Born in Vancouver, B.C., Barbara Logan Tunis, graduated from the University of British Columbia in 1944 with a Public Health Diploma. She received her nurse's training at the Royal Jubilee Hospital, Victoria, British Columbia and served in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps from 1944 to 1945. Entering McGill in 1945, she was one of the first individuals to obtain a Bachelor of Nursing degree in 1946. In 1966, the McGill University Press published her history of the School for Graduate Nurses, In Caps and Gowns: The Story of the School for Graduate Nurses McGill University, 1920-1964.

Tundra Books/Les Livres Toundra was founded in Montreal by May Ebbitt Cutler in 1967, as an independent publishing house. Under Ms. Cutler's dynamic leadership, the Tundra imprint became synonymous with children's books publishing, featuring titles such as William Kurelek's A Prairie Boy's Winter, Ann Blade's Mary of Mile 18, Roch Carrier's Le chandail de hockey and Joan Finnegan's Look! The Land is Growing Giants, A Very Canadian Legend, with drawings by Richard Pelham. From 1971 to 1978, May Cutler operated an American branch of Tundra in Plattsburgh, New York for distribution purposes to the United States. In the thirty years of the company's existence, and until its sale in December of 1995 to McClelland and Stewart, May Cutler sought and published talented artists and authors from the most diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Today, McClelland and Stewart operates the company as a separate entity, producing and marketing books under the Tundra imprint.