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Elaine Briere is a Vancouver documentary-maker, photographer, journalist and social justice activist. Her documentary, Bitter Paradise: The Sell-Out of East Timor, won the best political documentary award at the Hot Docs Festival, North America’s preeminent documentary film showcase, in 1997. In addition to her work on East Timor, which includes a published collection of photographs (Testimony: Photographs of East Timor, Between the Lines, 2004), Briere has directed a documentary on Canadian merchant seamen, Betrayed: The Story of Canadian Merchant Seamen (1997), and has produced photo-journalism and print articles for "The Tyee", "Briarpatch", "Our Times", and other publications dedicated to labour and social justice issues. Briere’s photographs have appeared in many publications including, Carte Blanche Photography 1 (2004); The Other Mexico: The North American Triangle Completed (1996), South East Asia Tribal Groups and Ethnic Minorities (1987) and The Family of Women (1979). Her photographs have been featured in exhibits in Canada, Japan, Sweden and the United States.

The University of British Columbia's Faculty of Law opened in September 1945. Prior to this, law students in British Columbia articled for three years and attended lectures given by the legal profession at the Vancouver Law School (V.L.S.) operated by the Law Society of British Columbia. After lengthy discussions a joint Law Society/UBC committee was struck in July 1945 to submit recommendations and plans for the establishment of a Faculty of Law. The University's Board of Governors and Senate approved the committee's recommendations late in August. The faculty's original staff consisted of George F. Curtis (professor and dean), Frederick Read and Alfred Watts. The Faculty was housed in converted army huts on campus and would remain there until 1952. Student enrollment increased significantly following World War II. By the early 1950s the Faculty had outgrown its accommodations and Dean Curtis began plans for a permanent Faculty of Law Building. Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent opened the new building in 1952. Curtis was succeeded in 1971 as Dean by Albert J. McClean. The Faculty continued to grow throughout the seventies, again raising the need for a larger building. In 1975 the existing building was remodelled and a new addition constructed. This new structure was completed in 1976 and named the George F. Curtis Building. In 1985 Chinese Legal Studies was added to the East Asian programme through a
joint U.B.C./Peking University exchange of legal scholars and graduate students. That same year also saw the establishment of a Cooperative Project in Law and Computers with IBM Canada.

Dr. Allon Peebles was born October 20th, 1900 in New Westminster. He graduated from UBC in 1920 and had a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia. Dr. Peebles taught economics at the University of California and at Columbia had worked with a committee in the United States on the costs of medical care. A medical and labour research economist, he was chairman of B.C.’s first Health Insurance Commission in 1936 and helped fashion the later B.C. Hospital Insurance Service. The 1936 Health Insurance Act was written by Peebles and Harry Morris Cassidy. In 1941, Peebles went to Ottawa as first executive director of the Unemployment Commission and was in charge of the labour department’s research and statistics. He wrote several books on medical facilities, insurance and care. After retiring from the labour department in 1947, Allon Peebles entered private business in Chatham, Ontario. He died in Ottawa on March 13, 1962.

In 1910 the Canada Synod and Synod of Central Canada of the Lutheran Church entered into an agreement to establish a Lutheran Seminary. Though the location first proposed for the Seminary was Toronto, Waterloo was selected when its citizens offered a tract of land on the boundary of the town. The choice of location was affected, too, by the fact that the majority of Lutherans in Ontario lived in the vicinity of Waterloo and Berlin (Kitchener). In 1911 the Evangelical Lutheran Seminary of Canada opened its doors.

Facilities for pre-theological education were established in 1914 with courses leading to senior matriculation given in Waterloo College School.

In 1924 the Waterloo College of Arts, providing courses in post-secondary education in a four year program, was established. In 1925 the Faculty of Arts, under the name of Waterloo College, affiliated with the University of Western Ontario. Waterloo College soon began to offer Honours degree programs in the arts.

The affiliation with the University of Western Ontario ended in 1960 when the Seminary obtained a revised charter changing the name of the institution to Waterloo Lutheran University.

On November 1, 1973, Waterloo Lutheran University became Wilfrid Laurier University, one of Ontario's provincially assisted universities after Bill 178 was given Royal Assent by the Lieutenant Governor, former Wilfrid Laurier University Chancellor William Ross Macdonald.

Nils Willison (1880-1964) was a Lutheran pastor, professor and administrator. Willison graduated from the University of Toronto in 1908, received a BA from Queens University, and was the first graduate of Evangelical Lutheran Seminary (now Waterloo Lutheran Seminary) in 1914. He was a professor at Waterloo College from 1918-1928, and also served as Registrar. From 1928-1936 Nils Willison was pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church, Hamilton. He was President and Dean of the Lutheran College and Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, from 1936-1949. Willison returned to Ontario in 1949 and served as pastor of the Owen Sound-Wiarton parish until 1952. He was a member of the Board of Governors of Waterloo College and Seminary for 12 years. The University of Western Ontario granted Nils Willison an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree in 1944. Wilfrid Laurier University’s Willison Hall is named in his honour.

John Jackson (1947 - ) is an environmental activist in Ontario, Canada. Jackson received his BA from the University of Waterloo in 1969. He is a researcher, project director, advisor, chair and coordinator of numerous environmental agencies. Jackson served as President of the Ontario Toxic Waste Research Coalition, a citizens' and agricultural group which succeeded in halting the Ontario Waste Management Corporation's plans to build a hazardous waste plant in West Lincoln in the Niagara Peninsula. In recognition of his leadership, John Jackson was presented a scroll by the Member of Provincial Parliament for the Riding of Lincoln.

Walter Moos was born in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1926. He was educated at the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce in Geneva (graduated 1946) and at the New School for Social Research, New York, from 1948 to 1951. Moos moved to Toronto from New York in 1959, having become acquainted with the city through visits with his brother, an engineer, who lived there. He married Martha Wegmuller in 1962, and had two sons, Michel André and David Alfred. The Moos family has a well-established history as gallery owners. Walter Moos is a founding member of the Art Dealers Association of Canada, and served as its president from 1971 to 1978. He was the chairman of its appraisal committee from 1972 to 1989. He served on the Canadian Eskimo Arts Council from 1972 to 1982 and is the founder and past trustee of the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation.

Judith Rodger is a freelance curator and art historian based in London, Ontario. Rodger was chief curator of the London Regional Art & Historical Museum, and was personally acquainted with Greg Curnoe. She contributed the chronology and bibliography to the catalogue of the exhibition Greg Curnoe: Life and Stuff (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2000). For a biographical sketch of Greg Curnoe, please see Greg Curnoe fonds.

Helen Sanderson Sewell (1905-2001) was a Toronto artist and teacher. She attended the Ontario College of Art, graduating in 1928 with the Governor General’s Gold Medal. After graduation, she taught for six years with Arthur Lismer at the Art Gallery of Ontario and in Barrie, London, and her Toronto studio. She traveled to northern Ontario to paint with members of the Group of Seven. In 1934 she married William Sewell and interrupted her career to raise four children, including former Toronto mayor John Sewell. She resumed painting when her children were in high school, specializing in portraiture, and was active in the Toronto Heliconian Club.

The Art Institute of Ontario (AIO) was incorporated in 1951 to circulate art exhibitions, lecturers, and instructional programmes to venues in smaller communities. The idea of an art institute had been discussed informally as early as 1948, and the Art Gallery of Toronto had organized circulating exhibitions. The AIO was formed when a grant from the Ontario Department of Education made it possible to sponsor a travelling exhibition throughout the province. Later grants from the Atkinson Foundation, the Canada Council, and the Province of Ontario Council for the Arts supported AIO’s operations. The AIO was an alliance of several Ontario visual arts institutions and organizations. Its founding members were the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Art Gallery of Toronto (now Art Gallery of Ontario), Hart House (University of Toronto), London Public Library & Art Museum, National Gallery of Canada, Ontario Association of Architects, Ontario Society of Artists, Royal Ontario Museum, Willistead Library and Art Gallery (Windsor) and the Windsor Art Association. The AIO maintained close ties with the Art Gallery of Ontario throughout its existence. It was absorbed into the extension programme of the AGO in 1968.

The N.E. Thing Company was founded in 1967 by Ian and Elaine Baxter (nee Hieber), and formally incorporated in 1969, with Iain Baxter as President and Elaine as Vice President; the two later became co-presidents. Following the Baxters’ divorce, the company dissolved in 1978

William Grant Munro (1975-2010) was a Toronto-based visual artist, community builder, event organizer and entrepreneur. Munro spent his childhood and teenage years in Mississauga. He graduated in 2000 from the Ontario College of Art and Design, where he studied sculpture and installation. In 1999, he founded Vazaleen, a now legendary series of dance parties. In 2006, he and Lynn MacNeil purchased the Beaver Café, a hub of artistic, musical and social activity at Queen Street West and Gladstone Avenue in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood. Munro worked as a DJ for events in the visual art community. He served on the Board of Directors of Art Metropole and York University. His artwork has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at numerous venues including Art in General, New York; and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Mercer Union, Art Gallery of York University, and Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto. His work is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art.

Robert Frederick Hagan, painter, printmaker and educator, was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1918. He was educated at Central Technical School (Toronto) and the Ontario College of Art. From 1941-1946, Hagan was employed as Resident Artist and Master at Pickering College in Newmarket, Ontario. In the spring of 1946, Hagan journeyed to New York for further studies. Later the same year, he began teaching at the Ontario College of Art. In 1955 he became Head of Printmaking, a position which he held until his retirement in 1983. Frederick Hagan has held memberships in the Canadian Society of Graphic Art (of which he was made an Honourary Member in 1965), the Canadian Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers, the Ontario Society of Artists, and the Print and Drawing Council of Canada. His work is in the collections of numerous Canadian galleries. Frederick Hagan passed away on September 6, 2003 at the age of 85.

Nellie Olive Curnoe (née Porter, 1909-1999) was the mother of Canadian artist Greg Curnoe (1936-1992). She married Gordon Charles Curnoe (1909-1985) in 193- and had three children: Greg, Glen (b. 1939) and Lynda (b. 1943). For biographical information on Greg Curnoe, see the finding aid to the Greg Curnoe fonds at this library, or Judith Rodger’s chronology in the 2001 Art Gallery of Ontario catalogue Greg Curnoe: Life & Stuff.

Paul Bennett was hired as the AIO’s first Field Director / Adviser in 1959, and remained in this capacity until 1964. He then became Director, serving until 1968.

Factory 77, initially known as Galerie Scollard, was a Toronto artist-run gallery focused on art education which operated between 1976 and 1982. Galerie Scollard was established in Toronto in 1976 as a non- profit charitable organization by Dushka Arezina, a Yugoslavian emigrée, artist, and art historian. It was coined a “centre for education in vision” and was located on Scollard Street in Toronto. The gallery was operated by a Board of Directors of which Harvey Cowan was the chairperson and Kenneth Lund the president. Dushka Arezina sat on the Board of Directors as treasurer and was also the gallery’s executive director. Galerie Scollard ceased opera tions under that name in 1978 and was re-established as Factory 77 in November 1978 upon moving into a former carpet factory at 77 Mowat Ave. in Toronto’s Parkdale area. Factory 77’s operations were overseen by Arezina and a Board of Directors chaired by Lund, a Toronto lawyer. It aimed to present a broad view of contemporary visual arts by exhibiting established artists together with emerging ones. In the years between 1978 and 1982, the gallery mounted more than 13 exhibitions per year, featuring prominent Canadian artists such as Mary and Christopher Pratt, Lynn Do noghue, and Ken Danby. The gallery also placed significant emphasis on exhibitions by Eastern European artists such as Jiri Ladocha. The gallery aimed to foster student participation through exhibits of student and youth work, and placed significant focus on art education and appreciation outreach programs in elementary and secondary schools in the Toronto area. Due to financial and administrative difficulties, Factory 77 ceased operations permanently in February 1982.

David Brown Milne (Burgoyne, Ontario 1882 – Bancroft, Ontario 1953) was a painter and etcher; he is widely considered to be among the most outstanding Canadian artists. He worked as a schoolteacher before deciding to study painting in New York where, in 1903, he enrolled in the Art Students’ League. Milne supported himself through commercial artwork but actively and successfully developed his own painting, exhibiting five canvases in the famous Armory Show of 1913. His friends during this period included James (“René”) Clarke, with whom he maintained a correspondence for many years. In 1916, Milne and his wife Patsy (née May Frances Hagerty), whom he had married in 1912, left the city and settled in Boston Corners, New York. In late 1917 Milne joined the Canadian army as a private, and in 1918 was appointed as a war artist to record the locations of battles that had involved Canadian troops. Milne returned to Boston Corners in 1919, where he spent most of his winters until 1928, summering in the Adirondacks. He moved to Ottawa for one year in 1923, when the National Gallery of Canada bought six of his watercolours. In 1928, Milne moved permanently back to Ontario (he separated from his wife in 1933), spending extended periods of time alone in the wilderness regions north of Toronto. Palgrave, a short drive from Toronto, became Milne’s home from 1930 to 1933, and from 1933 to 1939 he lived in a cabin on Six Mile Lake near Georgian Bay. He maintained an interest in the Toronto art scene and developed a small group of patrons including Alice and Vincent Massey, and Douglas Duncan of the Picture Loan Society, who acted as Milne’s agent and dealer for many years. He met his second wife Kathleen Pavey in 1938 and lived with her from 1939; their only child David Jr. was born in 1941. The Milnes lived in Uxbridge from 1940 to 1946. From 1947 Milne lived and worked at Baptiste Lake, with Kathleen and David Jr. joining him periodically. As Milne’s health deteriorated, the family moved to Bancroft to be closer to Baptiste Lake. Milne died at Bancroft in December 1953. His work is represented in numerous public collections, notably the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection and the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

Gordon Conn (ca.1888-1977) was an art collector and supporter of visual art in Toronto. He studied to be a musician and worked as a painter in his youth. Although he did not pursue a career as an artist, he maintained connections with many artists. He was a friend of the painter Kenneth Forbes (1892-1980) who painted Conn’s portrait in 1935. Together with Forbes, Gordon Conn founded the Ontario Institute of Painters devoted to the display of painting based on what Forbes called “traditional” art values. Conn turned over his studio in Wychwood Park in Toronto—The Little Gallery—to a series of one-man shows of its members. Near the end of his life, he donated paintings by artists represented in this collection to public art galleries in Ontario.

Florence Wyle, sculptor, was born in Trenton, Illinois November 24, 1881. While studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905, she met Frances Loring, with whom she later moved to New York. Loring moved to Canada in 1912, where Wyle joined her the following year. They each produced a considerable body of work in their studio, a converted church, in Toronto. A member of the Ontario Society of Artists (1920), Wyle was the first woman sculptor to become a full member of the Royal Canadian Academy. She was also a published writer (Poems, 1958). Among her public sculptures is the relief of Edith Cavell on the grounds of the Toronto General Hospital. Florence Wyle died in Newmarket, Ontario January 13, 1968. Loring & Wyle’s works are in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada and the Canadian War Museum and in several public and private buildings in Ontario.

Frances Norma Loring, sculptor, was born in Wardner, Idaho October 14, 1887. She studied sculpture in Geneva, Munich and Paris 1901-1905. In 1905 at the Art Institute of Chicago, she met Florence Wyle with whom she subsequently shared studios in New York (1909-1912) and Toronto (1912-1966). A member in 1920 of the Ontario Society of Artists, she was a founding member (1928) of the Sculptors' Society of Canada and a chief organizer of the Federation of Canadian Artists and the National Arts Council. Among her best-known public monuments are the lion of the Queen Elizabeth Monument in Toronto (originally near the entrance to the Queen Elizabeth Way) and war memorials at St Stephen, New Brunswick and Cambridge (formerly Galt), Ontario. Frances Loring died in Newmarket, Ontario February 3, 1968.

Gallery Moos was opened by Walter Moos in May 1959 at the corner of Avenue Road and Davenport Road in Toronto. Early in 1963 it moved to Yorkville Avenue, becoming one of the first arrivals in what was to become a significant gallery district of the city, and subsequently prospered there for some 30 years. In July 1992 the gallery moved to its current location at 622 Richmond Street West.

Robert William Geary (fl. 1913-1933) lived in Niagara Falls, Ontario. According to a note in the inventory, in 1913 the Geary family lived at 33 Barker Street. Geary was the third president of the Lundy’s Lane Historical Society (1908 1932), and was the author of Historical sketches : a memorial of the hundredth anniversary of the War of 1812-14, 1912. He died in June, 1933.

Lawrence Arthur Colley Panton (1894-1954) was a Canadian painter, educator and academician active in Toronto from the 1930s until his death. Born in England, he immigrated to Canada at 17. He served in the Army during 1916-1919 and studied art in the evening after his return from the war. In Toronto, he worked at Rous and Mann as a designer until 1924 when he began his teaching career, first at the Central Technical School and then at Western Technical School (1926-37), Northern Vocational School (1937-51) and finally principal of the Ontario College of Art (1951-54). In 1920 he married Marion Pye; their son Charles was born in 1921 and died in action in 1944. Panton was active in a number of organizations, including the Ontario Society of Artists (President 1931-37), the Canadian Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers, the Canadian Group of Painters, The Royal Canadian Academy and the Arts and Letters Club (President 1953-54).

Charles William Jefferys (1869-1951) was a prolific Canadian artist, illustrator and author. He was a talented landscape painter whose work was widely exhibited and collected, but is best known for his illustrations of Canada’s past. He was born in Rochester, Kent. In 1875 the Jefferys family emigrated to Philadelphia, then in 1878 they moved to Hamilton before settling in Toronto around 1880. Jefferys began formal training as an artist in 1884 when he started attending evening classes at the Ontario School of Art. The following year, Jefferys began a five-year apprenticeship at the Toronto Lithographic Company, where he was also hired out to work occasionally as an illustrator for The Globe. He worked as an artist for The Globe, as well as for a number of other Canadian newspapers until the fall of 1892 when he was taken on as an artist-reporter for The New York Herald. Jefferys lived in New York and New Jersey until 1899, returning to Canada permanently in 1901, eventually settling in York Mills. Jefferys illustrated a large number of books and articles providing illustrations for The Makers of Canada (1903-1911), Chronicles of Canada (1914-1916), was co-founder of the satirical periodical The Moon (1902-1904), and wrote and illustrated Canada’s Past in Pictures (1934) and The Picture Gallery of Canadian History (1942, 1945, 1950). He also gave frequent lectures and published numerous articles on art, architecture, and Canadian history. From 1912 to 1939 Jefferys was instructor of freehand drawing at the Department of Architecture at the University of Toronto. He also was a lecturer and part-time instructor at the Ontario College of Art. Jefferys worked for Canadian War Records in 1918, recording the activities Polish Army in Exile at Niagara and Toronto and the Siberian Army in Exile in at Camp Petawawa, Ontario. Jefferys was active in many organizations, including the Ontario Society of Artists, Royal Canadian Academy, Art Students’ League, and the Arts and Letters Club. He exhibited his art widely throughout his life, in Canada and abroad, and his work appears in major institutions across Canada. Robert Stacey (1949- ) is the grandson of C.W. Jefferys. He is an art historian, author, editor, picture editor and curator based out of Toronto. Has written numerous books and articles on C.W. Jefferys and many other aspects relating to Canadian art and graphic design, with titles including The Hand Holding the Brush: Self Portraits by Canadian Artists, Canadian Bookplates, Massanog: the art of Bon Echo, and Sir Daniel Wilson (1816-1892): ambidextrous polymath.

Arthur Lismer, painter and art educator, was born in Sheffield, England in 1885. He studied at the Sheffield School of Art 1899–1906 and later at the Académie royale des beaux-arts in Antwerp. In 1911 he immigrated to Toronto where he worked as a commercial illustrator for the Grip Engraving Company and taught at the Ontario College of Art. He married Esther Mawson in 1912 and their only child Marjorie was born in 1913. Lismer's career as an art educator began at the Victoria School of Art and Design in Halifax, 1916–1919, followed soon after by his appointment as Vice-President of the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. In 1920 he became a founding member of the Group of Seven. His best-known works in oil are wilderness landscapes, expressionist in style with a use of raw colour and simplified form. He also produced many works on paper, including several portraits. Lismer established a Children's Art Centre at the Art Gallery of Toronto, where he was educational supervisor, 1927–1938. He was briefly educational supervisor at the National Gallery of Canada, later holding that post at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from 1941 to 1967. He was assistant professor of fine arts at McGill University, 1948–1954. He died in Montreal in 1969. Arthur Lismer was a member of the Arts and Letters Club, Ontario Society of Artists, Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, Canadian Group of Painters, Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour, and Federation of Canadian Artists. His work is in many Canadian public collections. Following her father’s death, Marjorie Lismer Bridges devoted a number of years to organizing his archival records and gradually donating them to public repositories. She wrote the “Arthur Lismer source book”, which is included in the fonds.

The Master Print and Drawing Society of Ontario (MPDSO) is the first independent body of specialist collectors of prints and drawings in Canada. Founded in 1985 by Sidney Bregman and Katharine Lochnan, the Society first came into existence as the Master Print and Drawing Society, and operated as a non-profit educational association that provided special assistance to its members with problems unique to collecting. The Society is officially affiliated with the Art Gallery of Ontario, but is an independent organization belonging to its members, and through its Board of Directors determines its objectives, policies and activities, requirements for membership, selection of new members, and the composition of its executive. The executive consists of the President, Vice-President(s), Secretary/Treasurer, and Directors. The President has primary responsibility for determining the Society's activities, making arrangements for lectures, tours, and other special events. Since 1989, the MPDSO has been supported by the Fraser Elliot Foundation in fulfilling its mandate to represent the collective interests of its members in seeking out the expert advice of scholars, curators, and visiting lectures to contribute special assistance with collecting master prints and drawings from the 15th to the mid 20th century.

Newton McFaul MacTavish (1875-1941) was a Canadian journalist, art critic and early art historian. Born in Staffa, Ontario, he became a reporter at The Toronto Globe in 1896 and was its assistant financial editor until 1900. From then until 1906, he studied English literature at McGill University while working as a correspondent and business representative of The Globe in Montreal. In 1903 he married Kate Johnson. Between 1906 and 1926, MacTavish was the editor of The Canadian Magazine in Toronto. In 1910 he travelled to Europe and visited the Canadian artists J.W. Morrice and John Wentworth Russell in Paris. He subsequently (1922-1933) served as a trustee of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia conferred honorary degrees on Newton MacTavish in 1924 (M.A.) and 1928 (D. Litt.). From 1926 to 1932 he was a member of the Civil Service Commission of Canada. A founder of the Arts and Letters Club (Toronto), he was also on the editorial advisory board of and contributor to the Encyclopedia of Canada (1932-1935). In addition to his articles, essays and short stories, MacTavish was the author of Thrown In (1923), The Fine Arts in Canada (1925, the first full-length history of Canadian art), and Ars Longa (1938). A fourth work, Newton MacTavish’s Canada, was published posthumously in 1963. He died in Toronto in 1941.

Jack (John Richard) Chambers, artist and experimental filmmaker, was born in London, Ontario in 1931. He studied at the Escuela Central de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid from 1957 to 1959. In Spain he met Olga Sanchez Bustos, whom he married in Canada in 1963. They made their home in London and had two children, John (b. 1964) and Diego (b.1965). Chambers’ style of painting and drawing in the 1960s was characterized by a dreamlike quality. Toward the end of that decade, his work became intensely focused on the depiction of reality, often relating closely to source photographs, most of which were taken by the artist himself. Between 1964 and 1970 Chambers also directed eight films. The subjects of his work were often domestic or regional, focusing on his experience in London. In 1967, Chambers founded Canadian Artists’ Representation to try to establish fee scales for reproduction rights and rental fees for works in public exhibitions, and served as president from 1967 to 1975. In 1969 Chambers published his essay “Perceptual Realism”, and that same year, was diagnosed with leukemia. From 1971 to 1977 he worked on “Red and Green,” a study of art and perception (unpublished). Chambers died in London in 1978. His work is in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and numerous other Canadian galleries.

John Faichney is a Canadian dancer, television producer and software analyst born in Montreal in 1952. He graduated from Oberlin College where he developed an interest in choreography and dance improvisation. In May 1976 he performed at the Centre for Experimental Art & Communication (CEAC) in Toronto and was invited to join the Centre’s staff. Amongst other activities, he designed printed matter, maintained exchange programs with other artists’ groups, curated an exhibition of artists’ books and managed distribution of mailings and periodicals (including Strike, a quasi monthly newspaper.) An offshoot of the Kensington Art Association, CEAC moved in 1976 to 86 John Street and then to 15 Duncan Street, offering space for performance art, installations, videos and music. Key members of the group were Amerigo Marras, Suber Corley, Bruce Eves and Ron Gillespie (a.k.a Ron Giii); Marras in particular encouraged connections with European and American artists. The group became increasingly politicized and in 1978 its government funding was rescinded. An attempt at self sufficiency by starting a television production studio at 124 Lisgar Street was not sustainable and CEAC disbanded in 1980. John Faichney lives in Kitchener, Ontario, and remains involved with Contact Improvisation.

Workscene Gallery was a non-profit, artist-run co-operative gallery in Toronto, 1974-1995. It originally provided studio space and a venue for exhibitions of members’ works, later expanding to exhibiting other artists’ works and curated exhibitions. Members were responsible for all programming and administration with individual artists responsible for content, installation and promotion of exhibitions. Members were required to have a strong art practice, to provide financial support through membership fees and be committed to promoting the arts community.
The co-operative was incorporated May 16, 1974 as Workscene Co-operative Corporation with the following directors: Gissa Geraldine Gold, Ian James Shaw, James Henry Tiley, Robert John Varty and Badanna Bernice Zack. In May 1988, the corporation was re-activated by the current group of artist members who began operating the Workscene Galley at 1020 Queen Street West as an exhibition space. This storefront gallery was formerly the Ruby-Fiorino Gallery and the co-operative remained in this space until the lease expired at the end of August 1990. In September 1990, Workscene Gallery relocated to 183 Bathurst Street, a building which was a focal point at that time for Toronto’s arts community and housed other artist-run centres, arts organizations and magazines. Workscene Co-operative Corporation also produced a magazine as an independent program, Work Seen Artists Forum, to provide a forum for artists to write about their work and issues of concern. In the summer of 1992 the magazine became a separate entity with no ties to the Workscene Gallery, changing its name to Artword Artists Forum.
Workscene Co-operative Corporation was dissolved in February 1992. Workscene Gallery Art Association Toronto Inc. was formed in June 1992 with the following directors: Jocelyne Regina Belcourt Salem (President), Yvonne Maria Eva Singer (1st Vice President), Ian David Lazarus (2nd Vice President), David John Renaud (Treasurer), and Sheila Ann Gregory (Secretary). The final exhibition of Workscene Gallery ended January 28, 1995 and was documented in a number of newspaper articles describing the event. Workscene ceased operations permanently in 1995.

George Agnew Reid (1860-1947) was a Canadian artist, architect, educator and administrator influential in the early 20th century and instrumental in the formation of a number of important Canadian art institutions. Born in Wingham Ontario to a Scottish farm family, he studied architecture and book-keeping at his father’s insistence. In 1878 he moved to Toronto to study art. He was able to extend his art education under Thomas Eakins in Philadelphia, where he met the painter Mary Heister. In 1888 the couple travelled to Europe and studied at the Julian and Colorossi Academies, returning to Toronto in 1889. The house he designed and built in Wychwood Park was his home until the end of his life. In 1890, George Reid began reaching at the Central Ontario School of Art and Design. He eventually became principal and researched new theories of art education in the United States and Europe. Under his direction, the art school became independent of the Board of Education and moved into its own building, which he designed, in 1921. He also served as its first Principal. In 1892, George and Mary Reid built two cottages from his design at the artist colony in Onteora, New York. This led to the design of other summer homes and a small church in the Catskills community. They spent summers at this location until 1917 when the war made travel to the United States difficult. In 1921 Mary Heister Reid died, and in 1923 George Reid married Mary Wrinch, a former student and close friend of his first wife. His later life was filled with accomplishments, including the painting of murals for public spaces in Toronto City Hall, Jarvis Collegiate, the Royal Ontario Museum and elsewhere. He was instrumental in obtaining permanent funding and staff for the National Gallery in Ottawa, and was a force behind the establishment of the Art Gallery of Toronto. He was a member of the RCA, serving as President 1906-1907. He influenced a generation of students, among them C.W. Jefferys, through his teaching and created a number of works that exemplify his generation, including Forbidden Fruit, Mortgaging the Homestead, and The Foreclosure of the Mortgage.

The Tovell family of Toronto, in particular Harold Murchison Tovell (1887-1947), Ruth Massey Tovell (1889-1961) and their son Vincent Massey Tovell (b. 1922), was active in art circles in Toronto for several decades following the First World War. Harold Tovell and Ruth Massey married in 1910 and in 1913-1914 travelled in Europe, visiting the major art galleries. Returning to Toronto, they lived on the eastern edge of the city in Dentonia Park, the Massey estate, until 1936 when they moved to the city centre. The Tovells built a collection of works by Canadian and European artists. In France in 1926 they met French painter Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) through their friend American author and artist Walter Pach (1883-1958). In 1928 they purchased a painting by Duchamp’s older half-brother Jacques Villon (1875-1963) at an exhibition in New York. They met Jacques and Gaby Villon in Paris in 1930 and corresponded with them until the 1960s. The Villons befriended Vincent who visited them in France in the years before the Second World War. From 1941 to 1947, the Tovells lived near Port Hope, Ontario. After her husband’s death, Mrs Tovell returned to live in Toronto. Harold and Ruth Tovell had three other sons: Walter (b. 1916), a geologist and Director of the Royal Ontario Museum 1972-1975, Freeman (b. 1918), diplomat and historian, and Harold (1919-2002), a physician. They bequeathed many of their artworks to the Royal Ontario Museum, the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Avis Lang [Rosenberg] (1944-) is an art historian, teacher, curator, writer and editor who lived in Vancouver for many years. In 1972, as a member of the faculty of the Fine Art Department at the University of British Columbia, she wrote to Canadian artist Jack Chambers (1931-1978) beginning a correspondence that led Chambers to invite her contribution to a scholarly monograph on his work. In 1973, Peter Mellen took over the editorial direction for the book and differences of opinion prompted her to resign the project. Her essay, “The Hart of London: a film by Jack Chambers” was included in The Films of Jack Chambers, edited by Kathryn Elder (Cinematheque Ontario and Indiana State University Press, 2002).

Jules Frederic Wegman was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland on 14 July 1865 and received his early education there. He came to the United States with his father Julius, also an architect, at the age of ten years and trained with him. At one point he was sent to Jerusalem to measure the city and its buildings, and his drawings were used to reproduce the city at the Worlds’ Fair at St. Louis in 1904. Wegmen then spent several years in the Chicago office of Daniel H. Burnham & Co., a leading figure of American architecture. He appears to have also worked there under his own name, and is credited with the design of the Newbury Building, South Wabash Avenue at East Ninth Street in Chicago, in 1896. In 1905 he was invited to join the Toronto firm of Darling & Pearson, and worked there until his death in 1931, becoming a partner in 1924. He worked on the Sun Life Building in Montreal, the North Toronto Station at Yonge and Summerhill, and the 1925 expansion of the Art Gallery of Toronto. He spoke at least four languages fluently and traveled widely, collecting photographs and drawings of architectural details. In 1911 he joined the Arts and Letters Club and lunched there regularly. In 1912 he was Chairman of the Toronto Chapter of the Ontario Association of Architects and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada shortly before his death.

Kathleen Jean Munn (1887-1974) was a modernist Canadian painter active in Toronto between the World Wars. She was the youngest of six children born to a Toronto jeweler who died when she was four (of an infection caused by the impact from a champagne cork) leaving her mother to manage the family business. Her talent for drawing was encouraged by her maternal grandmother, an accomplished amateur painter, and she was sent to study at the Westbourne School with F. McGillivray Knowles from 1904 to 1907. Knowles encouraged personal expression and an understanding of the principles of art and Munn thrived in this environment. In 1909 she began to exhibit Barbizon inspired landscapes at the OSA, RCA and CNE exhibitions, moving through periods influenced by Whistler, Corot, Puvis de Chavannes and the post-impressionists. About 1912 Munn first traveled to New York to study at the Art Student’s League and in 1914 she was awarded first prize at the Summer School in Woodstock NY. In 1915-16 she began a series of landscapes in which she showed a mastery of modernist techniques. Her association with the Art Student’s League, whose teachers were early proponents of modernism, was an important influence. Her notebooks show that she was reading extensively and broadly in the areas of literature, philosophy and aesthetics. She studied Jay Hambridge’s mathematical principles, the concept of ‘dynamic symmetry’ and Denman Ross’s colour theory. She seems to have been drawn to writers who proposed an underlying system of order and logic as a basis for individual expression. She also toured Britain and the major art centres of continental Europe in 1920, accompanied by her sister, and this trip seems to have encouraged her quest for a means to express religious and spiritual themes in a contemporary fashion. She was ultimately uncomfortable with complete abstraction and believed that art should express a larger purpose, influenced by readings of Blavatsky, Blake, Whitman, and others. The Group of Seven shared her interest in the spiritual content of painting but she was intolerant of their nationalism; of her contemporaries she formed the closest bonds with Bertram Brooker and Lemoine Fitzgerald. Her studio, in a large room overlooking the ravine at the family home at 320 Spadina Avenue, was visited often by Brooker. The household consisted of three unmarried siblings: Will (Jr.), who ran the family business, May, a teacher who ran the household, and Kathleen. During the 1920’s she began to work on a series of paintings that explored Christian themes and she devoted the 1930’s to the subject of the Passion. Two major drawings from this series were purchased by the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1945. She exhibited a number of these drawings with Fitzgerald and Brooker at the Malloney Galleries in Toronto in 1935 but there as little critical response. Discouragement at her lack of critical success, combined with the death of her brother in 1935 and her sister’s increasing disability, led to the end of her artistic output around 1939. Most of her work remained in family hands. The Art Gallery of Toronto exhibited her Passion drawings in several group shows in the 1940’s and the Willistead Art Gallery in Windsor included her Ascension in a 1954 show of drawings. She died twenty years later, in October 1974.

Florence Vale, Canadian artist, was born on April 18, 1909 in llford, Essex, England and died on July 23, 2003 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Her family immigrated to Toronto two years after her birth, where she grew up with an interest in music. She married artist Albert Franck on June 8, 1929, and together they bought a house on Hazelton Avenue in Toronto which became a centre for artists, writers, musicians, and critics. Florence Vale was the mother of two children, Trudy (who died as an infant) and Anneke.
Florence Vale began to paint with her husband’s paints and brushes in the late 1940’s with no previous artistic training – only what she had learned under the influence of her husband and the artists who visited her home. Her art was influenced by Surrealism, Cubism, Expressionism, and the works of Paul Klee. After her husband’s death in 1973, Florence Vale continued to express her artistic ability with oil paints, collages, and ink, also including her own poetry in some of her works. Many of her works, most prominently after the death of her husband, were erotic, while still viewed by critics as keeping a whimsical, innocent tone. Her art appeared in exhibitions throughout Ontario, with exhibitions also in Quebec and New York, U.S.A. She was associated with the Gadatsy Gallery, Toronto.

Robert Nelson Markle, Canadian artist, writer, educator and musician, was born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1936 and died in Holstein, Ontario in 1990. He began his studies at the Ontario College of Art (OCA) in 1954, but was expelled before graduation. While at OCA, he met Marlene Shuster, a fellow student, whom he married in 1958. The focus of Markle’s work from his early days was the female nude, particularly burlesque dancers, and Marlene became his primary model and muse. In 1962 Markle had his first group exhibition at The Isaacs Gallery in Toronto, becoming one of the “Isaacs Group” of artists. In 1965, Markle paintings shown in the exhibition Eros ’65 at the Dorothy Cameron Gallery were seized on a charge of obscenity, drawing considerable media attention. In the mid-1960s Markle began to write for magazines such as the Toronto Telegram Showcase, Maclean’s, and Toronto Life, publishing widely on topics as diverse as striptease, hockey, childhood Christmases, and Gordon Lightfoot. Markle also worked extensively as an illustrator, contributing images to magazines and literary journals. His work as an educator included terms at The New School of Art (1966-1977) and Arts’ Sake (1977-1982) as well as OCA and the University of Guelph. From the early 1960s, Markle played tenor saxophone and piano in the Artists’ Jazz Band. In 1970 the Markles moved to a farmhouse outside of Holstein, Ontario, although Robert re-established a studio in Toronto from 1979 to 1982. In 1979, he won a commission to decorate a Toronto hamburger restaurant, which was named Markleangelo’s in his honour. His other large-scale commissions include wall-sculptures for the Ellen Fairclough Building in Hamilton, Ontario, and the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. He executed painted outdoor murals in Owen Sound and Mount Forest, Ontario. Markle was killed in a traffic accident in 1990. Of Mohawk ancestry, Markle used his mother’s spelling of his surname, although it was spelled “Maracle” on his birth certificate. Markle worked primarily in painting and ink drawing, and also explored photography, collage, printmaking, wooden sculpture and neon. He collected folk art, which inspired a number of whirligig works later in his career. His work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada.

The Gershon Iskowitz Foundation was started by artist Gershon Iskowitz in 1985, with the mandate of awarding the Gershon Iskowitz Prize to a mature practising artist; since 2007 the Foundation has partnered with the Art Gallery of Ontario to administer the Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO.

Gershon Iskowitz (1921-1988) was an abstract painter based in Toronto for much of his artistic career. Born in Kielce, Poland, he survived internment in Nazi concentration camps and lost his entire family in the Holocaust. Iskowitz studied art in Munich at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in 1947, soon transferring to private studies with Oskar Kokoschka. He moved to Toronto in 1949. His work developed from wartime imagery to a focus on landscapes (particularly inspired by practice in the Parry Sound area), eventually arriving at his mature abstract expressionist style in 1967. Iskowitz began exhibiting with Gallery Moos in 1964, a relationship which continued throughout his career. He taught at the New School (Toronto) from 1967-1970, and his informal mentoring of artists in Toronto is often noted. Iskowitz, along with Walter Redinger, represented Canada at the Venice Biennale in 1972. The artist established the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation in 1985, with the mandate of awarding the Gershon Iskowitz Prize to a mature practising artist; since 2007 the Foundation has partnered with the Art Gallery of Ontario to administer the Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO.

Frederick Sproston Challener, painter, was born in Whetstone, England in 1869 and came to Canada in 1870. He studied at the Ontario School of Art, was first exhibited in 1900 at the Royal Canadian Academy and subsequently worked as a newspaper artist. After a tour of Europe and the Middle East in 1898-99, he began working as a muralist and participated in the decoration of the recently completed Toronto City Hall. At the end of the First World War, Challener worked as a painter for the Canadian War Records Department. He made his career chiefly by creating murals for passenger boats, restaurants, hotels—such as Fort Rouillé in the King Edward Hotel,Toronto—office buildings and theatres, including the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto. He also produced easel paintings, watercolours and drawings in a realistic, romantic style. From 1927-1952 he taught at the Ontario College of Art, during which period he made notes and assembled material on Canadian artists. He died in Toronto in 1959. Challener was a member of numerous arts organizations including the Toronto Art Students’ League, Ontario Society of Artists, Royal Canadian Academy, Society of Mural Decorators of Toronto and the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto (founding member, 1908). His work is in the National Gallery of Canada, the Civic Art Gallery, Winnipeg, the Art Gallery of Ontario and numerous public buildings.

J.A. Wainwright (1946- ) is a writer of poetry, fiction and non-fiction; and an emeritus Professor of English at Dalhousie University. He published Blazing Figures: A Life of Robert Markle (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press) in 2010.

The Canadian Art Club was a Toronto-based exhibiting society active from 1907 to 1915. The club brought together the work of most of the leading Canadian painters and sculptors of the day, largely from Toronto and Montreal but also from abroad, for its annual exhibitions. It was formed by seceding members of the Ontario Society of Artists who rejected what they perceived as that group’s parochialism and low artistic standards. Among the founding artist members were W.E. Atkinson, Archibald Browne, Franklin Brownell, Edmund Morris, Homer Watson (first president of the club) and Curtis Williamson. The artists were soon supported by a considerable number of members who were not artists (referred to as ‘lay members’ in documents). Part of the club’s purpose was to encourage expatriate Canadian artists, such as J. W. Morrice and Clarence Gagnon, to associate with the club and to exhibit in Canada. It succeeded in affording sympathetic reception in Toronto for prominent Quebec artists of the time, like Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté. After the death in 1913 of Edmund Morris, honorary secretary and chief organizer, the club declined amid disputes between members until it ceased to function in 1915. The Canadian Art Club was formally dissolved about 1933.

Gilbert Forrest Bagnani (1900-1985) was a professor of ancient history. He was born in Rome to General Ugo Bagnani and Florence Dewar. He served as a Second Lieutenant of artillery towards the end of World War I. After the War he returned to the University of Rome where he received his doctorate. Instead of entering law as he had planned, he turned to the Italian School of Archaeology in Athens to study antiquities. In 1929 Gilbert married Mary Augusta Stewart Houston (1903-1996) of Toronto, daughter of Stewart Houston (editor of "The Financial Post") and Augusta Robinson (daughter of John Beverley Robinson, Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario, and granddaughter of Sir John Beverley Robinson, Chief Justice and Attorney-General of Upper Canada). Gilbert and Stewart had an apartment in Rome and for seven seasons worked, in the Sahara Desert, with the Royal Archaeological Mission to Egypt. In 1937 they fled fascist Italy and purchased a 200 acre farm and house built around 1845 near Port Hope, Ontario and named it "Vogrie". In 1945 Gilbert was invited to teach ancient history at the University of Toronto and in 1958 became a Professor. He retired from the University of Toronto in 1965. The Bagnanis returned to "Vogrie". In the same year, Gilbert was asked to accept a term-appointment at Trent University. He was honoured with a LL.D. by Trent in 1971 and he continued to teach as a Professor of Ancient History until 1975.