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J. Graham Morgan was a social anthropologist, Dalhousie professor and President and Vice Chancellor of the University of King's College from 1970-1977. Born in Barrow-in-Furness, England, on 11 August 1940, he studied at the University of Nottingham, McMaster University, and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1966 he joined Dalhousie's Sociology Department (later Sociology and Social Anthropology), serving as chair from 1995-2000. From 1970-1978, he held a joint appointment at the University of King's College, where he guided the creation of the university's Foundation Year Programme.

Morgan was an active scholar and member of dozens of departmental, faculty, university and national committees, including University Senate (1987-1991) and chair of the Senate Library Committee (1995-1998). He retired from teaching in 2004.

Archibald Ogilvie Leighton was born in 1880 in Ballycarry, Northern Ireland, the youngest son of John Leighton (1841-1928), a Scottish-born attorney who settled in Ireland after his marriage to Caroline Wilson (1849-1885). Archie—or “A.O.”—was the sixth of eight children and the youngest of three sons. As a young man, Archie was apprenticed in the building trade and in 1902 was sent to Sligo, on Ireland’s west coast, to supervise the building of a post office. It was here that he met and became engaged to Gertrude Ann Hamilton. In 1906 he moved to the United States in pursuit of work, intending to take advantage of the construction boom in San Francisco that followed the great earthquake. However, he ended up in Philadelphia; after Gertrude arrived the same year in New York and they were married, they settled just north of Philadelphia, where their first child, Alexander (Alec), was born.

In 1909 Archie joined forces with a wealthy businessman named A.D. Leighton to form the contracting firm Irwin and Leighton Company. As the company grew more prosperous and a daughter, Gertrude (“Gussie”), was born, the Leightons moved further out of the city and began to spend their summers on the New Jersey coast. However, the combined threat of killer sharks and a polio outbreak in 1916 prompted them to start summering in Nova Scotia, where Archie—(and later, Alec) eventually established second homes in Digby County.

In 1955 Irwin and Leighton was sold to its employees and in 1958 Archie’s wife, Gertrude, died. Some years later Archie married Rose Witowski. He continued to work for the firm and was serving as Chairman of the Board when he died in 1964.

John Young was a Halifax merchant, author, and politician. Born in Falkirk, Scotland in 1773 to Janet and William Young, he was educated at the University of Glasgow ca. 1790. Young performed well in his theological studies but chose to pursue business in Falkirk and Glasgow. He married Agnes Renny, with whom he had nine children, including George, Charles, and William. In 1814 Young and his family moved to Nova Scotia, where he founded John Young and Company.

Young became interested in agriculture shortly after his arrival in Nova Scotia. Between 1814 and 1816, under the pseudonym "Agricola," he wrote letters to The Acadian Recorder, championing ideas such as the creation of a provincial farming board, rural farming societies, and other initiatives. His suggestions were popular and supported by Lord Dalhousie, who established a Central Board of Agriculture in 1819. Young was appointed secretary and treasurer, making him responsible for mediating between the board and the newly formed farming societies, importing and distributing seeds, tools and other items, managing agricultural competitions, and handling correspondence and other administrative duties. In 1822 many of Young’s Agricola letters were published in the book The Letters of Agricola on the Principles of Vegetation and Tillage. While the board was initially popular and well supported, the House of Assembly failed to renew its charter in 1826.

In 1823 Young ran unsuccessfully in Halifax for a seat in the assembly, and in 1824 he won a Sydney by-election. He proved to be a vocal and active member in the assembly, where he remained until his death in Halifax on October 6, 1837.

James Morrison is an oral historian and researcher with interests in global, Southeast Asian and oral history. He was born and raised in Truro, Nova Scotia, and received his BA and BEd degrees from Acadia University. Between 1965 and 1969 he was enrolled in a Naval Officer Training Program, worked for Frontier College (now called United for Literacy), and taught both English and mathematics in Ghana. In 1969 he received a Commonwealth Scholarship from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, where he completed his PhD in 1976 on the oral traditions of the Nigerian highlands.

He returned to Nova Scotia in 1976 to work as an oral historian and researcher with Parks Canada, conducting an oral history of Kejimkujik National Park. In 1979 he was appointed Executive Director of the International Education Centre at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, where he helped to foster the university's institutional commitment to international education. He served as Dean of Arts from 1983-1989, and later as Coordinator of the Asian Studies Program and the International Development Studies Program.

Morrison has held visiting fellowships at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore), Hokkaido University of Education (Japan), and Jawaharlal Nehru University (India). He was an advisor to the Black Cultural Society for Nova Scotia and the Black Loyalist Museum, and a researcher and oral historian for the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. He is past president of the Japan Studies Association of Canada, the Canadian Oral History Association, the Nova Scotian Federation of Heritage, the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society, and the Society for the Study of Ethnicity in Nova Scotia.

He is a former editor and current book review editor for FORUM, the Canadian Oral History Association journal. He has written and published in areas including oral history, military history, social history, ethnicity and adult education. In 2008 Morrison was named a Member of the Order of Canada, and in 2013 he received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for his research and contributions to the field of oral history.

The first Dalhousie library was established by order of the University Senate on 24 April 1867. Housed in the “new” Dalhousie College (renamed the Forrest Building in 1919), the library was beset by financial difficulties during the early decades, especially after the Board’s 1890 decision to withdraw all library funding. During this period the collection grew only through gifts in kind and sporadic donations by faculty and alumni, although 1894 witnessed both the advent of class memorial book gifts and the hiring of paid library staff, which led to expanded service hours, from two to seven hours per day, five days each week.

In 1916 a library was built on the new Studley Campus, thanks to the generosity of Professor Charles Macdonald. On his death in 1906, the former Chair of Mathematics bequeathed $2000 to the university for books, a gesture that triggered an eponymous fundraising campaign. Despite several renovations and later additions, eventually the collection and its user population outgrew the space, and in 1971 the Killam Library was opened.

From 1867 until the 1952 appointment of Douglas G. Lockhead, the library's operations were overseen by a Senate-appointed committee, which appointed an acting librarian, usually from the ranks of newly arrived junior faculty. Their responsibilities were limited to collecting fines, providing access to the library's limited book collection, and placing orders approved by Senate. Faculty librarians included James DeMille (1868-1875); Professor Liechti (1875-1876); Reverend Dr. William Lyall (1876-1881); John Forrest (1881-1885); Jacob Schurman (1885-1886); William Alexander (1886-1889); James Seth (1889-1892); Walter Murray (1892-1902); Daniel Murray (1902-1906); and Archibald MacMechan (1906-1931).

The first paid assistant librarian was Zillah Macdonald in 1894, followed by a series of part-time student assistants and finally, in 1907, a full-time assistant. In 1915 Francis Jean Lindsay was hired as a cataloguer. She was the main library's first trained librarian and in her three years at Dalhousie she reclassified the entire collection according to the new Library of Congress system, increased the library's opening hours to 44 hours a week, initiated circulation procedures and wrote a column in the Gazette. President MacKenzie referred to her as being in charge of the library, albeit without authority over policies, collections or budget, and her low salary led to her resignation in 1919. Her work was continued by a series of untrained library assistants.

During the tenure of C.L. Bennett (1931-1950), who was the last Library Committee faculty member to oversee the library, operations were in the hands of librarians Ivy Prickler (1940-47); Dorothy MacKay (1947-1951); and Jean Carter (1951-1952). Douglas G. Lochhead (1952-1960) was Dalhousie's first University Librarian, appointed with faculty status and directly responsible to the university president. He was followed by J.P. Wilkinson (1960-1966); Louis G. Vagianos (1966-1969) and as Director of Libraries (1976-1973); Dorothy Louise Cooke (1970-1981); William F. Birdsall (1981-1997); and William R. Maes (1998-2010). During the tenure of Donna Bourne-Tyson (2010-2022), the position of University Librarian changed to Dean of Libraries.The second Dean of Libraries, Michael Vandenberg, was appointed in August 2022.

Catherine Banks is an award-winning playwright. She was born in 1957 in Middleton, Nova Scotia, and was educated at Digby Regional High School before earning her BA (1978) and BEd (1979) from Acadia University. From 1980-1985 she worked as a special education teacher in Shelburne and Halifax, and began writing for the theatre while raising her children, Rilla and Simon.

Her plays, frequently described as "Atlantic Gothic," have been performed across Canada and have received numerous awards and critical recognition. In 2008 Catherine Banks received Nova Scotia’s Established Artist Award for her body of work. Three Storey, Ocean View won the du Maurier National Play Competition's Silver Medal in 1995 and was nominated for a Merrit Award for best new play in 2000. Bone Cage received a Special Merit prize in Theatre BC's New Play Competition in 2002, was showcased at the National Arts Centre's On the Verge in 2005, and was awarded the Governor General’s Literary Award for (English) Drama in 2008. In 2012 It is Solved by Walking won Catherine Banks the Governor General's Literary Award for (English) Drama for a second time.

An active member of the Canadian theatre scene, Banks has participated in numerous readings and workshops and collaborated with theatres across the country. She served on the faculty of Sage Hill Writing in 2018, 2020, and 2021. She is a founding member and past president of the Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre and has served as the Atlantic representative for the Playwrights Guild of Canada.

Natural philosophy (physics) was on the curriculum of the "first" Dalhousie College in 1838, and when the college reopened in 1863 as a university, Thomas McCulloch, Jr. was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy. After his premature death in 1865, it was a decade before another such appointment was made. In 1876 J. Gordon MacGregor was appointed Lecturer in Natural Philosophy and taught classes in experimental physics and mathematical physics, while Charles MacDonald taught hydrostatics, optics and astronomy. In 1879 MacGregor became the first George Munro Chair of Physics. One of the first female faculty members hired at Dalhousie was Merle Colpitt, who started as a physics demonstrator during World War One, was promoted to an instructor in 1918, and retired in 1926, a year after she married H.L. Bronson, who had been appointed first head of the newly named Physics Department in 1922.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the department offered a general BSc, a BSc with Honours in Physics, and a BSc in Engineering Physics. In the 1980s, Engineering Physics moved from Dalhousie and a Diploma in Meteorology (DMet) was added. In the 1990s, the Honours Co-op program was instituted. The design, organization, and instruction of undergraduate teaching laboratories, as well as a Physics Resource Centre for first-year students, was enhanced by the work of senior instructors, including Mr. F.M. Fyfe (1974-2001) and Mr. W. P. Zukauskas (1982-2008).

J.H.L. Johnstone was the department's first graduate student, earning an MSc in Physics in 1914, joining the department as a faculty member in 1920, and appointed Head and Munro Professor in 1945. The first woman to receive a MSc was Elizabeth Torrey in 1930. The PhD program in Physics was initiated in 1961 and the first recipient of a PhD in Physics was Dr. Peter Gacii in 1966. The first woman to receive a PhD in Physics was Dr. Nahomi Fujiki of Japan, whose degree was awarded in 1989.

The Dalhousie University Meteorology program was established ins 1984. Administered by the Physics Department, it offers a Diploma in Meteorology (DMet) in conjunction with a BSc in Physics. In 1989, the Atmospheric Sciences program was established in conjunction with AES and NSERC and run jointly between Dalhousie's Departments of Physics and Oceanography. In 2001 the program was absorbed into the physics department, whose name changed to the Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science.

William Graham Allen (1909-1986) was a freelance writer and broadcaster, best known for his work with the CBC. He was born in Halifax on 6 January 1909 to William T. and Winnifred (Dodge) Allen. He was a graduate of Dalhousie University's class of 1929, and also studied at Royal Roads Military College and HMCS Cornwallis. In 1928 Allen began reporting for The Halifax Chronicle and worked in various editorial positions until 1941, when he signed on for active duty in the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve. He served as a Sub-lieutenant and was involved in the theatrical show "Meet The Navy." In 1946 Allen returned to The Halifax Chronicle-Herald, continuing to serve from 1947-1951 as an executive officer for HMCS Scotian, Halifax Naval Reserve Division.

In 1951 Allen was appointed Director of University Liaisons at Dalhousie University, where he also served as editor for The Dalhousie Review from 1953-1957, the year of his retirement from the university. That year he joined the Canadian Broadcast Corporation as the news staff supervisor for the Maritimes. He retired from the CBC in 1975, but continued to broadcast as a freelancer and to host the popular radio program Neighborly News from 1977–1980. Allen was a self described "movie freak" and a large supporter of the arts. He held positions as juror for the Governor General Awards (ca. 1950s); treasurer for ACTRA, Maritimes (1976); Director of Neptune Theatre Foundation (1976); Dal Alumni Executive (1976); Governor of Dalhousie University (1976-1977); President of the Radio Television News Director's Association; and spent several years with Halifax Welfare Council and the United Services Institute of Nova Scotia. He died in 1986.

The Review Publishing Company was incorporated on 7 March 1921 with the sole objective of publishing The Dalhousie Review. The Board of Governors held one-third of the authorized shares, with the remaining shares divided between alumni, faculty and others. Herbert Leslie Stewart, Dalhousie philosophy professor, was the journal’s founding editor, a role in which he remained for 26 years. Stewart wanted to situate The Dalhousie Review between the specialized scholarly journal and the popular press, and during this period contributors comprised political thinkers, historians, literary scholars, poets and novelists. The names of many notable individuals appeared in its pages, including Archibald MacMechan, R. MacGregor Dawson, Sir Robert Borden, Duncan Campbell Scott, Eliza Ritchie, E.J. Pratt, Douglas Bush, Charles G.D. Roberts, Frederick Philip Grove, Robert L. Stanfield, Hugh MacLennan, Hilda Neatby, Eugene Forsey, Thomas Raddall and Earle Birney.

Herbert Stewart was succeeded by Burns Martin (1948–1951), C. Fred Fraser (1951–1952), William Graham Allen (1953–1957), C.L. Bennet (1957–1970), Allan Bevan (1971-1978), Alan Kennedy (1979-1984) and Alan Andrews (1985-1995), and over these years the journal underwent a variety of transformations, including the practice of printing works of short fiction alongside discursive articles and poetry. Norman Ward, George Woodcock, Mavor Moore, J.M.S. Tompkins, Owen Barfield, Miriam Waddington, Alden Nowlan, Malcolm Lowry, Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer, Margaret Atwood, Juliet McMaster, Wilfrid Sellars, Peter Schwenger, Daniel Woolf and Guy Vanderhaeghe were all published in the pages of The Dalhousie Review in the second half of the twentieth century.

Despite the high regard in which The Dalhousie Review was held—by writers and readers—by 1964 the Review Publishing Company was virtually bankrupt. In 1967 it ceased to exist and in its stead The Dalhousie University Press was incorporated with the nominal role of publishing the journal. The Dalhousie Review continued to be funded through subscription and advertising revenue, running an increasing annual deficit that was underwritten by the university administration. In 1974 the journal began to apply for and receive grants from the Canada Council, and later from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, but continued to operate at a loss. In 1994 President Clarke announced that the administration was withdrawing its funding, and in 1997 the President’s Office terminated its responsibility for The Dalhousie Review. Faced with its closure, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences agreed to take charge of the journal.

Ronald Huebert began his term as editor in 1997 with a mandate from the Faculty to reanimate the relationship between The Dalhousie Review and its readers, with a much reduced budget and staffing. Under his guidance the journal was redesigned and transitioned from being published quarterly to appearing three times a year. Since 2010 the editorial focus has shifted to publishing primarily short fiction and poetry, and during this time stories published in The Dalhousie Review have regularly appeared in The Journey Prize Anthology and twice won the prestigious Journey Prize itself. Editors Robert Martin (2004-2007 ), Anthony Stewart (2008-2011) and Carrie Dawson (2012– ) have guided the journal's development towards an online presence and open access publishing, and fully searchable digitized back issues of its first 90 years are now available in Dalhousie University's institutional repository, DalSpace.

Murray G. Brown is a research economist and retired professor of health economics at Dalhousie University.

He was born 10 November 1936. He received his BA Hon. in economics from the University of Western Ontario in 1961and his MA from Queen's University the following year. His MA in economics was granted by the University of Chicago in 1968, followed in 1974 by a PhD, with his dissertation, "Experience and Earnings of Male Physicians in the United States."

From 1964-1973 Dr. Brown taught in the Department of Economics at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton. In 1973 he joined Dalhousie University's Department of Preventative Medicine, now the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, and held both joint and cross appointments in the Department of Economics and the School of Health Service Administration. From 1992 until his retirement he taught primarily within the Faculty of Medicine.

Dr. Brown's research activities have spanned multiple departments, faculties and special research units, institutes and programs within Dalhousie. He has also been involved in research, committee work and task-force work for the Nova Scotia Department of Health and other public sector bodies.

The Office of Research Services (ORS) was created in the early 1980s in response to federal government funding of the three research councils: the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and the Medical Research Council, which has since been restructured and is known as the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR). Universities required an official link with the tri-councils to review and administer research grants awarded to faculty on their campuses.

During the tenure of Vice President of Research Martha Crago, the office was renamed Dalhousie Research Services, but the name reverted to ORS shortly after the arrival of her successor, Alice Aikens.

Eastern Front Theatre (EFT) was founded in 1993 in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, by Gay Hauser, Wendy Lill and Mary Vingoe to support the work of Atlantic Canadian playwrights. From 1999-2009 Eastern Front Theatre was the resident theatre company at Alderney Landing. Between 2009-2021 Neptune Theatre’s Scotiabank Stage was its Halifax performance venue before it moved backed to Alderney Landing in 2021.

The company has produced or presented over 200 original Canadian plays, including 32 world premieres, and received four Governor General Award nominations, one Nova Scotia Masterworks nomination, and 16 Robert Merritt Awards (out of 68 nominations).

The Khyber Arts Society is a not-for-profit organization that administers the Khyber Centre for the Arts, an artist-run centre for non-commercial work. The centre was developed in 1994 by the No Money Down Cultural Society, headed by Bill Roberts, who negotiated an agreement with the City of Halifax to maintain an unoccupied three-storey heritage building known as the Church of England Institute for use as an art exhibit and live entertainment space. The society was incorporated on 10 March 1995 as the Halifax Arts Centre Project Society; in September 1995 it changed its name to the Khyber Arts Society. In the mid-2000s the Khyber Centre for the Arts became known as the Khyber Institute of Contemporary Art (Khyber ICA), but the name was changed back in 2012.

Lease negotiations between the Khyber Arts Society and Halifax Regional Municipality have formed a central role in the society's history. In 1995 a widespread campaign to keep the Khyber public and to secure a long-term lease was launched, resulting in the promise of a three-year lease. Structural renovations forced a temporary relocation. In 1996 the Khyber Arts Society signed a new five-year renewable lease and, after obtaining a liquor license, the Khyber Club was opened as a meeting place for visual artists and a venue for Halifax’s emerging music scene.

In 2006 the Khyber Arts Society ceased to be the primary property manager on behalf of the municipality and the Khyber Performance Arts Society was formed to run the club as a non-profit performance space. Musician Lukas Pearse proposed establishing a performing arts society to keep the Khyber Club open after tax issues compelled the Khyber Arts Society to close it. In 2007 the society again negotiated with the City of Halifax to renew its lease and were offered a month-to-month tenancy, which was accepted in April 2008. In 2015 the discovery of asbestos closed down the building, and in 2017 the Khyber Centre for the Arts relocated to Hollis Street.

Dalhousie School of Education had a short-lived existence, from 1989-1995. Classes in the history of education and educational philosophy were first offered in 1924, following the publication of a report by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which advocated a closer relationship between the province's colleges and public schools. In 1926 the Nova Scotia Department of Education began to allow universities to offer teacher education/qualification programs, and Dalhousie established a five-course diploma program that could be taken following the attainment of a BA or BSc. In 1954 this was expanded to include a BEd degree, which was granted after the completion of a first degree, subsequent education classes, one year of teaching and a thesis. It wasn't until 1968 that the university calendar listed a Department of Education, which offered both a four-year integrated BEd/BA or BEd/BSc and a one-year sequential program taken after the completion of a first degree.

The Nova Scotia Council on Higher Education report on teacher education published in 1994 questioned the utility of nine institutions across the province offering teacher education; it made specific reference to Dalhousie and the limitations of its doctoral program and poor reputation with practicing public school teachers. Dalhousie's School of Education—along with the Nova Scotia Teacher's College and the education programs of five other universities—was closed the following year.

Brenda Hattie was born in Halifax and raised in the Annapolis Valley and Pictou County. She studied at the University of King's College and Universite Sainte-Anne, where she earned her BA in 1981. Taking classes in psychology and sociology in her early twenties exposed her to feminist theology and led her to question many of her religious beliefs, especially those related to sexual orientation. In 1998 she entered into a same-sex relationship and subsequently left her religious community. In 2000 Brenda moved to Halifax to pursue an MA in Women's Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University. Over the next four years she also volunteered in the queer community as a director for NSRAP, and later as a director for Safe Harbour Metropolitan Community Church, in 2005 winning an award for her service to the LGBTQ community. She was witness to some of the first same-sex marriages in Nova Scotia in October 2005.

She was a research assistant at the Nova Scotia Centre on Aging from 2005-2013, where she worked on a range of projects, including several related to age-friendly communities. Brenda has co-authored a number of reports and given presentations on her work at national and international academic conferences. She has also co-published a number of refereed journal articles. Brenda completed a PhD in Philosophy of Educational Studies in 2018. She continues to teach at Mount Saint Vincent University and is currently researching the work and social lives of the women who worked at the Dartmouth Marine Slips during World War II. Her most recent activism involved advocacy for banning conversion therapy in Nova Scotia. The ban came into effect in 2018.

A. Keith and Son Limited is one of the oldest brewing companies in Canada. It was established in 1820 by Alexander Keith after he took over a brewing business from Charles Boggs. The brewery was originally located in a house on Argyle Street in Halifax, Nova Scotia, but a larger facility was built on Lower Water Street in 1822. In 1836, Keith expanded again, building a new brewery on Hollis Street. In 1863, Keith Hall was built adjacent to the brewery on Lower Water Street and served as Keith's private residence, eventually becoming the headquarters of Oland and Son.

Alexander Keith was mayor of Halifax, president of the Legislative Council, and held many other public offices. He was involved with numerous boards, companies, charitable organizations, and societies. He died in 1873.

In 1928 Oland and Son Limited acquired an interest in A. Keith and Son. Later, a stock offering was issued and the company became a wholly owned subsidiary of Oland and Son. Oland and Son Limited maintained the A. Keith and Son brand and continued to brew Keith's products until John Labatt Limited purchased all of Oland and Son's brewing assets in 1971.

A. Keith and Son is best known for its Keith's India Pale Ale, but at different periods in the company's history it also brewed Keith's Stag's Head Stout, Keith's Bohemian Lager, and Keith's Medicinal Stout.

The Atlantic Institute of Education (AIE) was a short-lived degree-granting body providing graduate studies in education, curriculum research and development, and training for school board directors. It was conceived in 1969 as a cooperative initiative of the four Atlantic provinces to serve as a research and development arm of the education industry. However, Nova Scotia was the only province to enact legislation around it—the Atlantic Institute of Education Act.

The original idea was the brainchild of Nova Scotia premier and education minister Robert Stanfield and, in 1966, on the advice of the Association of Atlantic Universities (AAU), he commissioned the Fletcher report, which recommended that such an institute be established at Dalhousie’s Faculty of Graduate Studies. Despite the enthusiasm of Stanfield and the Nova Scotia Department of Education, the recommendation was not welcomed by the other provinces, Nova Scotia universities, or even Dalhousie.

Despite this, the institute was chartered in 1970, with a board of directors, an academic council, and offices at 5244 South Street. Joseph Lauwerys was appointed as the first director and Gary Anderson as assistant director. In December 1973 the AIE granted its first degrees. In 1975 W.B. Hamilton took over as director and, in an effort to encourage buy-in from the other provinces, he established representation on the academic council from all the provincial universities. In 1976 the institute joined the Association of Atlantic Universities and received support from a series of Nova Scotia ministers of education.

In August 1982 the new Conservative government withdrew all funding and the AIE was shut down.