Stephen Herrero is a Canadian professor emeritus of ecology at the University of Calgary. He is the author of Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance, which has been described as "authoritative" and "required reading" on the topic.

Primarily known for her exquisitely drawn narrative short stories, Alice Munro (née Laidlaw) is a critically acclaimed Canadian short-story writer who won the Man Booker International Prize in 2009 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013.

Born July 10, 1931, in Wingham, Ontario, Canada, Munro graduated from her local district high school with the highest standing in her class in 1949. She won a two-year scholarship to the University of Western Ontario (now Western University) but left after two years of studying English and journalism due to financial constraints. At age 20, in 1951, she married her first husband, James Munro, and moved to Vancouver and then Victoria, British Columbia where the couple opened a large, independent bookstore, Munro’s Books, and raised three daughters. During this time, she began publishing her work in various magazines including The New Yorker. In 1951, Munro's story The Strangers was purchased to broadcast on the CBC radio program Anthology. Produced by Robert Weaver, the show is credited with championing the work of Canadian writers.

Written over a 15-year span, Munro's first collection of stories (and first book-length work) was published in 1968 as Dance of the Happy Shades netting her first Governor General's Award for fiction. This anthology was followed by two subsequent short story collections Who Do You Think You Are? (1978; also issued as The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose) and The Progress of Love (1986).

Originally conceived as a novel but developed into a series of interrelated coming-of-age stories, her work Lives of Girls and Women (1971) captured tales of her native southwestern Ontario, an uncharted and ambivalent landscape that affectionately came to be known as “Munro country.” After her first marriage ended in 1972, she returned to Ontario and settled in Clinton, near her childhood home, where she lived with her second husband, geographer Gerald Fremlin, whom she married in 1976. (Fremlin died in April 2013.)

In 1979, Munro spoke out against banning books on CBC and in newspaper editorials after the school board in her native Huron County banned her book Lives of Girls and Women from the Grade 12 syllabus.

Her writing continued with Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You (1974), The Moons of Jupiter (1982), Friend of My Youth (1990), and A Wilderness Station (1994). The multifaceted Open Secrets, which appeared in 1994, ranged in setting from the hills of southern Ontario to the mountains of Albania; while her dark collection The Love of a Good Woman (1998) would go on to receive both Canada’s esteemed Giller Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in the U.S.

In 2004, Munro released Runaway, a Giller Prize-winning effort that explored the depths of ordinary lives through realistic reminiscences, prompting Margaret Atwood to describe her as having achieved "international literary sainthood." Published in 2007, The View from Castle Rock saw Munro once again expertly weaving history and family memoirs into quizzical fiction. Her short-story collection Too Much Happiness arrived in 2009 with Munro claiming the UK’s Man Booker International Prize that same year. She told an interviewer that Dear Life (2012), her semi-autobiographical 14th collection, would be her last, although she did go on to issue several compilations of previously published material, including Selected Stories (1996) and Family Furnishings: Selected Stories, 1995–2014 (2014).

Screenplay adaptations of Munro’s short stories include “The Bear Came over the Mountain,” originally published in Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001), which was made into the film about the domestic erosions of Alzheimer’s disease Away from Her (2006), directed by Sarah Polley. Other films based on Munro’s work include Liza Johnson’s Hateship Loveship (2013), the title story of her 2001 collection, and Pedro Almodóvar’s Julieta (2016), a mystery-drama movie inspired by a trio of stories — Chance, Soon and Silence from her 2004 collection Runaway. In 2015, her story Dear Life was re-imagined as a work for orchestra and soprano, by award-winning Canadian composer Zosha Di Castri, and performed at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.

In 2013, at age 82, Munro was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Munro was the first Canadian—as well as the 13th woman—to be named the Nobel literature laureate, with the exception of Canadian-born American author Saul Bellow (who won the prize in 1976). The Royal Canadian Mint issued a commemorative Alice Munro coin in 2014 to celebrate her Nobel Prize win. The coin's design includes a passage from her short story Messenger. Established in honour of her many literary accomplishments, The Alice Munro Festival of the Short Story (Wingham) was launched in 2015.

"It's nice to go out with a bang," Munro stated after receiving a Canadian book award for Dear Life. When she was contacted by The Canadian Press about her Nobel Prize win, Munro remarked, "I knew I was in the running, yes, but I never thought I would win." The author later stated, "I would really hope that this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something that you played around with until you'd got a novel written."

https://www.biography.com/writer/alice-munro#:~:text=Munro%20was%20born%20Alice%20Ann,first%20husband%20James%20Munro%20(m. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alice-Munro https://www.cbc.ca/books/90-things-to-know-about-master-short-story-writer-alice-munro-1.4088507 https://nac-cna.ca/en/lifereflected/dearlife

Joanna McClelland Glass was born Joan Ruth McClelland in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan October 7, 1936. Glass was involved in theatre in high school and when she moved to Calgary a year after graduating, she participated in Betty Mitchell's amateur theatre Workshop 14. She spent a year in California at the Warner Brothers Drama School and later moved to New York in 1959 where she met and married physicist Alexander Glass. Glass acted with the Yale School of Drama for four years until her children were born.

By the late 1960s, Glass had written a number of plays; the first published was the playscript "Over the Mountain" in 1966. Her career as a playwright was cemented in 1972 with the production of "Canadian Gothic" and "American Modern" first produced in the Manhattan Theatre Club. Glass has also written two novels "Reflections on a Mountain Summer" and "Woman Wanted" which she also adapted as screenplays. She earned a Tony award nomination for her play "Trying".

Richard C. (Dick) Mann attended the University of British Columbia, graduating in 1957. He joined the Vancouver firm of Thompson, Berwick, Pratt & Partners the same year as a draughtsman. In 1966, Mann was put in charge of the Urban Planning division, a post he held until he left the firm in 1985. Mann was involved with various projects including the Kelowna waterfront development, and planning for urban development and industrial building projects. Mann was also active on the Vancouver Board of Trade as Chair, and as a member of the Civic Affairs Committee, and the Environmental Task Force.

When Mann left TBP in 1985, he founded his own firm of abitat consultants. The company was involved in economic and environmental consulting for building projects, and the design and building of private and public spaces.

Dick Mann died in Vancouver in 1992.

E.F. Ross Brisley was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1906. He attended elementary school in the Oak Park neighbourhood of Chicago. In 1920 he moved to Toronto with his family. He attended Central Technical School in Toronto in a four year industrial course on architecture and building construction, graduating in 1924. His first position as an architect was with Lindsay A. Wardell in Toronto (1924-1925). He then joined J. Francis Brown Architect (1925-1926), followed by Wickson and Gregg Architects (1927), and J. Francis Brown and Son Architects (1929-1932). In 1931 he took a six month break to travel Europe. In 1932 he moved to New Liskeard in northern Ontario and worked as a draftsman with Hill Clark Francis before starting his own practice (1934-1945). In 1943, he worked for the Canadian Department of Defense in Ottawa, Works and Buildings of the Navy. Brisley was asked by F. Bruce Brown to return to Toronto in 1943 to assist him with projects following the death of J. Francis Brown. In 1946 Brisley became a partner in the firm under the name Bruce Brown & Brisley Architects (1946-1962) and later Brown, Brisley & Brown Architects (1962-1973) after F. Bruce Brown’s son, Douglas B. Brown, became an additional partner in the firm in 1962. In 1972, Brisley retired from his architectural practice.

Douglas Bruce Brown was born in Toronto in 1932. His father was the architect F. Bruce Brown. He attended elementary school in Whitney, Ontario, and secondary school at the University of Toronto Schools. He graduated with his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Toronto in 1958 and joined his father’s firm Bruce Brown & Brisley Architects. In 1962 he was admitted to partnership in the firm and the name changed to Brown, Brisley & Brown Architects. Following the retirement of his father and E.F. Ross Brisley in 1972, Douglas B. Brown became sole proprietor of the firm from 1973 to 1980. In 1981 Brown was joined by partners Fred W. Beck and Murray R. Ross and the name of the firm changed to Brown, Beck & Ross Architects (1981-2012).

John Francis (J. Francis) Brown was born in Levis, Quebec in 1866. He attended school in Plymouth, England and returned to Canada in 1882. Brown trained for architecture in various Toronto offices, including Edwards & Webster. In 1888, he was resident architect on the Board of Trade Building for the firm James & James of New York. He was one of five architects chosen for the second stage of the competition for the British Columbia Parliament Buildings in Victoria (1891). He established his own practice in 1892 under the name J. Francis Brown (1892-1924). He was later joined by his son, F. Bruce Brown, and the firm became J. Francis Brown & Son (1924-1942). In 1929, he collaborated with William Lyon Somerville on the design for McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He was a member of the Architectural Draughtsmen's Club (1886-1892), a member of the Eighteen Club (1899-1902), and a member of the Ontario Association of Architects (1892). J. Francis Brown died in April 1942.

Francis Bruce (F. Bruce) Brown was born in Toronto in July 1899. His father was the architect John Francis Brown. F. Bruce Brown attended Rosedale Public School and University of Toronto Schools before he served in WWI with the 85th Battery of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Siberia, Russia. His commanding officer in the military was Raymond Massey, the famous actor and father of Canadian architect Geoffrey Massey. Brown received his B.Arch. (Honours) from the University of Toronto in 1923 and was the recipient of the Architectural Guild medal. That same year he was awarded the Ontario Government French Travelling Scholarship and studied at the Fontainebleau School of Fine Arts in France during 1923-24. He received his M.Arch. from the University of Toronto in 1925. He joined his father's firm in 1926. He married Myrtle Estelle Hare in 1930 and they had five children: two boys and three girls. His architectural specialty was churches, designing over 100 churches throughout Canada. In the late 1940s he and E.F. Ross Brisley partnered in the firm Bruce Brown & Brisley (1946-1962). The firm later changed to Brown, Brisley & Brown (1962-1972). He retired from his architectural practice in 1972. In 1956, in recognition of his design work for McMaster University, F. Bruce Brown was awarded a Doctor of Laws, Honoris Causa, from McMaster University. F. Bruce Brown was a President of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (1964-65), an Associate in the Royal Institute of British Architects, an Honorary Fellow in the American Institute of Architects, and an honorary life member of the Ontario Association of Architects. Brown was a member of the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto, an enthusiastic amateur artist, and a frequent sketching companion of the Canadian artists A.J. Casson and Clare Bice. F. Bruce Brown died on July 30th 1983 in Toronto.

Howard Reid Cable was a Canadian conductor, arranger, composer, music director, scriptwriter, and producer. He was born in Toronto, Ontario on December 15, 1920. Cable studied piano, clarinet, and the oboe and played in the Parkdale Collegiate Institute Orchestra under Leslie Bell. He also studied at the Toronto Conservatory of Music.

Cable began his radio career in 1936 for CFRB Toronto as a programmer and scriptwriter. He began working for the CBC in 1941 as a composer of incidental music. He also produced and directed events at the Canadian National Exhibition. In 1967 he became the on-site producer for Expo ’67 in Montreal. Cable began working with the Canadian Brass as an arranger in 1977, during his association with the ensemble, wrote more than 80 compositions and arrangements. In 1986, he began to guest conduct leading Canadian orchestras in concerts featuring his own arrangements. The following year he became the music director of the Halifax Summer Pops Orchestra. Over the years, Cable composed, arranged and conducted for many musical groups including the Hannaford Street Silver Band.

Cable worked in musical theatre and other musical endeavors. From 1964-1967, he worked in New York as a studio conductor and on Broadway. His Canadian theatrical credits include associations with the National Ballet, as well as the Banff, Shaw and Charlottetown festivals. Cable was music director of the Summer Musical Theatre training program (1975-1983) and program head (1983-1985) at the Banff Centre. He was also the head of the music department at Humber College, Toronto (1982-1985) and music director of the Royal York Hotel, Toronto (1974-1986). In 1989, Cable began a summer training program in musical theatre techniques and production at Dalhousie. He composed numerous scores for CBC radio and television, the National Film Board, Calgary International Organ festival and the 1988 Olympic Winter Games arts festival and gala in Calgary.

In 1980, Cable received the Canadian Band Directors’ Association Award for his contribution to the development of Canadian band music. He received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from University of Lethbridge in 2002, and was appointed a member of the Order of Canada by the Governor General in 1999. Cable died in 2016.

Charles Leslie 'Les' Usher was the son of Thomas and Margaret Dorothy Usher. Born in Scollard Alberta, he grew up on the Usher family ranch in the Big Valley, AB area. He graduated from University School in Victoria B.C. in 1942, then completed the No. 1 Canadian Army Training Course. He served as 2nd Lt. in the field artillery during World War II. After the war, he returned to Alberta and completed an Agriculture degree from the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

In the 1970’s, Les served as Deputy Minister of Culture under Horst Schmid, and Peter Lougheed. He last worked as Manager of Program Implementation with Agriculture Canada before retiring in 1993. Highlights career of public service include: Deputy Minister of Department of Youth in Alberta; President of 4-H Clubs in Alberta and Canadian Council of 4-H Clubs; Member of Board of Governors & Senate at UofA; National President of IPAC in 1976; President of Alberta Forestry Association & Jr. Forest Wardens; President of Alberta Institute of Agrologists – Edmonton; and People’s Warden at All Saints’ Anglican Cathedral.

He continued to ranch on the family ranch on weekends and created the Rumsey Ecological reserve on former Usher Ranch lease land.

He married Lillian May Popoff in 1955 and had two children, Laurel and Thomas. Les died on September 9, 2018.