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Roger Verschingel was born on January 19, 1928 and died on May 27, 1996 in Montreal. He was a professor of chemistry at Concordia University and one of its two founding institutions, Sir George Williams University. He received a Diplôme d’études scientifiques from Collège Notre-Dame in June 1946, a Bachelor of Science from Sir George Williams College in 1949 and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from McGill University in 1955.

He joined the Sir George Williams University staff in 1954 as a lecturer in Chemistry (Natural Science Division). He later became associate professor and professor in 1968. He was Chair of the Department of Chemistry from 1968 to 1973, and was Dean of Sir George Williams Faculty of Science from 1973 until the creation of the Concordia University Faculty of Arts and Science in 1977. Professor Verschingel retired in 1993.

Maïr Verthuy started her teaching career at Concordia University as a Sessional Lecturer in French at Sir George Williams University in 1966, becoming Assistant Professor in 1969. After the merger of Loyola College and Sir George Williams University in 1974, she worked with other feminist scholars on the establishment of a college dedicated to Women’s Studies. She became the first principal of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at its opening in 1978. Verthuy remained an Associate Professor at the department of Études françaises until being granted the rank of Professor in 1992. She would be getting the title of Distinguished Professor Emerita, in 2004 after announcing her retirement in 2003. She’s the author of many books and articles and presented at many colloquia around the world. Her domains of expertise are women’s rights and French literature.

• Maïr Verthuy chaired Concordia’s Arts Faculty Council Committee on Experimentation and Innovation in Higher Education (or AFC Education Committee) in 1974.
• Verthuy was a Democratic Alliance candidate in the St. Louis riding during the Quebec general election of 1976 (becoming Maïr Williams-Verthuy for the occasion as women running at the time had to use their maiden name tacked to their married names).
• In 1978, Verthuy launched Les Cahiers de la femme/Canadian Women’s Studies of which she was an editor.
• Verthuy gave the opening remarks at the Terre des Femmes ’79, a meeting of women’s groups from the Island of Montreal organized by the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Loyola’s Campus Centre in March 1979.
• On May 4, 1979, Maïr Verthuy was honoured at Salon de la femme for her extraordinary contribution to the status of Women in the province of Quebec especially in the field of education.
• Maïr Verthuy was the chief organizer of the International Conference on Research and Teaching Related to Women, sponsored by the Simone the Beauvoir Institute and held July 26 to August 4, 1982. The conference attracted 342 participants from 82 different countries.
• Maïr Verthuy received the John O’Brien Tenth Anniversary Distinguished Teaching Award in 1985.
• A Maïr Verthuy Scholarship was established in 1986. Its first recipient was Kathy Silver.
• Verthuy was one of the founders of the Centre de recherche et d’enseignement sur la francophonie et les femmes (CREFF) in 1988. Among other things, the centre aimed at promoting local research on women in francophone countries.
• In September 1995, she represented Canada at the United Nations World Conference on Women held in Beijing.
• The YMCA selected Verthuy as the recipient for the 1997 Women of Distinction Award for the Advancement of Women.
• The three-day conference Les Femmes de lettres et le français hors frontière held at Concordia in May 15 to 17, 1998 was held in honour of Maïr Verthuy.
• On the recommendation of Quebec’s Minister of Education, Verthuy was made Chevalière, Ordre des Palmes Académiques by decree of the prime minister of France in recognition of her long commitment to teaching and research in French language and culture in 2002.
• Verthuy was granted a Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case on November 7, 2008.
• She was named to the Order of Canada by the Governor General in 2012.
• Verthuy was the subject of the 2014 movie Autour de Maïr, directed by Hejer Charf.
• She was inducted in the Ordre national du Québec, becoming a Chevalière in 2019.

Norman (Norm) Marshall Villeneuve was born in Montreal, Quebec, on May 29, 1938. His mother is Adeline Villeneuve. From age 7, he was raised by foster parents, Alonso and Josephine Griffith, in the Little Burgundy area of St. Henri in Montreal. He is married to Louise Artibello-Villeneuve.
Norman Marshall Villeneuve first learned tap dance from his foster brother Charles. He began his career as a tap dancer and singer at age 8. At the same time, he began to teach himself how to play drums, and received piano lessons from Daisy Peterson-Sweeney at the Negro Community Centre. By age 14 he was a professional drummer. He has had a successful career as a musician for more than six decades. In the 1960s and early 1970s, he worked at Montreal clubs, including Rockhead’s Paradise, Chez Paris, the Black Bottom and Café la Bohème. From 1965 to 1968, he toured as a drummer with his cousin Oliver Jones throughout North and South America. In 1974, Norman Marshall Villeneuve moved from Montreal to Toronto, where he played in several jazz clubs, including Bourbon Street, The Senator, The Pilot and The Rex. Under his banner “Norman Marshall Villeneuve’s Jazz Message”, Villeneuve has mentored many young jazz musicians and has provided emerging musicians with the opportunity to perform. He relocated to Montreal in 2013.

1983 Faculty of Fine Arts graduate, artist, and long-time community volunteer, Lillian Vineberg was elected Vice-Chair of the Board of Governors in July 1997 for a one-year term, having served since 1996 as a community-at-large representative. Vineberg assumed the role of interim Chair of the Board of Governors in 1999, following the sudden death of then Chair, Reginald K. Groome, before being elected Chair of the Board of Governors at their November 17, 1999 meeting. Vineberg stepped down as Chair in 2003 and was soon re-elected to the Board of Governors as community-at-large representative until her retirement in 2011.

• Vineberg served on several Advisory Search Committees: in 1996 she represented the community-at-large on the Advisory Search Committee for the Dean of Engineering and Computer science; in 1997 she was a member of the Advisory Search Committee for the Director of University Libraries; in 1999 she represented the community-at-large on the Advisory Search Committee for the position of Rector and Vice-Chancellor; in 2003 she represented the Executive Committee on the Advisory Search Committee for Provost; in 2004 she represented the community-at-large on the Advisory Search Committee for the Dean of Fine Arts.
• In 1998, along with other 35 prominent Montrealers, Vineberg was a member of the External Advisory Board of the Faculty of Fine Arts, which was created to publicize faculty accomplishments.
• In 1998 Vineberg also chaired the Task Force on the Revitalization of the Loyola Campus, created to find solutions to Loyola’s longstanding identity crisis. The Force’s final report was submitted to the Board of Governors at their April 15, 1998 meeting, after seven months of intense work. Richard J. Renaud paid tribute to Vineberg at the Richard J. Renaud Science Complex opening ceremony on September 2, 2003, citing her work as Chair of the Force.
• Vineberg raised $7,200 in pledges at the 2000 Concordia Shuffle.
• Vineberg spoke at a February 20, 2001 ceremony unveiling two large installations in the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall lobby in acknowledgement of the generosity of donors to the recent Capital Campaign. She was appointed Chair of the Installation Committee in 2005.
• On May 11, 2006 Vineberg received the Humberto Santos Award of Merit at the 15th Annual Concordia University Alumni Association Recognition Awards banquet for her work with the Board of Governors, Fine Arts Advisory Board, and Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery Board.
• The Lillian Vineberg Graduate Award in Painting and Drawing was created in 2010.

Musician Victor Stephan Vogel, of Austrian-Hungarian descent, known as Vic Vogel, was born in Montreal on August 3, 1935, as the second son of first-generation immigrants Emilia Zuelt and Mathias Vogel, who was of gypsy origin. Vic Vogel grew up on Bullion Street in Montreal. His father played accordion, and especially violin. Vic learned to play piano at the age of 5, by watching his older brother Frank as he studied piano. Vic also taught himself to play trombone, tuba, and vibraphone as well as arranging. At twelve years old, he dropped out of school. He started performing in Montreal Jazz clubs, and by the late 1950s he was playing in numerous orchestras. In 1960 he conducted his first ensemble at the Montreal night club Chez Paree. He went on tour with the orchestra Les Doubles Six de Paris in 1961 and with a CBC band in 1966. From 1965 to 1982, he was part of the staff creating the emission “Femmes d’aujourd’hui” at Radio-Canada, and has been musical director for a number of variety shows. At CBC radio, he conducted his own bands, including the Vic Vogel Big Band, which was formed in 1968. During its 50 years existence, this band became an important part of Montreal’s jazz scene. Every year from 1980 to 2015, Vic Vogel performed at the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal. He composed and arranged the music for the opening ceremonies for the Man and his World world's fair Expo 67, the Olympic Games held in Montreal in 1976, the Canada Games in 1985, as well as for the 1981 and 1985 Grey Cup football game half-time shows. Vogel’s other compositions include musicals for the Théâtre des variétés, program themes for CBC-TV and CTV, and film soundtracks. He has also created arrangements for jazz soloists and symphony orchestras. Vic Vogel released his first piano solo album in May 1993. In 2010, Vogel was awarded an honorary doctorate in music by Concordia University. In June 2019, he received the Medal of the National Assembly.
Vic Vogel died in Montreal on September 16, 2019.

Canadian painter Marion Wagschal was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 1943, as the daughter of Jewish refugees from Germany. The family immigrated to Canada in 1951. Wagschal received her graduate degree from Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University), Montreal, in 1975, and went on to become a professor at the university in the Faculty of Fine Arts’ Painting and Drawing Department, where she taught for thirty-seven years before retiring in 2008.

Wagschal’s works have been displayed on international and national platforms and her works are featured in private and public collections throughout the world, including the Musée d’art contemporaire in Montreal, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, the Musée de Joliette, the Musée des Beaux Arts du Québec, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Plattsburgh State Art Museum, and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa, ON).

Robert E. Wall was a professor of history and university administrator. He accepted an associate professor position at Sir George Williams University, leaving Michigan State University in 1970. He acted as Chair for the department of History between 1972 to 1977 before being named Faculty Provost in 1977. Wall would leave Concordia University for a Provost position at New Jersey’s Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1980.

• In the Spring of 1977, Wall was charged by the University Senate to establish ‘small units such as colleges’ within the Arts and Science faculty. The creation of colleges would solve the overspecialization and depersonalization problems present at the time. Following his proposals, the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, the Centre for Mature Students, the Science College, the Lonergan University College, the School of Community and Public Affairs and the Liberal Arts College would be created.
• In 1980, Wall published the historical novel Blackrobe, a bestseller that would later be adapted by CBS into a successful radio drama series.
• Wall received an Honorary Degree from Concordia University at the Arts and Science Convocation ceremony of June 1999.

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.

Following elementary and secondary education under the Religious Sisters of the Sacred Heart in Montreal, Katherine Waters studied English at McGill University and then at Oxford University. In 1962 she became the first woman hired to teach at Loyola College. After its merger in 1974 with Sir George Williams University to form Concordia University, she continued teaching English at Concordia. She was active in university and feminist politics. She was one of the founders of Concordia University's Simone de Beauvoir Institute. She was intensely and continuously involved in university political and service work for many years. She retired in 1996.

Thomas Waugh was born on April 24, 1948 in London, Ontario. He graduated from the University of Western Ontario with a BA (Honours) in English Language and Literature in 1970. He then attended Columbia University School of the Arts where he subsequently completed a MFA in Film in 1974 , a M. Phil. in film in 1976 and a Ph. D in Film in 1981 (with Distinction). In 1976, he joined Concordia University as assistant professor in Film Studies. He became associate professor in 1981 and was promoted full professor in 1994. In 1989, Waugh co-taught Concordia’s first gay film and literature course with Robert K. Martin. In 1992, he was instrumental in organizing La Ville en Rose, the first Québec lesbian and gay studies conference which drew over 1,500 activists, academics and media to Montreal from around the world. Professor Waugh was also active in departmental, Faculty and University committees such as the Faculty of Fine Arts’ Permanent Review Committee on the Status of Women, and Concordia’s Task Force on Lesbian and Gay Life.

In 1993, as head of the academic sub-committee of the Concordia HIV/AIDS Advisory Committee, he founded the HIV/AIDS Project. The same year, the HIV/AIDS Lecture Series was launched with contributions from leading academic thinkers, scientific experts, artists, and community leaders who have been diversely affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In the fall of 1994, the course HIV and AIDS: Cultural, Social and Scientific Aspects of the Pandemic was introduced.

In the fall of 1998, he became the Director of a newly launched minor in Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality, which included courses on queer cinema, lesbian issues and realities, cultural, social and scientific aspects of AIDS/HIV. From 2000 to 2001, he was Chair of the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. Between 2008 and 2015, he was Concordia Research Chair in Documentary Film and Sexual Representation. In 2015, he established the Queer Media Database Canada-Quebec Project with filmmaker Kim Simard, an online catalogue of LGBTQ films made in Canada, and the makers involved in their creation. Thomas Waugh retired from Concordia in 2017.

Apart from his teaching activities, Thomas Waugh pursues research interests in sexual representation, documentary film and video, Canadian cinema, queer cinema, and photography. He published several articles and books on these subjects (anthologies, collections, monographs).