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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".

Kevin McKenna was born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, in 1952. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute in New York in 1974.
Bob McKenna is an artist and filmmaker working in visual and media arts.
Together, the McKenna brothers 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. They created the large-scale photomontage Rues-miroirs, encompassing a panoramic view of five or six blocks of Sherbrooke Street and St-Laurent Street, where it was installed. The exhibition, and with it McKenna’s installation, was dismantled by the City of Montreal before the Olympic Games opened.

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.

Participation Quebec was founded in November 1976. It was a non-profit public interest organization dedicated to bringing together the anglophone and francophone communities in Quebec. Participation Quebec was non-partisan and was not affiliated with any other organizations until its eventual merger with Alliance Quebec. The organization was incorporated under the laws of Quebec and was registered as a charity for tax purposes. In 1978, the members of its executive were Michael Prupas (President), David Steward (Treasurer) and François Goulet (Executive Director). At that time, the organization had approximately 200 members.

According to Participation Quebec, it's goals were: "to have a positive influence on the policies of education and governmental institutions which promote the isolation of cultural groups within Quebec, or which are prejudicial to the building of a Quebec for all Quebecers" and "to improve the relations between the French and non-French speaking communities in Montreal." Throughout its years of Operation, Participation Quebec hosted symposiums, formed committees, sponsored meetings with government officials, prepared and tabled briefs, held press conferences, and organized speaker series, among other activities.

In May 1982, Participation Quebec and other anglophone rights organizations, including the Positive Action Committee, merged with Alliance Québec.

Alphonso (Alfie) Theodore Roberts was born in St. Vincent and the Grenadines on September 18, 1937. He attended St. George’s Anglican School and St. Vincent Boy’s Grammar School. Roberts was awarded a scholarship to study at Queen’s Royal College in Trinidad and Tobago where he was selected to play cricket internationally for the West Indies cricket team. He later stopped playing cricket as his interests in politics and education grew over sports. He worked as a civil servant in St. Lucia between the years 1958 and 1962 and moved to Canada at the age of 23 to study at Sir George Williams University in Montreal (Quebec), where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Political Sciences. He later obtained a graduate diploma in Public Administration from Carleton University.

Roberts was involved in several community organizations in Montreal. Significantly, he was a founding member of the St. Vincent and Grenadines Association of Montreal. He also helped establish the International Caribbean Service Bureau and was a member of the Emancipation 150 Committee, which organized the Emancipation 150 Conference. After working for 20 years at the administration department of SIDBEC, a steelworks company in Montreal, Roberts decided to return to his studies and registered at Dawson College as a full-time mature student in the Political Science program.

Roberts was a political activist. Along with contemporaries like Franklyn Harvey and Rosie Douglas, Roberts organized conferences and events that supported several major political movements in the Caribbean. These events also brought renowned Caribbean thinkers and writers - including C.L.R. James and George Lamming - to Montreal.

During the independence of St. Vincent 1979, Roberts submitted a proposal to the government highlighting the importance of adding the smaller islands to the country’s name. His proposal was accepted by the government, renaming the country St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Alfie Roberts was Married to Patricia Cambridge with whom he had a daughter and two sons. He died in Montreal on July 24, 1996.

Samuel Abraham Rochlin was born in Cape Town July 9, 1904 to Isaac Gershon Rochlin and Dora Rochlin (nee Daniller). His parents moved from Rostov on Don in South Russia to Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1896. They later moved to Cape Town where Samuel and his brothers Harry and Israel were born.

Rochlin, a historian, archivist, and researcher, witnessed the development of socialist and labour movements and the formation of the Communist Party of South Africa. Rochlin was a member of the Young Communist League in South Africa in the 1920s. Later he was involved in the Zionist movement, working for the Zionist Federation in Johannesburg and on the Zionist Record in the 1930s. He was also the first archivist of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), where he worked from 1947 to 1961. Rochlin is renowned for his research into South Africa’s Jewish settlers and was the chief research specialist of the South African Jewish Historical Society. Rochlin died November 14, 1961. In 1986 the SAJBD archives was renamed the S.A. Rochlin Archives in his honour.

Jaroslav Bohdan Rudnyckyj was born on November 28, 1910 in Peremyshl, Ukraine (now Poland). He was married to Maryna Rudnytska.
Rudnyckyj graduated in Slavic studies from Lviv University in 1937. He became research associate of the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Berlin (1938–40). Later he taught at the Ukrainian Free University in Prague and Munich, at Prague University (1941–45) and Heidelberg University (1947–48). After his immigration to Canada in 1949, Rudnyckyi became head of the department of Slavic studies at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, where he stayed until his retirement in 1977. From 1955 to 1970, he served as president of the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Rudnyckyj was member of the Canadian Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, which operated from 1963 to 1971. Furthermore, he was president of various associations, as the Canadian Linguistic Association (1958–60), the Canadian Association of Slavists (1959), and more. He was founding editor of Slavistica (1948), Onomastica (1951), Ukrainica Canadiana (1953–73), Ukrainica Occidentalia (1956–66), and Slovo na storozhi (1964–89). His numerous articles on Ukrainian language, onomastics, folklore, and literature have appeared in various periodicals, and many of his works have been separately published. After his retirement in 1977, Rudnyckyj moved to Montreal, Quebec. In 1992, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. Rudnyckyj died in Montreal on October 19, 1995.

Mary Soderstrom, born 1942 in Walla Walla Washington, is a novelist, short story and nonfiction writer. She has been involved in a number of literary organizations since she began her writing career in the 1970s. Soderstrom was a founding member of the Quebec Writers’ Federation; she sat on the National council of the Writers’ Union of Canada; and served on the Quebec program Writers in Schools where she was a liaison with the Conseil des arts et lettres du Quebec. She was also one of the founders of Write pour écrire, a bilingual literary show that was held in 1996, 1997, and 1998. Write pour écrire is seen as a precursor to the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival.

Soderstrom has been involved in provincial politics for more than 30 years, primarily the NDP and Québec Solidaire. She was the President of the Outremont NDP riding association during Thomas Mulcaire’s tenure as party leader.

Soderstrom has been nominated for numerous prestigious awards. She was shortlisted twice for the QSPELL Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction (finding the Enemy (1997) and Endangered Species (1995)) and was a finalist for the Books in Canada First Novel Award (1977). Green City: People, Nature and Urban Places (2007) was one of the Globe and Mail’s 100 best books of 2007.

Soderstrom has written a number of fiction and non-fiction books. Non-fiction publications include Concrete: From Ancient Origins to a Problematic Future (2020); Frenemy Nations: Love and Hate Between Neighbo(u)ring States (2019); Road Through Time: The Story of Humanity on the Move (2017); Making Waves: The Continuing Portuguese Adventure (2010); The Walkable City: From Haussmann’s Boulevards to Jane Jacobs’ Streets and Beyond (2008); Green City: People, Nature and Urban Places (2006); and Recreating Eden: A Natural History of Botanical Gardens (2001). Fiction publications include River Music (2015), Desire Lines: Stories of Love and Geography (2013), The Violets of Usambara (2008), After Surfing Ocean Beach (2004), The Truth Is (2000), The Words on the Wall; Robert Nelson and the Rebellion of 1838 (1998), Finding the Enemy (1997), Endangered Species (1995), and The Descent of Andrew McPherson (1976). Soderstrom also wrote the children’s book Maybe Tomorrow I'll Have a Good Time (1981). The Descent of Andrew McPherson was shortlisted for the Books in Canada First Novel Award.

Victoria Stanton is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator. She studied Creative Arts at Dawson College, Montreal, until 1989, and continued thereafter at Concordia University, where she graduated in 1995 with a bachelor of Fine Arts.She works as part-time professor in Fibers and Materials Practices at Concordia University. Stanton has performed and exhibited at various spaces and events at the local, national, and international levels. Time, transaction, transition, the in-between, and liminal spaces are central to her time-based work. In the spring of 2007, Victoria Stanton founded, together with Sylvie Tourangeau and Anne Bérubé, the Montreal-based performance art trio TouVA Collective, that has been researching the practice of performance through multiple frameworks and approaches. Stanton is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2018 Prix Powerhouse. She has held numerous residencies, including at McGill University, DARE-DARE, and Artexte. "Impure, Reinventing the Word: The Theory, Practice and Oral History of Spoken Word in Montreal" (conundrum press, 2001), co-authored with Vincent Tinguely, was her first book.
Victoria Stanton lives and works in Montreal, Quebec.

Sur Rodney (Sur) is a Canadian visual artist and multimedia performance artist, who is also known for his work as an archivist, writer and curator, but above all for his impact on the awareness about AIDS/ HIV and the Aids crisis in the arts scene.

Born as Rodney Adams in Montreal on December 28, 1954, he is the second child of photographer Desmond Rupert Adams and Jean Gertrude Adams, born Gordon. Sur Rodney grew up in the Jewish neighborhood of Mount Royal in Montreal, but his family was part of Montreal’s black community and Union United Church. In 1975, he officially changed his name from Rodney Adams to Sur Rodney (Sur), referring to himself as a surrealist. He was married to Gracie Mansion (then known as Joanne Mayhew Young) until 1989. Sur was married to Geoffrey Hendricks from 1995 until Hendrick’s death on May 12th, 2018.

From 1973 to 1975, Sur Rodney (Sur) studied at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts School of Art and Design. After having graduated, he moved to the East Village in New York City in the summer of 1976. At the time, Sur Rodney was working as a visual artist, mostly known through video projects. In the early 1980s, Sur became a member of the Blackheart Collective, a group of gay black poets, writer and multi-media performance artists, which allowed him to be included in various anthologies. At the same time, Sur Rodney (Sur) was program coordinator of The Sur Rodney (Sur) Show (1980) and the All New Sur Rodney (Sur) Show (1981), hosted on Manhattan Cable Television and featuring many young artists of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Also in 1981, Sur Rodney (Sur) and Tessie Chua co-produced the video Scary Truth About Cockroaches and Landlords. In 1982, Sur Rodney (Sur) “abandons his practice as a visual and performing artist to form a partnership with Gracie Mansion as co-director of the Gracie Mansion Gallery” in the Manhattan East Village. Later, Sur acted for two years as program director of Kenkeleba House, an African American cultural institution in Manhattan.

With the spreading of the AIDS epidemic in the late 1980s, Sur’s main occupation became the support of friends living with HIV/AIDS and the organization and preservation of their estates. From 1989 to 1994, he worked as an independent archivist for artists living with HIV/AIDS. He archived, among others, the estates of Swiss artist Andreas Senser, of photographer Timothy Greathouse, and of photographer Bern Boyle. In 1994, together with Geoffrey Hendricks and Frank Moore, Sur helped set up the Visual AIDS Archive Project to document the work of artists with HIV/AIDS and to secure the management of their estates. Sur also served on the Visual AIDS' Board of Directors for over ten years and worked on several curatorial projects and exhibitions relating to art and AIDS.

In the mid-1990s, Sur Rodney re-entered the art scene, working with Fluxus artist Geoffrey Hendricks on performances and other projects.

In 2012, Sur Rodney (Sur) received the Visual AIDS Vanguard Awards (VAVA Voom). In 2016, Sur was awarded the first ever Candy Darling Award during the Acker Awards for his community engagement as a community activist.

Guy Thouin is a musician and artist born on April 10, 1940, in Montreal. He studied percussion with a private tutor from 1959 to 1960, and during the early 60s, started playing drums at bars in Montreal. He graduated from l’École d’Optique du Québec in 1964 and worked as an optician for a year before he began his studies in fine arts at l‘École des Beaux-arts de Montréal. From 1969 to 1970, Thouin studied classic percussion at McGill University under Pierre Béluse. From 1971 to 1976 he studied Indian music in Pondicherry and Calcutta, India, specializing in Tabla.

In 1967, Guy Thouin, along with Yves Charbonneau, Jean Préfontaine, and Maurice C. Richard, became one of the founding members of Quatuor de jazz libre du Québec, originally known as Quatuor du nouveau jazz libre du Québec. The band played in several Montreal bars, colleges and Universities around Quebec, until they disbanded in 1974. In 1969, Thouin also joined L’Infonie, an avant-garde group where he played with Walter Boudreau and Raôul Duguay until 1971 when Thouin decided to leave both bands to study music in India. After returning to Montreal from India, Thouin rejoined the Montreal jazz scene and collaborated with several artists and musicians, including the band Mirage, which was a Montreal Jazz Festival finalist in 1985. In 1989, he founded the Heart Ensemble, a quintet of guest musicians that performed Guy Thouin’s compositions for over 20 years at cultural centres and bars in Montreal, Ottawa, Joliette, and several other cities around the province of Quebec. Many of these performances were recorded and broadcasted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). In 2012, along with Bryan Highbloom, Thouin founded the Nouveau Jazz Libre du Québec, playing several concerts, including one at the Suoni Pel II Popolo Festival.

Thouin composed Rien ô tout ou linéaire un, an immersive sound experience, while studying at McGill University. This sound environment was created for a work by visual artist Roland Poulin and was exhibited in 1971 at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. Since 2015, Guy Thouin continues to compose, play, and perform along with Félix-Antoine Hamel, in a new version of the Heart Ensemble called From the Basement, which invites musicians to play with them in their basement, and explore different avenues of the “free jazz” movement.

Vincent Tinguely is a writer and performance poet currently based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 2005, he self-published a novella titled Final Trainwreck of a Lost-Mind Summer. In 2006 he published a chapbook titled Parc Ave. Poems. Tinguely has also written extensively on spoken word and literary events and co-hosted a two radio shows on CKUT 90.3, Victorious & Invincible and Kitchen Kitchen Bang Bang.

Dr. Jean-Philippe Warren studied at Laval University, University of Montreal, and Concordia University. He is professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. He lives in Montreal.
Jean-Philippe Warren published over 200 papers, articles, and books on a wide variety of subjects related to Quebec society, it's social changes and political movements. For his book "Honoré Beaugrand : La plume et l’épée" (Montreal, Boréal, 2015), he won the Governor General’s Award for French-language non-fiction.