Her nephew, Fr. Jacques Monet s.j., celebrated the funeral Mass at Scarborough Court. Her body was buried in the SOS plot in Mount Hope cemetery in Toronto.

Born 19 February 1914 in Brandon, Manitoba, daughter of Timothy Sheehan and Leah Page; entered 21 January 1940; first vows 15 August 1942; final vows 15 August 1947; died 26 February 2014.

Born in Brandon and baptized in the Redemptorist parish of St. Augustine of Canterbury, Agnes grew up in that southern Manitoba town and the Saskatchewan communities of Saskatoon, Ridgedale and Punnichy, where her father was the station master. She attended local schools, predominately in Ridgedale, a community she described as anti-Catholic, remembering vividly the burning of a flaming cross by the Ku Klux Klan. To ensure safety for travelling religious, the Sheehans provided accommodation. In 1938, Agnes recalled an overnight stay of Sister Catherine Donnelly.

On a catechetical tour, Sister Clara Graf was the next Sister of Service to stay with the Sheehans. Sister Graf asked Agnes, the church organist, to teach the children hymns. This connection with the sisters prompted in Agnes entering the Sisters of Service on January 21, 1940 a few weeks before her 26th birthday. In the second year of novitiate, she was assigned to the Toronto residence (1941-1948) and professed first vows on August 15, 1942. She was the first Sister of Service to graduate from St. Michael's Choir School, Toronto, in 1952.

She was next appointed to the Montreal residence (1948-1955, superior 1949-1955). Sister Sheehan attended the Maritime School of Social Work in Halifax (1955-1957), becoming the first member to graduate as a social worker. For the next 15 years in the Winnipeg residence, Sister Sheehan served in many posts, including superior (1957-1960), directing the addition of the residence, the residence's staff social worker (1960-1968) and social worker at a Child Guidance Clinic (1968-1973).

Her contribution in Winnipeg was recognized in 1966 with the awarding of the Bene Merenti Medalion on the occasion of the 50th jubilee of the Archdiocese of Winnipeg. At that time, she worked with the Recreation Division of the Social Planning Council, the umbrella for all the social agencies, including the Sisters of Service residence. When the residence was closed in 1972, it was leased to the Manitoba Housing and Renewal Corporation for five years at $1 a year. The YWCA undertook the operation of Hargrave House as a YWCA-SOS joint project with Sister Sheehan as the director.

When the project ended, she joined the Marriage Tribunal of the Archdiocese of Winnipeg (1979-1983) and the Marriage Tribunal of the Archdiocese of Toronto (1984-1997) when she returned to that city. In Toronto, Sister Sheehan lived in the Broadview Avenue house and in an apartment on Degrassi Avenue before moving into the Motherhouse, where she served as the book-keeper and singer. When the Motherhouse was renovated, she moved to Scarborough Court as the co-ordinator of the retired community (1999-2005) and at LaSalle Manor (2005-2009).

She died five days after her 100th birthday at La Salle Manor. , Fr. Rocky Guimond, OMI, also her spiritual director, celebrated her funeral mass. She is buried in the community plot at Mount Hope cemetery.