Lady Ouida Touche was a former Fleet street journalist turned art consultant. Moving to Calgary in 1961 she started her own business as an art consultant for companies building art collections. She started the annual Calgary Art Walk, served as chairwoman of the Calgary Region Arts Foundation, sponsored Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, and gave a weekly arts talk on CBC Radio. Ouida married Rodney, a fellow Fleet Street reporter, in 1955. She died in 2009.
Margaret J. Osler was born on November 27 1942. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College in 1963 and later graduated from Indiana University with her Master of Arts (1966) and Ph.D. (1968) with degrees in History and the Philosophy of Science. Her dissertation was "John Locke and Some Philosophical Problems in the Science of Boyle and Newton.
Osler held teaching appointments at Oregon State University, Harvey Mudd College and Wake Forest University; she moved to Calgary in 1975 with a position in the Department of History. During her tenure she was instrumental in the creation of the major and minor undergraduate programs in History and Philosophy of Science, the interdisciplinary M.A and Ph.D. programs and the Research Institute in Gender Studies. She published widely in the areas of history of science and religion, intellectual history, mechanical philosophy and the scientific revolution.
Osler was the recipient of the Science and Religion Course Prize from the Centre for Theology and the Natural Sciences, the Richard S. Westfall Lecture from Indiana University and the Stillman Drake Lecture from the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science, of which she was President from 1987-1990. She was also active as the editor of several journals including the Journal of the History of Philosophy, and she served in many community organizations including the Rocky Mountain Civil Liberties Association and the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership.
Osler died in Calgary on September 15, 2010.
James Wheeler Davidson was born in Austin, Minnesota in 1872 and educated at the Northwestern Military Academy. After a brief stint organizing tours for members of the local opera house, he was invited to join Peary’s second Greenland expedition in 1893. After this fifteen-month adventure was complete, he returned briefly to Minnesota and then went to Formosa as a war correspondent in the Sino-Japanese war of 1895. He was appointed US consul agent in Formosa in 1896, a position he held until 1903, when he was transferred to Manchuria and then to Shanghai the following year. He wrote extensively during this period, and his book The Island of Formosa, Past and Present, published in 1903, is still considered one of the primary authoritative books on Taiwanese history.
Davidson returned to the U.S. in 1905 suffering from typhoid and met his future wife, Lillian Dow, on the ship coming home. They married in 1906 and moved to Winnipeg, where he started his life as a businessman in Canada. The couple moved to Calgary in 1907 and in 1915, their daughter Marjory was born. Together with his brother, C.H. Davidson, and investors from the U.S., James was involved in a number of successful business ventures, including the Calgary Colonization Company, the Crown Lumber Company, and the Royalite Oil Company. He was also actively involved in a number of different initiatives in Calgary, including the construction of the Lougheed Building, the Calgary Symphony Orchestra, the Alberta Motor Association, and the Calgary-Banff Tourist Development Association.
Davidson began his involvement with Rotary in 1914. In 1919, he became the President of the Calgary District Rotary Club, and for the remainder of his life, Rotary would play an increasingly important role. In 1921, he travelled to Australia and New Zealand with James L. Ralston, and they were successful in generating enthusiasm for Rotary and instrumental in getting several new clubs chartered. After increasing involvement locally and nationally with Rotary, James, Lillian and Marjory embarked on a thirty-two month trip in 1928 to Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Jerusalem, India and the Far East. The purpose of the trip was to promote the expansion of Rotary clubs across the world, and they were successful in getting 23 Rotary clubs chartered in 12 different countries. Throughout this period, James submitted regular reports to Rotary International about his progress, and Lillian maintained detailed journals and contributed regular articles about their travels to The Rotarian magazine.
The Davidson family returned to Canada in 1931 and were enthusiastically welcomed home by their Rotarian family at a large formal dinner in Vancouver. In 1932, the family moved to Vancouver, as James was in failing health. In 1933, at the age of 61, James passed away. Tributes poured in from all over the world after his passing, as he had met and touched so many lives. A lasting tribute to James proposed by the Alberta Motor Association and the Royal Club of Calgary was the dedication of Mount Davidson, near Banff, Alberta.
Lillian and Marjory continued their involvement with Rotary for many years, and they kept an active correspondence with many of the people they met on their travels. Lillian was asked to speak at various Rotary events, and her articles about their Rotary extension trip were published in a book, Making New Friends, in 1934. Marjory also spoke at Rotary events, including the Rotary International Convention in Taiwan in 1994.
John Michael Boon was the founder of The Wheel Trust, a Calgary think tank specializing in peace and justice issues that included Canadian foreign policy, war in Iraq and Afghanistan. He lived for a period in Chiapas, Mexico, advocating for human rights.
Boon was also an avid caver, a past editor of the Caving International Magazine, and is the author of "Down to a Sunless Sea."
Gregory (Greg) Hollingshead, born 25 Feb 1947 in Toronto, Ontario, is a Canadian novelist. He was educated in Canada and England and earned a PhD from the University College, University of London (1974). In his academic career at the University of Alberta, he rose to the rank of Professor teaching in the English Department from 1975-2005. His professional career as writer included terms as chair and first vice-chair of the Writers? Union of Canada from 2010-2012, as well as Director, Writing Programs, Banff Centre, beginning in 1999. He is the recipient of many honours and awards including the appointment as Member of the Order of Canada and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012), his induction to City of Edmonton Arts and Culture Hall of Fame (2010), and the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Gold Medal for Excellence in the Arts (2007). He began his literary writing career in the early 1990s and has produced since then the award winning novels Spin Dry (1993), The Healer (1999), and Bedlam (2004), the short story collection The Roaring Girl (1997), and fiction including White Buick (1993), The Fall Guy (2004), as well as the film script Strange Cargo (1993). He has also published personal essays and essays on writing and art.