Thomas Joseph Workman Burgess was born on March 11, 1849, in Toronto, Ontario.

He was a physician, botanist, asylum superintendent, professor, and author. He attended Upper Canada College in Toronto (1862-1866) and then completed his medical studies at the University of Toronto (1870). He immediately joined the medical staff of the Asylum for the Insane in Toronto. In 1872, he accepted a position as surgeon to the North America Boundary Commission. Travelling widely throughout Canada in this capacity, he developed an interest in botany, a subject to which he would devote many articles and lectures. From 1875 to 1887 Burgess worked at the Asylum for the Insane in London, Ontario and later at the Asylum for the Insane in Hamilton. In 1890, he became the first medical superintendent of the Protestant Hospital for the Insane in Verdun, Quebec where he spent the next 33 years. He made sure that the patients were treated in the most humane manner and he set up an extensive program to keep them occupied (work, physical activity, and leisure pursuits). In 1899, he became a professor of psychiatry at McGill University. In 1885, he became a member of the Royal Society of Canada. In 1886, he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1904 and 1905, he was president of the American Medico-Psychological Association.

In 1875, he married Jesse McPherson (1853–1929). He died on January 18, 1926, in Montreal, Quebec.

Irving Burgie has been called one of the greatest composers of Caribbean music. Son of a mother from Barbados and a father from Virginia, he was born in New York City. After high school, he sang at various clubs in New York — under the stage name Lord Burgess — until he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943. He served in an all-Black unit in China, Burma and India. After the war, he was accepted at Juillard School of Music and expected to become a classical singer; he also studied music at both the University of Arizona and the University of Southern California. However, he met singer Harry Belafonte at Camp Minisink run by the Harlem-based New York City Mission Society in upstate New York, and the two became friends. He and William Attaway collaborated on a version of the lyrics for the Banana Boat song (Day-O) for Belafonte, a major hit of the mid-1950s, and he went on to create 33 other songs for the Calypso star. In 1966, he wrote the lyrics for the national anthem for newly independent Barbados. He was inducted into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 2007.

Ordained as a priest in Ireland, Edmund Burke came to Québec in 1786. He served as a missionary on Ile d'Orléans (1791-1794) and in the area of Detroit and Ohio (1794-1796).