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Mark Abley is a non-fiction writer, journalist, travel writer, and poet. He was born in Leamington, England, on May 13, 1955, and grew up in Ontario, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. He now lives in Montreal.
Abley studied literature at the University of Saskatchewan, obtaining a BA in 1975. He continued his studies as Rhodes scholar at Oxford University, where he completed a second BA with first-class honours in 1978 and a Master’s degree in 1983, both in literature.
After his studies, Mark Abley and his wife Ann moved to Montreal, where he began to work as a freelance writer. His first book, Beyond Forget : Rediscovering the Prairies, was published in 1986.
With the birth of his first child in 1987, Abley joined the Montreal Gazette, where he worked as a feature writer, book-review editor and literary columnist for the following sixteen years.
During his career at the Montreal Gazette, Abley won the National Newspaper Award for critical writing (1996) and was nominated for a National Newspaper Award for international reporting. In 1995, he received a “Dateline Hong Kong” fellowship sponsored by the Canadian Association of Journalists. In 1997, he received a Maclean-Hunter Fellowship in arts journalism from the Banff Centre for the Arts.
Mark Abley left The Gazette and returned to freelance writing in 2003 with the publication of Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Language. In 2005, Abley was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, which he used to write The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches From the Future of English, published in 2008, as the second of three books about language. Abley also wrote a memoir of his father, The Organist : Fugues, Fatherhood, and a Fragile Mind, and a book about Indigenous and colonial history, Conversations with a Dead Man : The Legacy of Duncan Campbell Scott. In his book Strange Bewildering Time: Istanbul to Kathmandu in the Last Year of the Hippie Trail, published in 2023, Abley is reflecting back on his travels through Asia as a young man, in spring 1978. Abley also wrote the text of a children’s picture book, Ghost Cat.
In 2022 Mark Abley received an honorary doctorate from the University of Saskatchewan for his contributions to the literary community.

Abley was a participating member of poets’ workshops during his time in Oxford and later in Montreal. He has published three books of poetry, Blue Sand, Blue Moon (1988), Glasburyon (1994), and The Silver Palace Restaurant (2005), as well as the chapbook Dissolving Bedrock (2001). He received the QSPELL awards for poetry in 1989 and 1995.

Mark Abley has taught writing and literature at various writers’ workshops, at the Banff Centre for the Arts, at the English Department of Concordia University, and he has guest lectured in Concordia’s Journalism program. Abley has also served on juries for the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des letters du Québec, and the Quebec Writers Federation, of which he is a member. He is also a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada, the Canadian Association of Rhodes Scholars, and PEN Canada.

Al Baculis was a Canadian clarinetist and composer. He was born in Lachine, Montreal on November 21, 1930, as Joseph George Alphonse Allan Baculis. He was the son of Lithuanian immigrants. From 1948 to 1951, he studied clarinet at McGill University, and from 1952 to 1956 he studied composition. Baculis married Margo MacKinnon in 1963. They lived in Montreal and had two children, Heather and Alan Jr.

During the 1950s, Al Baculis played with the Canadian All Stars, but also with various bands led by Buck Lacombe. In 1958, he started to do studio work for the CBC. Around the same time, Al Baculis played and composed for several NFB films. From around 1965 to 1972, he led the Al Baculis Singers, a studio group working mainly for radio and television. Also in the 1960s, he led the Al Baculis Octet. Al Baculis wrote arrangements for the Ted Elfstrom Octet and played saxophone in the Johnny Holmes Orchestra. In the mid-1960s, Baculis performed with Vic Vogel's band for Canadian soldiers in Europe and the Middle East. Al Baculis composed and arranged the theme for the closing ceremonies of the 1976 Montréal Olympics. From 1977 to 1986, Al Baculis taught arranging and composition at Vanier College, Montreal, and at McGill University, Montreal, from 1978 to 1983.

Al Baculis died on January 22, 2007 in Seminole, Florida, where he had lived since his retirement in 1993.

Frances Belfrage McDonald was born on June 17, 1920. She was married to Peter McDonald with whom she had a daughter named Molly McDonald. Belfrage wrote several radio plays for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Some of her works include Blues for Charlie, Neon Sign in Green and Red, and The Exile. She also wrote for the British Columbia Department of Education’s Youth in Search of a Future series dealing with vocational guidance.

Frances Belfrage McDonald died on March 13, 2011.

Huntly Bourne was born as son of Charles E.H. Bourne and Muriel Winnifred (Macdonald) Bourne, around 1916. He married Nancy (Anderson) Bourne in 1946. They lived in Lachine, Quebec with their three children : Stephen, Brian and Janice. Huntly Bourne died on February 10, 2011 in Lachine, Quebec.

Patricia Cambridge was born on November 18, 1939, in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. She migrated to Canada in the 60s and obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies from Concordia University and a master’s degree in Urban Planning from McGill. Cambridge was involved in several community organizations and for several years she was the coordinator of the St. Vincent and Grenadines Association of Montreal’s annual Pageant and Dance. She was also involved with Project Genesis, a community organization that assists individuals affected by social inequalities. Cambridge worked as an Urban Planner for the Quebec Human Rights Commission, the City of Châteauguay, and the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. She also worked as a freelance for the Afro-Canada Citizens Enhancement Society and the Black Community Council of Quebec.

Patricia Cambridge and Alfie Roberts had a daughter and two sons.

Yves Charbonneau was born in 1934 in a working-class neighborhood in the east end of Montreal to Eugène Charbonneau and Dorothée Coulombe.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Yves Charbonneau was a trumpet player in various jazz orchestras. He married Francoise Labonne in 1962. He had three daughters, Nathalie, Sophie, and Julie, and a son. In 1967, together with Guy Thouin, Jean Prefontaine and Maurice Richard, he formed the group Quatuor du Jazz libre du Québec, where he was the trumpet player. In 1968 the group participated the Osstidcho. Thereafter, Charbonneau accompanied Robert Charlebois, L’Infonie, and Plume Latraverse.
From 1970 to 1972, the Quatuor du Jazz libre du Québec build up an artistic and political commune, known as Petit Québec libre, in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Rochelle in the Eastern Townships. After its closure, the quartet opened l’Amorce, an experimental coffeehouse located at 25 St.-Paul E., in Montreal, where they were performing until the club's destruction by fire in June 1974.
After the break-up of Jazz libre du Québec in 1975, Yves Charbonneau improvised in various groups, playing at Conventum and Véhicule Art. In 1987, he began studying photography at the Cegep of Matane, Quebec.
He died on February 22, 2007.

Ann Charney is a Montreal-based novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Ann Charney was born on April 3, 1940 in Brody/ Lwow, Poland (today Lviv, Ukraine) as the daughter of Dora Wengler Korsower and Michael Korsower.

Until the liberation of Poland by the Russians in 1945, Ann Charney’s family was forced to hide because they were Jewish. In 1950, Ann Charney and her parents immigrated to Canada. Since that time, she has lived almost continuously in Montreal, Quebec. In 1960, she married architect Melvin Charney. Together they have a daughter, Dara. In 1965, Charney received a master's degree in French literature from McGill University. She also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, France.

Ann Charney contributed to a number of Canadian and American periodicals as a columnist and writer of short stories. She published in Maclean’s magazine, Saturday Night, Chatelaine, the Canadian Forum, and Queen’s Quarterly, among others. She also wrote book reviews. Charney's first novel, Dobryd, was published in 1973.

Ann Charney has received grants from Canada Council and the Conseil des arts et des lettres de Québec. She has received various awards, including National Magazine Awards, the Chatelaine Fiction Prize, and the Canadian Authors’ Association Prize, honouring both her fiction and non-fiction work. In April 2006, the French government decorated Ann Charney as an officer of the French Order of Arts and Letters. Ann Charney is member of the Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois and the Writer’s Union of Canada. She was involved with Blue Metropolis since its foundation. She is a member of the Blue Metropolis Foundation Honorary Board.

David Clark, a musician, was born in England around 1947 to a musician father.

Clark moved to Montreal in 1968. He received a Bachelor of Music (Performance) from McGill University in 1972. As a student, he played with the McGill Jazz Workshop. Adept in both classical music and jazz, Clark worked as a saxophonist, clarinetist, orchestral arranger and conductor, performing with various well-known orchestras, including the Canada Symphony Orchestra, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Andrew Homzy Jazz Orchestra, and others. Clark was a member of Walter Boudreau’s Quatuor de saxophones de Montréal / Montreal Saxophone Quartet for 15 years, until the 1990s. During the 1990s, Clark spent several summers working as the musical director and bandleader on the cruise ship Amerikanis. Clark also worked as a music teacher at both Vanier College and Concordia University. He taught at Concordia University until 2009 and at Vanier College until 2014. In the 1980s and 1990s, David Clark was a member of the Fossils Club of Montreal, which was founded in 1926 by a group of Westmount High School graduates. Its annual musical productions allowed the club to raise money to allow for underprivileged children in Montreal to attend summer camp. During the 1980s and 1990s, Clark created arrangements and served as conductor for several of the Fossils’ productions. The club existed until around 1996. Clark also played with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal at Carnegie Hall in New York City, a performance that he considers to be the apex of his career.

David Clark died on September 4, 2015, at the age of 68.

May Ebbitt Cutler was a Canadian writer and publisher.

She was born as May Ebbitt in Montreal, Quebec, on September 4, 1923 as the daughter of Irish immigrants. In 1952, she married the labour lawyer Phil Cutler. They had four sons : Keir, Adam, Michael and Roger. May Cutler died March 3, 2011 at the age of 87 in Montreal.

May Cutler received a master’s degree in arts from McGill in 1945, and a MA in journalism from Colombia University, New York City. She worked as a journalist for newspapers like the Montreal Herald and the Montreal Standard. She also wrote several books, especially for children, and plays. In 1967, she founded Tundra Books, a publisher's house for children's books in Montreal, thus being the first female publisher of children's books in Canada. Cutler ran Tundra Books until it was sold to McClelland and Stewart in 1995.
In 1987, May Cutler became the first female mayor of Westmount for a four-year period. She also was member of the Council on the Arts of the Montreal Urbain Community.

Tom Dubicanac is a Montreal artist and architect, also known under the pseudonym Archigrok, which he shared with architect Ted Cavanaugh. As Archigrok, they participated in the exhibition "Corridart on Sherbrooke street" in Montreal in 1976.

Andrew (Andy) Dutkewych was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1944. He lives in Canada.
In 1966, he graduated from Philadelphia College of Art. He received a Post Graduate Diploma from Slade School of Art (London, England) in 1968. Since then, he is working as visual artist, mainly focusing on sculpture.
Andy Dutkewych was founding member of Véhicule Art.
He teaches Sculpture at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec.

Harriet Eisenkraft is a journalist and editor. She studied at the University of Toronto and at Ryerson University. She is married to Gary Klein, and they have two children, Elise and Daniel. She is involved in several non-profit organizations and charities, like Axis Music and Dancing with Parkinson. Eisenkraft was deeply involved in the administration and the building up of the Jewish congregation Shir Libeynu, Toronto, Ontario, since 2000, and had been a board member and served as Vice President of the congregation since 2007. From 2012 to 2014 Eisenkraft was president of the congregation.

Ted Elfstrom was a Montreal-based musician and trombone player. He was born in 1916. In the 1930s and 40s, he went on tour with the Mart Kenney Orchestra. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Ted Elfstrom was active in Montréal, leading the Ted Elfstrom Octet, including Marcel Baillargeon, Jo Christie, Gerry Danovitch, Nick Ayoub, Gilles Moisan, Armand Maiste, Don Habib and Ronny Page. During the same period, Ted Elfstrom organized the Ted Elfstrom Orchestra and the Montreal Woodwind Chamber Group, which played jazz as well as classic music. Ted Elfstrom often worked with Al Baculis. In the early 1970s, he was part of the Johnny Holmes orchestra.

Daniel Feist was born in Montreal on January 27, 1954 as the son of German immigrants Ursula and David Feist. His father was a visual artsit. Daniel Feist was married to Susan (Susie) Kessler. They had two children, Emily and Max. Daniel Feist died in Montreal on February 11, 2005.

Feist received a BA degree in Communications Studies and German and a minor in music from Concordia University, where he later studied music composition.

He worked as a freelance broadcast and print journalist, electroacoustic musician, band manager, and record producer, and he taught at Dawson College (1980-1984) and in the Department of Music and the Department of Communications Studies at Concordia University (1990-1999). From 1997 to 1999, Feist offered the World-Beat Music History Course in the Department of Music. As part of the class work he brought world music artists who were residents of Montreal to Concordia’s Oscar Peterson Concert Hall to perform and be interviewed.

Feist was one of the first broadcasters to embrace world music (world beat, i.e., the popular music of the Caribbean, Africa, Latin America and other parts of the world). He traveled widely, especially in Africa, where he also lived for several years, and interviewed many performers. He was considered an expert in the music of Africa and the Caribbean.

Since the early 1990s, Feist hosted the world-beat program “Rhythms International” on Sunday nights on the Montreal radio station CJFM Mix-96FM. Rhythms International was the only program of its kind on commercial radio in Canada. For several years, Feist also provided a version of Rhythms International for Air Canada’s and Delta Airlines’ in-flight programming, and he wrote and hosted the world-beat series “A Whole New World”on CBC-FM radio from 1993 to 1995.

As an electroacoustic composer, Feist was a member of the Concordia University Electroacoustics group, which had been founded in 1982 as the Concordia Electroacoustics Composers Group. The group’s members composed electroacoustic music and gave concerts. In 1990 his composition “Auxferd Nightburr’d November 2 A.M.” was voted jury winner at the first ACREQ (Association pour la création et la recherche électroacoustiques du Québec) Electroclips competition.

Feist was a long-time contributor to Montreal’s The Gazette as a world-beat music critic and he wrote for programs of events such as the Montreal festival Nuits d’Afrique. In 2001 he covered the United Nations Conference Against Racism in Durban for the Southam News Agency. In 2002 he covered the U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. Being diagnosed with cancer in 2004, Daniel Feist wrote together with Stan Shatenstein a series of articles for The Gazette chronicling his treatment. Theses articles were published as a book by CanWest in 2006, entitled "Cancer: My Story".

The artist collective General Idea was formed in Toronto in 1969 by three Canadian artists known as Jorge Zontal, Feliz Partz, and AA Bronson, pseudonyms they adopted to better reflect their identities within the group. What began as an artistic collaboration between friends, lasted for 25 years until the death of two members in 1994.

Jorge Zontal, originally named Slobodan Zaia-Levy, was born in a concentration camp in Parma, Italy, on January 28, 1944. After the end of the Second World War, Zontal and his mother reunited with his father, who was sent from Italy to Auschwitz. The family immigrated to Venezuela when Zontal was eight years old. In the 1960s, Zontal went to study architecture at Dalhousie University in Halifax, graduating in 1968. He also studied video at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, where he met Bronson, who was then teaching a workshop. A visit to Toronto made him move there permanently.

Felix Partz, born Ronald Gabe, was born on April 23, 1944, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Partz studied Fine Arts at the University of Manitoba in the mid-1960s. He traveled to Toronto in the summer of 1969 to visit his friend at Rochdale College, when he decided to remain in the city.

AA Bronson, born Michael Tims, was born on June 16, 1946, in Vancouver. In 1964, he enrolled in architecture studies at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. Three years later, Bronson abandoned his studies to participate in building an alternative community that also produced the newspaper The Loving Couch Press, where he became a contributing editor. In 1969, Bronson settled at Rochdale College in Toronto.

The same year, the three artists met at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto. Shortly after that, Bronson, Zontal, and Partz founded the artist collective General Idea.

During the group’s artistic career, they produced a wide variety of media-based artworks and installations commenting on popular culture, mass media, consumption, social inequalities, the AIDS crisis, and queer identity, among other topics. In 1971, General Idea created the fictional narrative Miss General Idea Pageant, satirizing glamour and commenting on beauty, fame, and the commercial process of the art world. In 1984, the group created The 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion, a bigger-scale event based on the Miss General Idea narrative from 1971, which included a series of architectural proposals for the installation of a pavilion. In 1972, they published the first issue of FILE Megazine, a publication that aimed to promote other artists’ works as well as General Idea’s major projects. The group released 26 issues, the last one was published in 1989. In 1986, General Idea produced a painting for an exhibition in support of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, featuring the word AIDS in the style of Robert Indiana’s 1966 work LOVE, which was highly popular and appeared in a wide variety of formats such as keychains, napkins, postage stamps, etc. General Idea’s intention in creating the AIDS painting in the same style as LOVE was for it to spread like a virus and raise awareness of the AIDS crisis. The AIDS painting was later produced on a variety of different media, including sculpture, posters, wallpapers, and rings, and was used as a logo for AIDS campaigns in several cities such as New York, Berlin, and Toronto, and AIDS awareness became a central subject of the group’s work.

General Idea’s innovative conceptual approach to art-making gave them widespread recognition, participating in 149 group exhibitions and 123 solo exhibitions around the world.

General Idea remained active until the deaths of Jorge Zontal and Felix Partz on February 3, and June 5, 1994, respectively, from AIDS-related causes.

Bellelle Guerin was a Canadian writer and the founder and first president of the Catholic Women's League of Canada. Bellelle Guerin was born as Mary Ellen Guerin on September 24, 1849 in Montreal. She was the eldest child of six and only daughter of civil engineer Thomas Guerin and Mary Maguire, both of Irish descent. Guerin spent several years of her education at the Mont Sainte-Marie Convent in Montreal. During this time, she became renowned as a writer and poet. It was then that she adopted the name Bellelle Guerin.

Guerin never married, but raised her brother’s two children, Thomas and Mary Carroll, after the death of their mother in 1888. Her brother, James John Edmund Guerin (July 4, 1856 – November 10, 1932), was a physician and politician. When he was elected mayor of Montreal in 1910, Bellelle served as mayoress. During the following two years, she accompanied him to civic functions and participated in such events as the International Eucharistic Congress, held in Montreal in 1910, and the visit of Earl Grey in Montreal.

In 1917, Guerin became president of the Catholic Women’s Club, formerly the Ladies of Loyola Club. In November 1917, the Montreal branch of the Catholic Women’s League (CWL) was founded, with herself as first president. Under Guerin’s initiative, the Catholic Women’s League of Canada was created in June 1920 to unify the various branches of the CWL, and once again, she was elected first president.

In 1922, Guerin was honored with the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice cross from the Roman Catholic Church. In 1923, she was made honorary president for life of the Catholic Women’s League of Canada. Meanwhile, the national membership of the CWL had grown to 50,000.

Bellelle Guerin died at age 79 on January 28, 1929, in Montreal.

Dorothy Evelyn Harper was born on April 3, 1921 in Victoria, British Columbia. She moved to Ottawa, Ontario, when she was a teenager, and later lived and worked in Montreal, Quebec. In September 1947, Harper married Allan Gordon (Gord) Craig while he was in the Royal Canadian Air Force. They had two children, in 1953 and 1955 respectively.

In the 1960s, Harper started her own business, Dorothy E. Craig Imports, which imported women's clothing and shoes, among other items, from Hong Kong.

Harper passed away in December 2003.

Franklyn Harvey, né à St. Andrews, Grenade, le 14 février 1943, était un activiste, philosophe politique, universitaire, auteur et ingénieur. Il a fréquenté l'Université de Londres, où il a obtenu un baccalauréat ès sciences en génie en 1964. Plus tard, Harvey a déménagé à Montréal, Québec, où il a étudié à l'Université McGill. Il y a obtenu une maîtrise en sciences de l’environnement en 1968. Pendant ses études à Montréal, Harvey faisait partie du cercle d'étude C.L.R. James et du Caribbean Conference Committee. Il a assisté à l'influent Congrès des écrivains noirs à Montréal en 1968. Après avoir terminé ses études, Franklyn Harvey a déménagé à Trinidad, où il était un membre fondateur du mouvement New Beginning. De plus, il faisait partie de la direction grenadienne du Movement for the Assemblies of People (MAP) et du Joint Endeavour for Welfare, Education and Liberation (JEWEL), qui jumelaient en 1973 sous le nom de New Jewel Movement, un parti d'avant-garde marxiste-léniniste à Grenade. Fait significatif, Harvey était le principal auteur du Manifeste du mouvement New Jewel. Harvey est retourné au Canada en 1974 et s'est établi à Toronto. Il est devenu l'éditeur de Caribbean Dialogue et de Caribbean Connection. Il était membre du Groupe de travail latino-américain, une organisation de recherche et de solidarité établie à Toronto, et directeur de Paticiplan, un réseau de consultants indépendants et de praticiens du changement au Canada et dans les Caraïbes,qui a travaillé avec des ONG du monde entier. Franklyn Harvey est décédé à Ottawa le 16 mai 2016.

Magnus Isacsson, a Swedish-Canadian filmmaker, was born in Sweden in 1948 and moved to Canada in 1970. He studied political science at the University of Stockholm in Sweden and later in Montreal, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the Université de Montreal in 1973. He also studied history and cinema at McGill University and took classes at Concordia University in Montreal, though he did not receive a degree from either institution. He was married to Jocelyne Clarke, documentary filmmaker and founder of Productions Pléiades. They had two children, Anna and Béthièle.

Early during his career, Isacsson worked as a radio producer for the Swedish Broadcasting and the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC). From 1980 to 1986 he was a producer for CBC’s English and French-language networks and worked as a producer for several programs, including Le Point, The Fifth State, and Contrechamps. Isacsson became an independent filmmaker in 1986.

With a documentary filmmaking career of over 25 years, Isacsson produced, wrote and directed several documentaries about critical social and political issues. During his career, he won several awards. Notably, he was the recipient of the Golden Sheaf Award for Uranium in 1991, and his film Power won best documentary at both the Paris International Environmental Film Festival in 1997 and at the Lausanne festival in 1999. Pressure Point (1999) received the Quebec Film Critics award for Best Documentary in 2000.

Magnus Isacsson was awarded the 2004 Prix Lumières from the Quebec Directors’ Association, and in 2012, Isacsson was named member Emeritus of the association. He was also a member of the Documentary Association of Canada, the Association des Réalisateurs et Réalisatrices du Québec (ARRQ), the Société des auteurs de radio, télévision et cinéma (Sartec), and was a former vice-president of the Observatoire du documentaire,

Isacsson was also an educator and throughout his career taught several courses and workshops about documentary film production. He taught at Concordia University in Montreal, Whitman College, the Quebec film school and at University of Montreal, among others. He also taught audiovisual production in South Africa and Zimbabwe, and collaborated in the production of teaching material Produire en Vidéo Légère volumes 1, 2 and 3.

His last film, Granny Power (2014), was completed and released posthumously by his wife Jocelyne Clarke.

Magnus Isacsson died in August 2012.

Peter K. Johnston was born in 1929. He lived as a farmer in Hudson, Quebec. He was a known collector of jazz, including an extensive collection on Harry James. He was member of the Montreal Vintage Music Society. He was co-author of the discography Harry James and his orchestra, published by the Joyce Record Club, and stood in contact with Peter Levinson, who wrote a biography on Harry James in 1999.

David Neil Lee is a Canadian writer and musician, born around 1950 in British Columbia. He is the author of several books.

Lee studied English at UBC, before he moved to Toronto, where he performed as a jazz musician. In the mid-seventies, he started writing articles for Coda and other music magazines. He was co-editor of Coda with Bill Smith from 1976 to 1983. From 1983 to 1990, he was part owner of the Canadian publishing house Nightwood Editions, together with his partner Maureen Cochrane, whom he married around 1985. Lee and and Cochrane lived in Toronto, before moving to London, Ontario in 1988 for a few years. They later returned to British Columbia. They have two sons, Malcom and Simon.

In 1985, Lee started working on a biography of the Canadian jazz pianist Paul Bley, entitled “Stopping time : Paul Bley and the transformation of jazz.” The biography was published in 1998 by Vehicule Press.

In 2004, Lee obtained a MA in Music Criticism from McMaster University. In 2017, he received his PhD in English from the University of Guelph. He is member of the Writers’ Union of Canada.

As musician, David Lee plays with the Lee Palmer Bennett Trio.

David Lee is now living in Hamilton, Ontario.

Leon Llewellyn was born on April 29, 1951, in Grenville, Saint Andrews, Grenada, to Eric Llewellyn and Vera Renaud Llewellyn. Llewellyn attended St. Andrews Anglican School in Grenville, Grenada (1956-1963), followed by Van Horn Elementary, in Montreal, Quebec. He later attended Northmount High School in Montreal (1965-1969). He is a graduate of Sir George Williams University in Montreal (1969-1975), where he received a BA in Fine Arts in 1974 and a Diploma in Art Education in 1975. Llewellyn is married to Danielle Fortas and they have two children, Jonathan and Julia Llewellyn.

Llewellyn is an artist and retired visual arts teacher, whose career was spent working for the English Montreal School Board, where he taught at Laurier MacDonald High School in Saint Leonard. Prior to his time working at Laurier MacDonald High School, he taught art and music at Aime Renaud High School in St. Leonard and worked as a teaching assistant at Miriam School in Montreal. Llewellyn was involved with many Black community organizations in Montreal, including the Black Studies Centre, Negro Community Centre (NCC), Cote-des Neiges Black Community Development Project, and the Quebec Board of Black Educators, among others. In addition to teaching art and developing art and photography programs for community organizations, including the Black Studies Centre, Llewellyn worked as a set designer for the Black Theater Workshop and a lighting technician at the Revue Theater. Llewellyn participated in many community organized exhibitions and provided artworks for community organizations, journals, and newspapers. He was present at many significant events in the Montreal Black community, including a presentation by Angela Davis in Montreal in 1974. In the 1960s and 1970s, he drew political and editorial cartoons for Uhuru and Focus Umoja. Llewellyn was the artist responsible for the sign above the doorway of the NCC, and the logo and banner on the top of Focus Umoja.

Wilson Griffith McConnell was born on March 3rd, 1908, as the eldest of four children of John W. McConnell and Lily Griffith. His father, John Wilson McConnell, was a well known Montreal personality and one of the richest men in Canada. Wilson Griffith McConnell was managing his father's sugar refinery, St.-Lawrence sugar.
Together with his wife Marjorie Wallace McConnell, he had one daugther, Jill.
As a jazz fan, Wilson Griffith McConnell was a collector of music recordings and recording equipment.
Wilson Griffith McConnell died on January 12, 1966.

Peter McDonald was born in Scotland, in 1919. He moved to Canada in 1929 and attended the Vancouver Provincial Normal School. From 1940 to 1941, McDonald worked as a teacher, and between 1942 and 1945, he worked in several radio stations as a freelance actor, writer, announcer, and soundman. Notably, he wrote several scripts for the show The Carsons, Canada’s longest-running radio serial. He joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Vancouver, as an announcer in 1945, and worked as a producer of documentaries, variety programs, and dramas between 1946 and 1950. In 1950, McDonald moved to Toronto, Ontario, where he continued to work as a producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio. Between 1952 and 1953, he worked as a TV drama producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto. In 1953, McDonald returned to Vancouver as Director of Television for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation at CBUT, the first television station in Western Canada. In 1956, he returned to Toronto as Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Assistant Director of Program Planning and Production, and in 1957, McDonald was appointed National Director of Television Network Programming. Notably, he introduced the shows Close-Up and Front Page Challenge during this period and was responsible for liaison with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s French network and the National Film Board (NFB).
Between 1959 and 1969, Peter McDonald was the vice president of Music Corporation of America (MCA). Then, from 1969 to 1971, he was the President of Universal Education and Visual Arts, a division of Music Corporation of America. In 1971, Peter McDonald was appointed Director of the Broadcast Programmes Branch of the Canadian Radio-Television Commission (CRTC) in Ottawa.

Peter McDonald died on October 15, 1995.

Bob McKenna is a Quebec artist and filmmaker working in visual and media arts.
Together with his brother Kevin, Bob McKenna participated in the exhibition "Corridart dans la rue Sherbrooke" that was sponsored by the Arts and Culture Committee of the 1976 international Olympic Games held in Montreal. The exhibition was dismantled by the City of Montreal before the Olympic Games opened. Several of the artists involved in the exhibition initiated legal proceedings against the city, these later known as the Corridart affair. Twenty-five years later, in 2001, Bob McKenna produced a documentary about the Corridart affair, entitled "About the Corridart Affair".

Brian McKenna was born in Montreal on August 8, 1945, as the eldest of five children of Leo McKenna, descendant of an Irish family that immigrated to Canada around 1850, and Agathe Macdonell, whose ancestors came to Ontario around 1786. Brian McKenna worked as journalist, author, filmmaker, producer, and contributor to numerous local and national radio and television shows. He passed away on May 5, 2023, at age 77.

Brian McKenna grew up in downtown Montreal, where he went to a French elementary school of the Congregation of Notre-Dame, until his family moved to the Montreal suburb of Valois, and later to Beaconsfield. While a student at St. Thomas High School in Pointe-Claire, McKenna worked as sports editor of the high school paper, the St. Thomas News. After his high school graduation in 1963, McKenna enrolled in the Honours English program at Loyola College. There he joined both the debating society and the college weekly paper, the Loyola News, first as a reporter, then desk editor and subsequently news editor. McKenna took over as editor-in-chief in autumn 1966. He received his Bachelor of Arts in English literature in 1967. He was hired as a summer reporter at the Montreal Star to cover the Expo 67 World’s Fair. In autumn 1967 he returned to studies and to work as editor of the Loyola News. In 1968, Brian McKenna graduated in communication arts and became a full-time reporter at the Montreal Star. From 1969 to 1971 he was parliamentary correspondent in Ottawa. McKenna resigned from the Montreal Star in 1973, to become story editor for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Montreal local TV news and current affairs show The City at 6. At that time, he also became the Quebec correspondent for the CBC’s national radio current affairs show As It Happens. In 1975 McKenna joined the current affairs program The Fifth Estate as founding producer. He remained there until 1988. In addition, since 1972, he independently produced several films. In the fall of 1980 McKenna Purcell Productions Inc. was formed and subsequently McKenna’s services were contracted through the company. In 1989, the production company Wartime Productions was incorporated by Brian McKenna and Susan Purcell. The same year, McKenna was named the Max Bell Fellowship visiting professor at the University of Regina School of Journalism, where he taught documentary filmmaking. Brian McKenna also worked on various projects with his brother Terence McKenna.

Brian McKenna wrote articles for Saturday Night, Weekend Magazine, the Literary Review of Canada, Cité libre, and The Last Post and did book reviews for the Montreal Gazette and the Toronto Star. He co-authored a biography of Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau. He contributed to the profiles of Montreal mayors Camilien Houde and Jean Drapeau to The Canadian Encyclopedia.

Throughout his career, Brian McKenna received numerous honours, awards, and prizes. In 1968, he was named Grand Old Man of Loyola News, and honoured as Man of the Year at the annual student awards ceremony. In 1973 he won his first ACTRA award for television writing and directing The City at 6 film documentary Settling Accounts. He also won the Anik Award for reporting, two Gemini awards for And Then You Die, and five Gemini Awards for The Valour and the Horror, a Canadian military history film series. He received further ACTRA awards, including one for His Worship Jean Drapeau, three ribbons from the American Film Festival, two Golden Sheaf awards from the Yorkton Film Festival, a medal at the New York Film Festival, and a “Chris” plaque at the Columbus Film Festival. For The Killing Ground, which he co-wrote with his brother Terence McKenna, he received a Wilderness Award and an Anik award.

Pierre Monat, born in 1947, is a retired graphic designer and artistic director based in Montreal. Politically engaged, Monat was involved in the 1968 occupation of the École des beaux-arts in Montreal, where he was a student. While he attended the École des beaux-arts, he was not formally trained as in graphic design. He describes his work in this area as “counterintuitive design.”

Monat was involved with the Jazz libre du Québec during the 1970s, creating posters and other materials for the group. He also had a studio, Atelier Pathographique, on the top floor of l’Amorce, an experimental venue that served as the headquarters for the Jazz Libre du Québec in the early 1970s. Around that time, Monat met Robert Forget, one of the founders of Vidéographe, while working at the National Film Board (NFB). (Forget and Monat were both working on Médium Média, a magazine published at the NFB.) It was then that he discovered video. At Vidéographe, Monat produced two experimental documentaries: Vive les animaux (1973) and Y'a du dehors dedans (1973). Y’a du dehors dedans is an experimental documentary, produced using a Portapak, about the Jazz libre du Québec. Vive les animaux shows a meeting between Edgar Morin and a number of Quebec intellectuals.

Monat also worked as a graphic designer for a number of publications, including Quartier latin, the student newspaper published at the Université de Montréal; Québec underground; Sexus; Allez chier; Le nouvel obsédé; La claque; Inter; Propos d’art; and Médium Média; among others. Monat is an honorary member of Vidéographe.

Pauline Morier, Canadian visual artist, was born on July 3, 1942 in Saint-Boniface, Manitoba, as the daughter of Guy Morier and Béatrice Painchaud. In 1960, she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. She briefly lived in France before moving to Montreal, Quebec, in 1965. From 1979 to 1994, Pauline Morier was member of the Conseil de la peinture du Québec. She was also member of La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse in Montreal during the 1980s and 1990s. Morier participated in various exhibitions at La Centrale, Véhicule Art and many other galleries. She also contributed to art magazines and radio broadcasts.

Lilian Mary Morter (born Jones) was born in London, England, on April 1st, 1924. She was daughter of William Jones, mayor of Gloucester, England, and carpet factory owner. From 1950 to 1987, she was married to the engineer Eric Morter. They had two children, Jennifer and Michael. The family immigrated to Canada in 1957, where they first lived in Toronto, Ontario, before settling in Montreal, Quebec, in 1963.

Morter began her career as actress with the Cheltenham Little Theatre Group in Gloucestershire, where she performed in her youth. When the family settled in Toronto, Morter started playing for CBC television. She founded The Questers, an amateur theatre company, and was president of the Broadview Barn Players. She also was member of the Christian Drama Council of Canada. Shortly after having moved to Montreal, Morter founded the theater group The Unknown Players. The group toured the city and presented plays in the English language, following Morter’s believe that theater should be accessible to everybody. Later, together with Jack Cunningham Morter founded the English lunchtime theatre Instant Theatre in Place Ville Marie, Montreal, which opened its doors on February 1, 1965. Morter was the head of the theatre until 1969. Her successor, Maurice Podbrey, closed the theatre in November 1969, to later reopen it as the Centaur Theatre. In 1971, Morter founded the touring company Pendulum Theatre, which offered performances all over Quebec. The bilingual production of Oskenonton, based on North American Indian legends and played by aboriginal actors, was its main success.

Morter completed a degree in library studies at Concordia University in 1977. From 1979 to 1986, she worked at Alcan Internationa. Following this, she worked as an assistant librarian at McGill University. In the 1990s, she was involved with the Westmount amateur drama group Dramatis Personae.

Mary Morter died on March 28, 2008 in Westmount, Québec.