Gordon Smithson was a researcher and historian based in Kingston, Ontario. Smithson focused his historical interests on the Pittsburgh community, becoming a founding member and first President of the Pittsburgh Historical Society. He was involved in authoring many local histories and cable TV productions, including "The View from Anglin Bay." Smithson passed away on 11 September 2013.
Joan M. Schwartz is a Professor Emerita from Queen's University. A specialist in photography acquisition and research at the National Archives of Canada for more than two decades prior to her faculty appointment, Joan M. Schwartz brought expertise in archives, materiality, memory, and institutional discourse to her teaching and writing. She was cross-appointed to the Department of Geography at Queen’s and was an Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of History at Carleton University, Ottawa. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Society of American Archivists, and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, she has just been made a Fellow of the Association of Canadian Archivists (2022).
Dr. Schwartz has published and lectured widely in the field of archives, historical geography, and the history of photography, and has served on the editorial boards of The Oxford Companion to the Photograph (2004) and the Encyclopedia of Nineteenth‐century Photography (2007). She co‐edited Picturing Place: Photography and the Geographical Imagination (with James Ryan for I.B.Tauris, 2003) and Archives, Record, and Power, two double issues of Archival Science (with Terry Cook in 2002).
Her research focuses on photography in nineteenth-century visual culture and on the relationship of photography and archives to notions of place, identity, and memory. She has a particular interest in photographically illustrated books and the role of photography in nineteenth-century Canadian nation‐building. With the support of an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, she is engaged in a four-year project entitled, “Picturing ‘Canada’: Photographic Images and Geographical Imaginings in British North America, 1839-1889.”
James Douglas, Queen's third Chancellor (1915-1918), led quite a varied life as a Presbyterian minister, a metallurgist, and industrialist, and a historian. He was born in Quebec City and educated at Queen's (BA 1858) and The University of Edinburgh, where he was ordained as a minister in 1861.
Shortly afterward, he made a surprising career change, becoming a mining chemist in Quebec. In 1875, he entered industrial life in the US. He discovered valuable copper deposits in Arizona, invented new metallurgical processes for the reduction of copper, and reached the presidency of three major mining companies.
Douglas also founded a huge smelting centre in Douglas, Arizona, which was named in his honour. Throughout his career he retained a deep interest in and affection for both Canada and Queen's. He wrote several works of Canadian history and donated close to $1 million to various University causes.
In 1910, Douglas established the Douglas Chair in Canadian and Colonial History. It was the first Chair in Canadian History in Canada, and in an unusual step, he had an actual chair made to accompany his gift. The chair was made out of teak, and was handcarved with Canadian symbols.
Douglas' biggest gift was to provide half of the funds for Douglas Library, which was completed in 1924 and named in his honour. He was elected Chancellor in 1915 after the death of Sir Sandford Fleming and served until his own death in 1918.
The Orphans' Home and Widows' Friend Society was organized in 1857 to provide for the care and education of orphans. Initially these children came from the House of Industry, an institution established by the Female Benevolent Society for the poor of the area. By 1857 the House of Industry was well established and receiving aid so the women who had been involved in organizing that agency now turned their attention to the children. In March, 1857, thirteen children were admitted from the House of Industry into a house on Earl street where they were cared for and taught by a Mrs. Harold. Other destitute children attended the classes. In 1862 the Orphans' Home and Widows' Friend Society was granted a charter. In 1862 the Orphanage and school moved to larger quarters. In 1927 the building housing the Orphanage was bought by Queen's University and Sunnyside, the home of Mrs. G.Y. Chown, was bought for use as an orphanage (formerly 241 Union St, now 50 Vandalay Crescent). As conditions changed and orphan children were adopted or placed in foster homes the orphanage had fewer and fewer inmates. By 1947 the role of Sunnyside had changed. It was formally closed in 1998 and the house "Sunnyside" was sold.
The Calvin Company of Garden Island, which operated under a variety of names from 1836 to 1914, was a family business created by Delino Dexter Calvin. In 1826, Calvin discovered there was more money to be made in the timber export business than in farming when, with the help of a neighbour, he cut square timber from his property and rafted it to Quebec. He and his partner, Hiram Cook, began rafting from Quebec Head at the foot of Wolfe Island and, in 1836, from Garden Island. The first Garden Island partnership was well established by 1838 and the firm was called Calvin, Cook and Counter, the latter being John Counter. In 1843 Counter withdrew from the partnership and the company became Calvin, Cook and Company with a seperate branch at Quebec under the name D.D. Calvin and Company. In 1843, Timothy H. Dunn joined the partnership at Quebec and the firm there was then known as Dunn, Calvin and Company until 1850 when Dunn withdrew and the Quebec name again became D.D. Calvin and Company. A third branch was established in Hamilton, called Hiram Cook and Company but, in 1854, Cook withdrew from the company, seperating the Hamilton branch which continued under the same name but independent of the Garden Island firm. The company also had agencies in Liverpool and Glasgow, and along the St. Lawrence waterway as far west as Defiance, Ohio and Sault Ste. Marie. In 1855 the Island firm became Calvin and Breck with the addition of Calvin's brother-in-law. The name continued until 1880 when Breck retired and the firm became Calvin and Son (D.D. and his son Hiram). After Calvin's death in 1886 the last change was made with the company's name becoming Calvin Company, Limited. The Quebec branch remained D.D. Calvin until 1887 when it became a branch office of the Calvin Company.
Although rafting was always the mainstay of the company's activities, other activities grew out of the rafting business. As early as 1841 the company had a shipyard, smiths' shops, and a sail loft and a planing mill, picket machine and withe machine followed. The Island was a self-contained community with company houses for the employees, a company general store, a school house and a hall. In 1861 it had a population of 761 and became an incorporated village. Hiram Calvin was reeve of Garden Island from 1884 to 1892, and member of parliament for the Countyof Frontenac in 1892. He was re-elected in 1900 and retired from politics in 1904. He died in 1932.
Wallace R. Berry (1917-1999) was born and raised in Brantford Ontario. In 1937 he entered Queen's University graduating in 1942. While at Queen's he was coach and instructor for swimming and water polo and it was also during these years that he developed an interest in photography. After his graduation from Queen's, in 1942, Wally Berry entered the Royal Canadian Navy. Following the war Wally worked with a motion picture company in Montreal, Associated Screen News. Later he returned to Kingston and established Cinema Television Productions as an outlet for his ideas, as well as opening a photographic studio. Around 1971, he opened The Village Studio in Photography located in Portsmouth Village at 670 King St West. In addition to portraiture he did some freelance news and aerial photography. In 1951 he was appointed official photographer to the Queen's yearbook. In 1954, in addition to still photography, he began filming and latterly video taping Queen's football games. In fact he pioneered this work and it brought him membership in Queen's Football Hall of Fame, builder category. he was also awarded what is now known as the Padre Laverty Award from the Kingston Branch of the Queen's Alumni Association. He closed up his studios in 1996.
A. Colin Wright was born in Chelmsford, County of Essex, England in 1938 and became a Canadian citizen in 1971. Professor Wright was educated at Cambridge University, Pembroke College, in England, receiving a B.A. in 1961 and a M.A. in 1965. In 1986 he received a PhD, also from Cambridge, in Russian Language and Literature. Anthony Colin Wright was appointed to the faculty of Queen's University as a professor in the Department of Russian Language and Literature in 1964. Previously he was employed at the British College in Riggio Colabria in Italy, and at the Bell School of Languages in Cambridge, England. He was a Fellow of the Institute of Linguistics until 1982, and was also active in the Canadian Association of Slavists, for which he served as President from 1975 to 1976.
A writer and speaker on Russian literature and art, A. Colin Wright's major research interest was the Russian author and playwright Mikhail Bulgakov, on whom he wrote the book Mikhail Bulgakov: Life and Interpretations (1978). In addition to this seminal work he wrote numerous articles on Bulgakov and other Russian literati as well as on aspects of Russian painting. Wright taught several courses on the Russian language during his tenure at Queen's and was an advocate for the teaching of Russian in Secondary Schools. He retired from Queen's in 1999. A. Colin Wright was also a prolific creative writer, producing several (unpublished) novels, and several (published) short stories and novella. He has written a number of plays, received awards for some of his work, and published articles on his travels abroad. Wright passed away on September 15 2023.
Bliss Carman was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, in 1861. He was educated at the University of New Brunswick (B.A. 1881; M.A. 1883; LL.D. 1906) and later studied at Edinburgh and Harvard Universities. In 1890 Carman went to New York to work as a journalist. He became an editorial writer for a religious weekly, the Independent, and then wrote for various literary magazines. From 1895 to 1900 he contributed a weekly literary column to the Boston Transcript. In 1925 he was elected corresponding member of the Royal Society of Canada, and in the same year was awarded the Lorne Pierce medal by the Society for distinguished service to literature. The medal of the Poetry Society of America was awarded posthumously. In his later years he was acclaimed Canada's "poet laureate". In addition to writing poetry, Carman was also the author of several volumes of essays. He died in New Canaan, Connecticut in 1929.
Campbell, Grace MacLennan Grant
Author Grace Campbell was born near Williamstown, Glengarry County, Ontario in 1895, on the farm which is the setting of her debut novel, Thorn-Apple Tree. She was educated at local schools, entering Queen's University with the MacLennan Glengarry scholarship from Williamstown High School. On her graduation in 1915 she obtained the gold medal in English Literature. She married the Reverend Harvey Campbell and together they had three sons, two of whom were killed in 1944 while serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Many of her short stories have been published in Canada, the United States and Great Britain, a few having been translated in the Danish. Her novels focused on the Canadian experience during different points in the country's history. In addition to Thorn-Apple Tree (1942) she is also the author of a number of books including The Higher Hill (1944), Fresh Wind Blowing (1947) and The Tower and The Town (1950). She was a active member of the Canadian Authors Association and the Arts and Letters division of the Council of Women, as well as the Provincial Girls' Work Board, the University Women's Club, and the Women's Canadian Club. She served on the Queen's University Board of Trustees from 1947-1963. Mrs. Campbell died on May 31, 1963 at Niagara-on-the-Lake.