Leslie Thomson was born in Toronto and earned a B.Sc. from the University of Toronto in 1906. After a short period teaching civil engineering at University of Manitoba, he moved to Montréal to work for Dominion Bridge (1911-1918) and other engineering firms. At McGill he was special lecturer in structural engineering from 1921 to 1934, Professor of fuel engineering from 1929 to 1931, and special lecturer in architectural engineering in 1935. During World War II, Thomson served with the federal ministries of Transportation and Munitions; for his work as special liaison officer in the munitions department he was awarded an M.B.E. in 1943 and an O.B.E. in 1946. He is the author of The Canadian Railway Problem.

John Thomson was born in Montreal. Sometime during his career as a fur trader, he married a Metis woman named Françoise Boucher, a la façon du pays. They had six children and settled down in Lower Canada. He entered the fur trade as an apprentice clerk with the North West Company on May 23, 1795. Thomson spent his first few years posted in the Assiniboine country and on the Upper Red River, but by 1798, he had begun his career in the Athabasca Department. He led the North West Company’s effort to expand the business down the Mackenzie River. Thomson kept a journal that documented his experiences in the Mackenzie River District from 1800. In 1802, he left the Mackenzie River for Great Slave Lake, where he remained for two years before being posted to the Peace River. Thomson returned to Montreal for one year in 1810 for a year of absence, then was posted to the English River Department in Île-à-la-Crosse, where he was in opposition to John Clarke of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He retired when the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company merged, and died in 1828.