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David Charles Onley was born on June 12, 1950 in Midland, Ontario and was raised in Scarborough. He attended the University of Toronto Scarborough where he graduated with a degree in Political Science.

Onley began his career in radio working on a weekly science show for CFRB, a Toronto radio station. He later worked with Citytv as a water specialist. In 1989 he became the first news anchor for Break Television Citytv's morning show. He worked as an education specialist for Citytv and CablePulse 2. In 1999 he become an anchor for CP24 when the station launched and produced and hosted Home Page.

From 2007 to 2014, Onley served as the Lieutenant Governor for the Province of Ontario.

On October 1, 2014, Onley was appointed a senior lecture at the University of Toronto Scarborough in the Department of Political Sciences. He also served as the University's Special Ambassador for the Pan Am and the Parapan American Games in 2015.

He was inducted into the Scarborough Walk of Fame in 2006. Onley passed away on January 14, 2023.

Fredrick (Fred) Albert Urquhart was a professor of zoology at the University of Toronto and the University of Toronto Scarborough. Born in Toronto in 1911, Urquhart studied biology at the University of Toronto, completing an MA in 1937 and a PhD in 1940. His first attempt at tagging monarchs, in 1937, met with limited success, but led to the development of the Alar Tagging Method in the 1940s. In 1945, he married Norah Patterson, who would become a partner in his research endeavours. He was appointed assistant director of zoology at the Royal Ontario Museum in 1945, becoming director in 1949; at the same time, he was appointed as an assistant professor in zoology at the University of Toronto. Urquhart took on full professorship in 1963. In 1966, he spearheaded a program in zoology at Scarborough College, a position that he held until his retirement in 1977. In 1975, two member of Urquhart’s extensive network of monarch trackers, Ken and Cathy Brugger, discovered millions of monarch butterflies in the Neovolcanic Plateau in Mexico, many of them tagged, proving that monarchs did indeed travel thousands of kilometres to breed. Urquhart and his wife were able to visit Mexico in 1976 to see the monarchs firsthand. An internationally renowned entomologist, Urquhart published both books and articles on the migratory patterns of monarch butterflies. He died in 2002.

Stanley Kosta Todorow was born in Serbia in 1902. He immigrated to Toronto after World War I. Upon his death in 1987, Todorow designated an estate gift towards the University of Toronto Billion Dollar Campaign, and established the Stanley Kosta Todorow Scholarship at UTSC, which presents an award for academic excellence to a student in the Physical or Life Sciences. Beyond this, little is known about Todorow's life.

Arthur Fitzwalter Wynne Plumptre, referred to as A.F.W. or Wynne, was the second principal of Scarborough College, a subordinate college of the University of Toronto. Plumptre was born in 1907 and raised in Toronto, the son of Rev, Canon Henry Pemberton Plumptre and Adelaide Mary Wynne-Willson. He graduated with a degree in political science from University College, University of Toronto in 1928 and studied for two years at King's College, Cambridge. At Cambridge, Plumptre was in contact with British economist and King's College lecturer John Maynard Keynes. He gained an appointment as lecturer at the University of Toronto in 1930. Plumptre was involved in economics at the national level during the Great Depression, assisting on the 1933 Royal Commission on Banking and Currency in Canada and co-edited, with University of Toronto professor Harold Innis, The Canadian Economy and Its Problems (1934). He married Beryl Alice Rouche of Heidelberg, Australia in 1938, with whom he had three children — Barbara, Judith, and Timothy. In 1949 Plumptre became the head of the Economics Division of the federal Department of External Affairs, followed by an appointment as deputy representative on the North Atlantic Council and the Organization for European Economic Co-operation. In 1954 Plumptre became the director of International Economic Relations, and from 1955 to 1965 served as an assistant deputy Minister of Finance.

In 1965 Plumptre was appointed as second principal of Scarborough College, following University of Toronto vice president D.C. Williams. Plumptre oversaw the formal opening of the College in October 1966. The College developed rapidly, soon outpacing many established universities in the province in enrolment growth. In 1971, Plumptre established the Committee on the Status and Future of Scarborough College, which recommended in its final report that the college move towards a more autonomous governance model within the university, which was supported by two-thirds of the college council. He retired as principal in 1972, and in 1974 was made an honorary member of the college. Following his this, Plumptre returned to the study of economics and took on the mantle of governor of the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa, Ontario, His magnum opus, entitled Three Decades of Decision: Canada and the World Monetary System, 1944-75, was published posthumously in 1977.

Daniel E. Bender, born in 1973, is the Canada Research Chair in Cultural History and Analysis and a professor of history at the University of Toronto Scarborough (Toronto, ON). He is the author or editor of three books: Sweatshop USA: The American Sweatshop in Global an Historical Perspective (edited, 2003), Sweated Work, Weak Bodies: Anti-Sweatshop Campaigns and Languages of Labor (2004), and American Abyss: Savagery and Civilization in the Age of Industry (2009).

His articles have appeared in International Labor and Working-Class History, Radical History Review, Journal of Women's History, American Studies, and Journal of Social History.

He is currently working on a book length and digital project on the histories of zoos and the American empire, entitled "Animal Empire: Zoos and the American Exotic." He is the recipient of the UTSC Principal's Research Award (2009).

At UTSC, he teaches classes in American, food, and animal history and in the Intersections, Exchanges, and Encounters program.

Robert Bon Lee was born on 7 April, 1939 in Toronto, Ontario. His father, Poy Gar Lee, was born in Guangdong province of China and his mother, May Hong, was a first-generation Chinese immigrant who grew up in Brockville, Ontario. Lee grew up in the Gerrard and Jarvis area and studied Metallurgy at Ryerson Institute of Technology. In the 1960s and 1970s he worked as a bartender and later restaurant manager at Nanking Restaurant until it closed in 1979. He had close relationships with many other Chinese restaurant owners and a genuine interest in Chinese cuisine. He later moved to Scarborough with his family. Robert Bon Lee passed away in May 2020.

The University of Toronto Scarborough Photographic Services is a department within the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus. The campus was established in 1964 with construction beginning that same year.

The Photographic Services department was formerly known as the Photography and Graphics department. In 1998, the department was housed in Room AC286 in UTSC’s Academic Resource Centre (ARC), along with UTSC’s Library. As of 2013, the services of the department fall UTSC’s Communications & Public Affairs department.

The department has been staffed by two staff photographers over 5 decades, first David Harford and then Ken Jones. David Harford worked for UTSC from the 1970s until 1994. Ken Jones joined UTSC as the University’s Staff Photographer in 1994. The UTSC Photographic Services mandate is to "complete professional-quality custom photographic and imaging services to meet the teaching, research, publication and promotional needs of the UTSC campus" which is reflected in the records within the collection.

Sandford Borins is Professor of Public Management in the Department of Management, University of Toronto Scarborough, where he was the founding chair, serving in that capacity from 1991 to 2003. He also holds graduate appointments in the Rotman School of Management, School of Public Policy and Governance, and Political Science Department. He has been a visiting professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley, and Scholar-in-Residence in the Ontario Cabinet Office. He is currently a research fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School.

He is the author of numerous articles as well as eleven books. The eleven books include Negotiating Business Narratives: Fables from the Information Technology, Automobile Manufacturing, and Financial Trading Industries, with Beth Herst (Palgrave Pivot, 2018), The Persistence of Innovation in Government (Brookings, 2014), Governing Fables: Learning from Public Sector Narratives (Information Age Publishing, 2011), Innovations in Government: Research, Recognition, and Replication (Brookings, 2008), Digital State at the Leading Edge (University of Toronto Press, 2007), “If you build it . . . ” Business, Government, and Ontario’s Electronic Toll Highway, co-authored with Chandran Mylvaganam (University of Toronto Centre for Public Management, 2004), Political Management in Canada, co-authored with Hon. Allan Blakeney, former premier of Saskatchewan (University of Toronto Press, 1998), Innovating with Integrity: How Local Heroes are Transforming American Government (Georgetown University Press, 1998), and The Language of the Skies: The Bilingual Air Traffic Control Conflict in Canada (McGill-Queens University Press, 1983). The Language of the Skies was recognized as one of the twenty best books in English supported by the Social Science Federation of Canada between 1940 and 1990.

Professor Borins has had a wide range of professional experience. He is a frequent conference speaker on public sector innovation and on narrative. He was a member of the board of directors of the Ontario Transportation Capital Corporation, responsible for developing Ontario’s Highway 407. He was the President of the Canadian Association of Programs in Public Administration from 2003 to 2007.

He did his undergraduate studies at Harvard, where he graduated magna cum laude, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. He then took a Master in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, and received his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard.

Harley J. Spiller was born in 1959 in Buffalo, New York. He is a museum educator, collector, and author and is known for his collections of menus and coins. Spiller graduated from Northwestern University and, in 1981, moved to New York to pursue a career in the museum field. Soon after his move, Spiller received a job as an administrative assistant for the curatorial department of the Jewish Museum.

Spiller first began collecting menus on his nightly walks up and down the streets of the Upper West Side, where he lived when he started working at the Jewish Museum. Harley, an English major, took advantage of the free and easily accessible mass printed take out menus available as a result of the “menuing” phenomenon occurring at this time. When Spiller moved to a new apartment in Manhattan, he continued his nightly walks and collecting menus. As others heard about his growing collection of menus they began to gift their own menus that they had accumulated. The collection of menus and Chinese cuisine related artifacts was augmented through eBay purchases made by Spiller.

Spiller’s material, both menus and artifacts, have been featured in several museum displays and exhibits including the “A Million Menus” exhibit.

Mr R. Kanagaratnam (Kurumbasiddy Era Kanagaratnam) (1 August 1934 -22 June 2016) tirelessly collected Tamil and English newspaper clippings and manuscripts related to political and cultural affairs of Eelam Tamils for almost six decades. Mr Kanagaratnam was respected for his contributions to the modern archival history of Eelam Tamils as well as his continued focus on the historiography of Tamils living across the larger region, from Fiji Islands to South Africa. His unique contribution to the nation of Eelam Tamils was collecting, archiving, microfilming and at the same time ensuring secure storage of the Tamil and English documents outside the island – all achieved through his focused and relentless efforts.

Kanagaratnam held an exhibition at the 4th International Tamil Conference in Jaffna in 1974. He has also exhibited a section of his collections in Canada (1996) and in Norway (1997).

Apart from his archival work, Mr. Kanagratnam also published a number of small pamphlets highlighting the situation of Tamils in Singapore, Malaysia, Burma, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Fiji Islands, Mauritius, Seychelles, Reunion, Indonesia, and South Africa.

He was painfully watching the unfolding genocidal onslaught targeting Vanni while he was exiled in Tamil Nadu since 2008.

Kanagaratnam had returned to the island 10 months before his death as his health conditions began to deteriorate due to diabetes and blood pressure. Kanagaratnam leaves behind his wife, Pavalarany, who has been assisting him in his work and two daughters who are living outside the island.

Greg Fitz was a student at the University of Toronto Scarborough (then called Scarborough College) in Arts & Science from 1971-1976. Fitz was active in many student groups, including the International Student Association. At a time on campus when student clubs and activities were expanding, Fitz began taking photographs as a way to remember their activities by posting photographs on the campus bulletin board or publishing his photographs in the school newspaper. He was the Executive of Scarborough College Student Darkroom from 1973-1975, photographer for Balcony Square from 1973-1975, Vice-President of Cinescar from 1971-1973, designed and printed the first Student Handbook, and organized the first Scarborough College Oktoberfest. Fitz graduated in 1976 and pursued a career in direct mail marketing.

Samuel James Velupillai Chelvanayakam was born in Ipoh, Malaysia on 31 March 1898 to Viswanathan Velupillai, a businessman, and Harriet Annamma Kanapathipillai. He moved to Tellippallai, Sri Lanka, with his mother, two brothers, and sister (only his brother E. V. Ponnuthurai survived past childhood) in order to receive his early education at Union College, Tellipalai for eight years. From then he studied for five years at St. Johns College, Jaffna, and then to St. Thomas’s College, Mount Lavinia. Chelvanayakam graduated from the University of London as an external student in 1918 with a degree in Science. In 1927 he married Emily Grace Barr-Kumarakulasinghe. They had four sons and one daughter.

He was a teacher at St. Thomas’s College until moving to Wesley College in 1919 to teach Mathematics. He later became the Head of the Science Department. He attended lectures at the Law College and sat for the law examinations at the Law College while he was still teaching at Wesley College. Chelvanyakam started his legal career in the Court of Requests in Colombo. He set up a private practice first in Hultsdorp and later in St. Sebastian Hill. From the Court of Requests, Chelvanayakam moved to the District Court and later to the Appellate Courts. He was made Queen’s Counsel on 31st May 1947.

Chelvanayakam then left his practice and joined politics as a primary organizer of the All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC) in 1944. He was elected as a member of Parliament for the first time in September 1947. On 18 December 1949, Chelvanayakam launched the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK, also known as the Federal Party) along with E. M. V. Naganathan and V. Navaratnam elected as joint General Secretaries. He was also a director of the Tamil newspaper Suthanthiran (Freedom).

Chelvanayakam was known by Tamils as Thanthai Chelva (Father Chelva) because of his interest in safeguarding the identity and interests of Tamil people.

Together with the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka he signed the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact on 26 July 1957 which would request parity for the Tamil language; cessation of colonization on traditional Tamil-speaking homelands; give regional autonomy for the Tamil provinces; and restore the citizenship and rights of the upcountry Tamils (S. J. V. Chelvanayakam and the Crisis of Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism / A. J. Wilson). On 24 March 1965 he signed the Senanayake-Chelvanayakam Pact which addressed the Tamil Language Special Provisions Act No. 28 of 1958 but this was not passed.

Chelvanayakam’s health declined due to Parkinson’s disease and in 1961 he had surgery in Edinburgh. After suffering from a fall resulting in head injuries in March 1977, Chelvanayakam passed away on 26 April 1977.

Alfred Jeyaratnam Wilson was born on October 4, 1928 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to Kanagasabay Rajaratnam Wilson and Elizabeth Ariammah Dutton. Wilson completed a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from the University of Ceylon in 1950, a Ph.D from the London School of Economics, University of London in 1956, and a DSc. (Econ.) from the University of London in 1977. In 1953, he and Suseelavathy Chelvanayakam (daughter of Samuel James Velupillai Chelvanayakam) were married in Colombo. Wilson taught political science at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka from 1956 to 1972. After completing several fellowships in the UK, Canada, and the US, in 1972 he became professor of Political Science and Chairman of the Department of Political Science at the University of New Brunswick until 1994. From 1978 to 1984 Wilson also acted as an advisor to the Sri Lankan government. He and his family later moved to Toronto, where he passed away on 31 May 2000.

Wilson wrote and edited nine books on Sri Lankan politics as well as numerous essays and reviews published in academic journals. His books include: An Introduction to Civics and Government (1954); Politics in Sri Lanka, 1947–1973 (1974); Electoral Politics in an Emergent State: the Ceylon General Election of May 1970 (1975); The Gaullist System in Asia (1980); The States of South Asia: Problems of National Integration: Essays in honour of W.H. Morris-Jones (1982, editor, with Dennis Dalton); The Break-up of Sri Lanka: The Sinhalese-Tamil Conflict (1988); S. J. V. Chelvanayakam and the Crisis of Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, 1947–1977: a Political Biography (1994); Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism: Its Origins and Development in the 19th and 20th Centuries (2000); and The Post-Colonial States of South Asia: Democracy, Development and Identity (2001, editor, with Amita Shastri).