Sir Samuel Hughes was born January 8, 1853 at Solina near Bowmanville, Canada West. He was educated at the Toronto Model and Normal School and also attend the University of Toronto. He received honour certificates in English, French, German and History. While he was still in his teens he took part in the second Fenian Raid and from this battle he received a medal. He had 3 brothers and 7 sisters. His father and one brother were school teachers and with their encouragement he became a teacher in Belleville, Lifford and Bowmanville. He also taught at the Old King's Grammar School in Toronto as English and History Master from 1875 to 1885. He was the author of a school geography and a County and Railway Map of Ontario. In 1872 he married his first wife, Caroline J. Preston, at Lifford, Ontario. She died a year later. In 1875 Sam married again. He married Mary E. Burk, daughter of Harvey W. Burk who was liberal M.P. of West Durham, Ontario. Samuel started the Millbrook lacrosse team. Throughout this time he participated in the militia and politics in which he had a long career. At age 32 he moved his family to Lindsay where he had bought the newspaper The Victoria Warder. He was publisher from 1885 to 1897. He was a Member of Parliament for Victoria North in 1892 and in 1899 went to the Boer War in South Africa from which he was dismissed for military indiscipline. In 1911 he won the militia portfolio of the Borden government. He foresaw the World War I and he helped Canada prepare for it by building armouries across Canada. He stepped up the training program for the Canadian Militia and he was able to place in the field four divisions, complete with artillery, and all details. In August 1915 he was knighted by King George V. After the Ross Rifle fiasco he was forced to leave the Borden government in 1919. He stayed in politics for the Victoria/Haliburton Region until his death on October 24, 1921 in Lindsay, Ontario.
Robert Lloyd Hunter was born August 19, 1914 to Cecil Hunter and Josephine Sipprel. He went to Ridley College in St. Catharines, Ontario. He received a Bachelor of Commerce and Law Certificate from the University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall. From 1939 to 1942 he served as Lieutenant of the 7th Toronto Reserve Regiment and from 1942 to 1945 he served as Captain with the 26th Field Regiment. In 1944 he married Hope Hazen Mackay and they had three daughters. In 1947 he was called to the Bar in Ontario and from 1947 to 1950 he served as a solicitor with the firm of Fraser & Beatty in Toronto. Subsequently, he was Vice-President and Director of Pitfield, Mackay, Ross investment dealers. He was an avid collector of Canadiana (Taken from: Who's Who in Canada. Volume 73). Robert Hunter died in 1986.
John Huston was born in Ireland in 1790. He married Martha Middleton (1787-1867), also of Ireland, and they came to Upper Canada by way of New York. Together they had four children: Mary Anne, Jane, Eliza, and Joseph. On 28 October 1820, Huston was authorized by the government to assist in surveying the Peterborough area. He also worked closely with Peter Robinson in settling the Irish immigrants into Emily Township in 1825. As well as being a highly respected surveyor, Huston was a Captain in the Durham Volunteer Militia, and a Justice of the Peace. He died in Cavan on 18 May 1845 at the age of 55.
William H. Ives was a builder and a contractor in Colborne, Ontario, at the end of the nineteenth century.
Elgie Ellingham Miller Joblin was born April 6, 1909 in Toronto to Flora Gertrude Elgie, of Toronto, and Frederick George Joblin, of the Isle of Wight in England. Elgie married Helen Majorie Smith of Rawdon Township on October 21, 1936. He studied at Victoria College, Emmanuel College and the University of Toronto. His M.A. thesis was entitled, "The Education of the Indians of Western Ontario". He was ordained as a United Church minister in 1936. He served the Aboriginal Peoples of Ontario as a student and minister in South Caradoc from 1936 to 1944. He taught and supervised the residential school at Muncey, Ontario from 1946 to 1957. He was the Assistant and later the Associate Secretary for Home Missions from 1957 to 1971. He served at Coboconk, Ontario, until his retirement from the ministry. He died in 1993.
Richard Johnston was born August 8, 1946 in Pembroke, Ontario. He was raised near Peterborough, Ontario and educated at Trent University, where he worked as an administrator and counsellor after earning his Bachelor of Arts in History and English. He later became a community worker and administrator, specializing in the problems of the elderly. He also worked as an organizer for former NDP leader Stephen Lewis, and ran for the party leadership in 1982, finishing second to Bob Rae. He served as chair of the NDP caucus, and chair of the Legislature's Social Development Committee. He also participated in select committees on the constitution, health care and education. He represented Scarborough West from 1979 to 1990, serving his last three years as the New Democratic Party's critic on education; colleges, universities and skills development; and women's issues. He was also the party's spokesperson for the disabled, and was responsible for issues affecting Metro Toronto. During his six years as Community and Social Services critic, Richard fought both inside and outside the legislature on behalf of the poor. In 1982, he publicly highlighted the plight of the poor by going on a one-month "welfare diet," living on the report called "The Other Ontario", which exposed the extent of the province's hidden poverty. In early 1987 he and his colleagues presented their report to an independent social assistance review committee. The report, called "Toward a New Ontario", recommended an overhaul of the existing social assistance system and a series of other policy changes to bring a new independence to Ontario's disadvantaged. He was a strong advocate of disarmament and in 1986 was able to move the Ontario legislature to declare Ontario nuclear-weapons-free. Also in 1986, Richard travelled to Nicaragua where he helped build a school and medical facility. From 1991 to 1995 Richard was chair of the Ontario Council of Regents. In 1996 he became a member of Trent University's Board of Directors and in 1998 became President of Centennial College in Scarborough, Ontario.
Professor David Kettler received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He began teaching Political Studies at Trent University in 1971. During his tenure, Kettler was instrumental in setting up the Social Theory program. He was on the Julian Blackburn College Academic Advisory Board from 1976 to 1979. In 1987 he began teaching Cultural Studies. He retired from Trent in 1991.
C.E. Cooper Cole was marrried to Sarah Kenwick Tucket. They had four sons and one daughter. His one son is Alfred O.C. Cole, who has played a major role in the history of Trent University.
Thomas B. Collins owned a general store in Millbrook, Ontario, in the late 1800's and early 1900's.
Karl Mannheim, pioneer sociologist of knowledge, was born on March 27, 1893 in Budapest, Hungary, to a prominent Jewish family. He studied at a University in Budapest and received a degree in philosophy. In 1919, after several collapses of the two post-war revolutionary regimes in Hungary, Mannheim settled in Heidelberg, Germany. There he established himself as a private scholar. After several notable publications, lectures and seminars, Mannheim was asked to succeed Franz Oppenheimer as Professor of Sociology at Frankfurt in 1928. By 1933, he was suspended from the position due to the increasing powers of the Nazi party in Germany. The same year, he moved to London, England, at the invitiation of Harold Laski. Mannheim spent the following ten years of his life as a lecturer at the London School of Economics. In approximately 1943, he was appointed Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of London. He died in 1947 at the age of 53. (taken from Kettler et. al. Karl Mannheim. London: Tavistock Publications Ltd., 1984.)
Rosemary McConkey was educated at the University of Western Ontario, Ohio State University and the University of Chicago. She holds a Master of Science degree and has worked as a dietitian, nutritionist and health educator at such institutions as South Chicago Community Hospital, Mercy Hospital and Medical Center Chicago, Montreal General Hospital, St. Joseph's Hospital and Peterborough Civic Hospital in Peterborough Ontario. McConkey was also Assistant Professor in the Department of Preventative Medicine at Ohio State University. She has been active in many venues as a health and nutrition consultant and teacher including being Director of Research and Development at the International Heath Awareness Centre in Michigan. Her last position before retiring was as Chief Therapeutic Dietitian at Peterborough Civic Hospital.
Amy Cosh (1902-1967) was a Bobcaygeon librarian who requested that all Bobcaygeon men joining the Canadian Armed Forces in WWII send her their photograph. She assembled these in a scrapbook and added newspaper clippings containing any local information.
Roy Russell Merifield was born 11 June 1916. He attended McGill University in Montreal, Quebec and was a graduate of its' law school. He served as a senior officer with the Shawinigan Water and Power Company and in the Canadian Navy during World War II. He became the general supervisor of corporate trust at the Royal Trust Company in Montreal. In 1967 he joined the Victoria and Grey Trust Company in Toronto as its vice-president and general manager. In 1974, Mr. Merifield took on the additional position of corporate secretary for Victoria and Grey and in 1979 he was named general counsel of the company. He retired from Victoria and Grey in 1981 at which point he was commissioned to write "From County Trust to National Trust" by the Company. This took 7 years to write. He and his wife, Helen, divide their time between their home in Toronto and cottage on Lake Memphramagog, near Magog in Quebec.
George Cobb ( - 2003) was a local historian, who in 1966 was commissioned by Trent University to begin an experimental program in oral history. The tapes in this fonds are the results of his efforts.
Professor Kenneth E. Kidd was born July 21, 1906 at Barrie, Ontario as the son of D. Ferguson Kidd and Florence May Jebb. He was educated at Victoria College at the University of Toronto (B.A. 1931 and M.A. 1937). He also attended the University of Chicago from 1939 to 1940. He married Martha Ann Maurer in October, 1943. In 1935 he joined the Ethnology Department of the Royal Ontario Museum where he worked until 1981 in various positions, starting as an assistant and ending as Curator of Ethnology. He directed the excavation at Ste. Marie I, the site of a 17th century Jesuit Mission near Midland, Ontario, which was the first excavation of a historical site using modern techniques, in North America. In 1964, Kidd joined Trent University as a professor of Anthropology and in the following year he established and chaired the Native Studies Program which was the first of its kind in Canada. He retired from Trent University in 1972, and in 1973, Professor Kidd was named Professor Emeritus of Anthropology. Throughout his career, Professor Kidd was honoured with many awards. Some of these awards include the Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, 1951-52; the Cornplanter Medal, 1970; Award for Eminent Service, Trent University, 1983 (See the Trent Fortnightly Volume 13, Number 21, Thursday, May 19, 1983. Trent University Archives Reading Room); J.C. Harrington Medal, Society for Historical Archaeology, 1985; and an Honorary Degree from Trent University, 1990. He published "Canadians Long Ago" and with Selwyn Dewdney published "Indian Rockpaintings of the Great Lakes". Professor Kenneth E. Kidd died February 26, 1994, at the age of eighty-eight in Peterborough, Ontario.
William O. Mitchell (W.O.) was born in 1914 at Weyburn, Saskatchewan. He grew up in Florida and came back to Canada in 1931 to study at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. After travelling around North America and Europe he finished his BA at the University of Alberta and became a rural school teacher. He gave this up in 1944 to write full-time and was published in 1947 with Who has seen the wind. From 1948 to 1951 he was the fiction editor for McLeans Magazine and lived in Toronto, Ontario. He published a number of books, radio shows and poetry. Mitchel died in 1998. (Taken from: The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1993.)
Dorothy Moir attended University of Toronto in the Faculty of Arts program and was enrolled in the 1st year Household Science course in the 1926-1927 academic year.
Gilbert C. Monture was born on August 27, 1896 on the Six Nations Reserve, Brant County, Ontario. He was the great grandson of Joseph Brant. In 1921, he received his Bachelor of Science degree in Mining and Metallurgy from Queen's University. Monture enlisted in World War I as a gunner in the Royal Canadian Field Artillery. In 1923 he became editor of publications for the Dominion Department of Mines and in 1929 became chief of the Division of Mineral Economics of the Mines Branch in Ottawa. During World War II, Monture worked in the Department of Munitions and Supply. Monture resigned from government service in 1956 and was appointed vice-president of Stratmat, a Canadian minerals exploration and development company. In 1957, he received the Indian Achievement Award of the Indian Council Fire for notable contributions in his field. In 1958, he was appointed honorary chief of the Mohawk tribe of the Six Nations Reserve at Brantford. He was elected a member of the Order of Canada, and in 1966 received a Vanier Medal. Monture served on the Board of Governors of Trent University from 1966-1973, and Monture House, near Rubidge Hall, was named after him. He died on June 19, 1973 in Ottawa.
David R. Morrison was born in 1941. He held several positions at Trent University: Professor in the Department of International Development Studies and Department of Political Studies; Chair of the Association of the Teaching Staff; Dean of Arts and Science; Dean of Arts and Science and Provost; President and Vice-Chancellor (acting); Vice-President Academic (interim); and Director of the Trent International Program. He received an Eminent Service Award at Trent University in 2007. For further information about the career of David R. Morrison, visit the following web page: https://www.trentu.ca/ids/faculty-research/dr-david-morrison (last visited 13 September 2017).
John Langton was born in April 1808 in England. He was educated at Trinity College in Cambridge and received his M.A. in 1832. In 1833 John emigrated to Canada and settled near Peterborough, Upper Canada. He represented Peterborough in the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada from 1851 to 1855. In 1855 he became the auditor of public accounts. Later, in the year of Confederation, he assumed the role of auditor-general of Canada and he held this position until 1878. He married Lydia Dunsford (daughter of John Harley Dunsford) in 1845 and together they had 5 sons and 2 daughters. John Langton died March 19, 1894 at Toronto.
William Morrison was a gold miner in California. In 1853, he was planning to go to Australia if he could find suitable passage. His brother, James, lived in Dummer Township at that time.
Alexander Geerardt Mörzer Bruyns was born in Holland in 1877 and emigrated to Canada in 1925 where he was recognized as a distinguished authority on agricultural affairs. Upon immigrating, he settled in Limehouse, Ontario and became a farmer and stock breeder, later moving to Acton, and then to Georgetown. He was chairman of the Live Stock Improvement Association and the Milk Producers Association. He was also author of the book, The Good Husbandry Dollar, and several articles related to agriculture. Mörzer Bruyns died in Georgetown, Ontario in 1955.
William Hamilton Munro was born in Peterborough, Ontario, the oldest son of George and Euphemie Hamilton Munro. He attended public school and high school in Peterborough and later entered the School of Practical Science, University of Toronto, from which he graduated in 1904. He joined the engineering staff of his grandfather's firm, the William Hamilton Manufacturing Company, for a short time and later worked for other engineering companies. First with John B. McRae of Ottawa and later with Smith Kerry & Chase of Toronto. During this period, Munro gained wide experience in dam and power house construction. In 1909, W.H. Munro was transferred to the Electric Power Company of Ontario and 1910 was appointed manager of the Peterborough Light & Power and Radial Railway Companies, branches of Electric Power. He remained in this position until 1915 when the company was expropriated by the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario.
He then joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force and went overseas as a transport officer. On his arrival in England, W.H. Munro was stationed at a reception and training base at Shorncliffe, Kent. Here he remained for eight months before being posted to northern France early in 1916. In France he was appointed workshop officer of No. 3 Canadian Ammunition Sub Park. He was still in northern France on Armistice Day, 1918 and was with the Canadian Forces during their brief occupation of Germany in 1919. On May 29, 1919, Munro married Angele Melina Marie Pouille of Bruay, Pas de Calais, France. He took his military discharge in England and joined Vickers Limited of London and Barrow-in-Furness. This involved him in water turbine engineering and sales which led to a good deal of travel. He remained in England until 1925 when he was appointed sales manager of Canadian Vickers of Montreal.
Munro left Vickers in 1926 to become manager of the Nova Scotia Tramways and Power Company in Halifax. He remained in this position until 1928 when he was appointed manager of the Bolivian Power Company Limited in La Paz, Bolivia. In 1933, W.H. Munro returned to Canada and joined International Utilities Limited as general manager of one of its divisions, the Ottawa Light, Heat & Power Company until it was taken over by Ontario Hydro in 1949. He remained as manager of International Utilities until his retirement in 1951 when he and his wife returned to Peterborough, Ontario.
W.H. Munro died in 1976.