Rev. George Bryce was born on April 22, 1844, in Mount Pleasant, Ontario.

He was a Manitoba Presbyterian educator, churchman, scientist, and historian. He was educated at the University of Toronto and Knox College, where his success as a student was marked with medals and scholarships. He was an athlete, playing on the college football team. He had served as a militia volunteer during the Fenian troubles of 1866. In 1871, he was selected by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church to come west to Red River (now Manitoba) to organize a Presbyterian college and a new church. He set up Manitoba College and taught there until 1909. In 1872, he founded Knox Church, the first Presbyterian church in Winnipeg. He was also one of the founders of the University of Manitoba where he taught science and served on the University Council until his retirement in 1904. He served as President of the Manitoba Historical and Scientific Society (1884-1887, 1905-1913). He was a prolific author who wrote nine books and forty or fifty pamphlets as well as numerous sermons and speeches. In 1910, he served as the Royal Society’s President. In 1921, he was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Manitoba.

In 1872, he married Marion Samuels (1839–1920). He died on August 5, 1931, in Carleton, Ontario.

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce, was born on May 10, 1838, in Belfast, Ireland.

He was a British educator, jurist, historian, and Liberal politician. He was educated at the Belfast Academy, Glasgow High School, Glasgow University, the University of Heidelberg, and Trinity College, Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, in 1862 and was called to the Bar, Lincoln's Inn, in 1867. He practised law in London for a few years but was soon called back to Oxford to become Regius Professor of Civil Law, a position he held from 1870 to 1893. From 1870 to 1875, he was also Professor of Jurisprudence at Owens College, Manchester. In 1872, Bryce, a proponent of higher education, particularly for women, joined the Central Committee of the National Union for Improving the Education of Women of All Classes. In 1880, he was elected to the House of Commons and remained a Member of Parliament until 1907. He served as Chairman of the Royal Commission on Secondary Education, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1885), President of the Board of Trade (1894), and Chief Secretary for Ireland (1905). From 1907 until 1913, he held the position of British Ambassador to the United States and was very efficient in strengthening Anglo-American ties and friendship. In 1914, Bryce was raised to the peerage as Viscount Bryce of Dechmount in the County of Lanark, becoming a member of the House of Lords. Following the outbreak of the First World War, he strongly condemned the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. In 1915, he published The Bryce Report, in which he described German atrocities in Belgium. He served as a judge at the International Court in The Hague and supported the establishment of the League of Nations. He was the author of numerous books, e.g., "The Holy Roman Empire" (1864), "Transcaucasia and Ararat" (1877), "The American Commonwealth" (1888), "Impressions of South Africa" (1897), and “Modern Democracy” (1921).

In 1889, he married Elizabeth Marion Ashton (1854–1939). He died on January 22, 1922, in Sidmouth, Devon, England.

Diana Fitzgerald, a Canadian literary author, was born in London, England. She was best known for her poetry, but also wrote novels, reviews, and columns. Her family lived around the corner from the Jordanian Embassy; its occupation by protesters demanding the release of a PLO hijacker, Leila Khaled, made a big impression on her at age 9. She later attended North Toronto Collegiate Institute with her younger sister, graduating in 1980, with a Kerr award for character, scholarship, and leadership. In 1984, she graduated from Trinity College. She has been a course instructor at Humber College in Toronto. Her poems have appeared in two Insomniac Press anthologies and Vintage 96, the anthology of the League of Canadian Poets. The Torontonian’s first collection of poems, "Learning Russian", shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award, was published in 2000, followed by "Clinic Day" in 2004. Her first novel, "No Place Strange", which appeared in 2009, features a female terrorist reminiscent of Leila Khaled, who later became a member of the Palestinian National Council.

Charles John Brydges was born on February 23, 1827, in London, England.

Brydges was a railway official, civil servant, and HBC land commissioner. In 1843, he was appointed a junior clerk in the London and South-Western Railway Company. He initiated a “friendly society” to benefit the railway’s workmen, and, knowing the need for financial prudence, he pressed on the company and its employees the urgency of contributory superannuation provisions. In 1852, he published a pamphlet “Railway superannuation: an examination of the scheme of the General Railway Association for providing superannuation allowances to worn out and disabled railway employés”. In 1852, he came to Canada to become the managing director of the Great Western Railroad which was incorporated to build a line from Burlington Bay to Lake Huron. From 1862 to 1874 he was general manager of the competing Grand Trunk Railway. Afterwards, he became one of the Commissioners of the Intercolonial Railway which connected Montreal, Quebec, with Halifax, Nova Scotia. He built up the employees’ morale and loyalty by supporting reading-rooms, education for workers, and improved benefits. From 1879 until his death, he was a Land Commissioner for the Hudson's Bay Company in Winnipeg. The town of Mount Brydges, Ontario, is named in his honour.

In 1849, he married Letitia Grace Henderson (1823–1912). He died on February 16, 1889, in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges was born on November 30, 1762, in Wootton, Kent, England.

He was an English bibliographer, genealogist, and author. He was educated at Maidstone Grammar School and The King's School, Canterbury, and was admitted to Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1780. Although he did not complete his degree, he studied poetry in seclusion from his peers. He joined the Middle Temple, London, in 1782 and was called to the bar in 1787 but never practiced law. In 1795, he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. Despite his early forgotten literary works, such as "Sonnets and other Poems" (1785), he made valuable contributions through his bibliographical publications, including "Censura Literaria," "Titles and Opinions of Old English Books" (10 vols., 1805-1809), "Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum" (1800) and "Peerage of England" (1812). He was a founding member of the Roxburghe Club, a publishing club of affluent book collectors. In 1807, he was appointed a Knight Grand Commander of the Equestrian, Secular, and Chapterial Order of St. Joachim. In 1814, he was made a baronet. He also served as Member of Parliament for Maidstone from 1812 to 1818.

In 1786, he married Elizabeth Byrche (1766/7–1796), and in 1796, he remarried Mary Robinson. He died on September 8, 1837, at Campagne Gros Jean, near Geneva, and was buried in Geneva.

William Brydone Jack was born on November 23, 1817, in Trailflatt, Tinwald, Scotland.

He was a mathematician, astronomer, and professor. He was educated at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. In 1840, he was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at what was then King's College (later the University of New Brunswick, 1851) in Fredericton, Nova Scotia. He also designed a small wooden observatory which became operational in 1851. In 1855, William Brydone Jack, together with Dr. J.B. Toldervy, determined the longitude of Fredericton using the exchange of telegraph signals with Harvard College Observatory. This was the first precisely determined longitude in Canada. In 1861, he became the University of New Brunswick's first surveying professor and its second president (1861-1885). He introduced a course in civil engineering and surveying. The Brydone Jack Observatory was marked by an official plaque in 1955 which identified the building as the "First Astronomical Observatory in Canada."

In 1844, he married Marian Ellen Peters (1825–1858). In 1859, he married Caroline Amelia Disbrow (1829–1910). He died on November 23, 1886, in Fredericton, Nova Scotia.