Jonathan Chamberlain Williams was born in Asheville, North Carolina on March 8, 1929 to Thomas Benjamin and Georgette Williams. He grew up in Washington, DC. Williams was an American poet, artist, and publisher. He studied Art History at Princeton University and painting with Karl Knaths at Phillips Memorial Gallery in 1949. He attended the Chicago Institute of Design and Black Mountain College from 1951 to 1956. Williams was a member of the U.S. Army Medical Corps between 1952 and 1954. In 1951, he founded Jargon Books (later Jargon Society Inc.) together with David Ruff. He was its executive director, editor, publisher, and designer. Williams died in Highlands, North Carolina on March 16, 2008.
Robert N. Wilkins was born in Montreal in 1947. He graduated from Sir George Williams University in 1969 (BA) and was a high school history teacher in Montreal for 35 years. In retirement, he was initially a regular contributor to the Westmount Examiner, and later a columnist for The Gazette (“Looking Back” and "Montreal Diary” pages). He is the author of Montreal 1909 (Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue: Shoreline, 2017). Using extracts from the 1909 editions of The Montreal Star and his own comments, he gave in this book a fascinating day-by-day account of the fast-growing Montreal during the Edwardian era (1900-1910).
Ken Whittingham attended Loyola College and worked on its weekly newspaper, the Loyola News, first as a reporter in 1967, then as desk and news editor in 1968-69, and associate editor in 1969-70. He became editor-in-chief in the fall of 1970. He graduated with a BA (Cum Laude) in Political Science in 1971.
From 1970 to 1979 he worked for the Montreal Star as a reporter and re-write editor covering the fields of education, health and social services. From 1978 to 1980, he was subsequently the Québec and Canadian correspondent for Washington D.C’s Chronicle of Higher Education. As such, he edited a weekly column on political, scientific and research developments and wrote articles about university and junior college education. During that period he also taught political science courses in the Continuing Education Department at Dawson College and worked as a story editor for CBC television Public Affairs programs. In 1980 he became a Public Relations Officer at McGill University, leaving in 1982 to join Concordia University’s Public Relations department as Assistant Director.
Ken Whittingham was named Concordia’s Public Relations Interim Director in 1984 and became Director in 1987. He developed marketing and communications strategies and co-chaired several key committees that oversaw the university’s communications and public relations activities.
After leaving Concordia in 1996, Whittingham became the Director of Communications and Research at Development and Peace, a position he held for ten years. In 1997, he received the Distinguished Service Award at Concordia’s Alumni Recognition Awards Banquet for his ongoing commitment to the Concordia Alumni Association and to the University.
Since 2006, he has been the Communications Officer at the McGill University Faculty of Engineering.
- Ken Whittingham received a Distinguished Service Award from the Concordia University Alumni Association (CUAA) at their Alumni Recognition Awards banquet held January 30, 1997.
Keith White, a jazz pianist and mathematics teacher, was born on June 19, 1929 in Toronto and now lives in Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec. He spent most of his childhood in Cleveland and came to Montreal at 15 to live with his grandparents. After graduating at the Montreal High School in 1949, he went to Clarkson College of Technology in Postdam, N.Y. He returned to Montreal in 1951 and attended Sir George Williams College (B. Sc. 1953, B. A. 1954).
From 1953, he worked as an engineer in Montreal while studying in the evenings. Between 1955 and 1957 he worked as engineer in Baltimore, Md., and Melbourne, Fl. From 1957 to 1959 he studied for a master’s degree in mathematics at the University of Miami. He returned to live in Montreal in the summer of 1959 where he began teaching mathematics at Sir George Williams University. He stayed on for two years and then taught in High Schools and CEGEPs. He retired from teaching in 1974.
Keith White began to play piano at age 6. In the 1950s, while studying and working for engineering firms, he worked in the evenings as a part-time musician, for example, in a relief band at Chez Paree in Montreal, in 1952-1953, as solo pianist for 3 months at the Baltimore hotel in 1955 and in 1960 as leader of the rhythm sections for the Montreal Jazz Society at Little Vienna (on Stanley Street). In 1952 he co-founded the Jazz Workshop with Paul Bley. Because of his teaching commitments Keith White retired from the jazz scene in the fall of 1960. From then on, he only worked occasionally as a musician. In the 1970s he organized a series of concerts at the Musée des Beaux-Arts under the name Jazz Workshop. His son André became a professional jazz drummer and pianist. Around 1980, the father and the son played together briefly at the C-Note.
White passed away on April 24, 2020.
Henry Frank Whiston was born in Montreal on March 11, 1928 as the second child of Henry Whiston and Rose Isabel Bristow Whiston, both immigrants from England. Henry Frank Whiston married Mary Xenos in 1960. They had two daughters, Barbara Eleanor and Lorraine Susan. He attended the High School of Montreal. During his school years, he worked part-time at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He was then hired full-time as a producer and worked at CBC until he retired in 1976. He had a long-standing interest in jazz, and worked as researcher, writer, and producer for the CBC-AM radio show "Jazz at Its Best", which was broadcast on Saturday mornings from 1952 to 1968. During the 1950s it ran locally in Montreal, and in the 1960s the program was broadcast nationally. It was hosted by Ted Miller. Henry Whiston produced other radio shows as well.
Henry Whiston died in Montreal June 24, 1984.
Sources: Interview with Mary Xenos Whiston; Encyclopedia of Music in Canada.
Ralph Whims is a retired teacher living in Sainte-Julie, Quebec. Whims was one of the first Black teachers working in Montreal’s English school system, and he spent his career at Lorne School in Pointe-Saint-Charles. Whims developed an interest in social work and teaching while involved with the Negro Community Centre. He attended the Negro Community Centre as a child and sat on the board of directors from 1994 to 1997. In the 1970s, Whims organized a weekly dance for high school kids. His experience as a chaperone at these dances was the subject of the documentary film The Chaperone (2013). This film chronicles the day that Whims took on a biker gang that showed up at a school dance taking place at Rosemont High School in the early 1970s. As a side business, Whims worked as a disc jockey in the 1960s and 1970s, and had what he describes as a “mobile discotheque.” Whims mother, Bernice Jordan Whims, inspired him to work in music, and as a child he started a band with two friends. Whims played the alto saxophone in a band with jazz drummer Norman Marshall Villeneuve. Whims had two daughters with his late wife Suzanne Trudel Whims. His grandfather was jazz pianist Lou Hooper Sr. His father was Lou Hooper Jr.
Orson Shorey Wheeler was born in 1902 in a farming family in Barnston in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. He died in October 1990. Orson Wheeler, R.C.A., S.S.C., was an artist and a well respected art teacher. He spent 55 years at Sir George Williams and its successor institution Concordia University.
His talent was discovered at a county fair and his development was encouraged by an American benefactor. He received a B.A. from Bishop's University in 1927. He studied at the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and the Monument national, both in Montreal, and at New York City's Cooper Union, Beaux Arts Institute, and National Academy of Design.
He began teaching at Sir George Williams in 1931. His professional career was multifaceted, but preeminent were his interests in sculpture and architecture. It is as a portrait sculptor that he will be remembered. All but one of the former rectors and principals of Sir George Williams sat for him. His major contribution to the field of architecture is a superlative collection of between two and three hundred architectural models in plasticine of many of the world's significant archictectural monuments. These were made as teaching aids for his classes in art and architectural history at Sir George Williams, Concordia, and McGill University. When viewed in series, they demonstrate the variances in how we perceive space. The unique collection makes possible more than 20,000 comparisons according to Wheeler's own calculations.
Wheeler's work was exhibited at the New York World's Fair, at the Tate Gallery in England, and in Canada at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the National Gallery in Ottawa, the Toronto Art Gallery, and the Winnipeg and Vancouver art galleries. At Concordia University his work is on public display in the library and the foyer of the Hall Building.