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John Erskine Read, OC, was a lawyer, civil servant and the only Canadian judge elected to the International Court of Justice. He was born in 1888 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Dr. H.H. Read and Jessie MacGregor. In 1909 he graduated from Dalhousie Law School and pursued post-graduate studies at Columbia University before receiving a Rhodes Scholarship. He received both his BA and a Bachelor of Civil Law degree from University College, Oxford. In 1913 he was called to the Nova Scotia bar and practised law with Harris, Henry, Rogers, and Harris. During World War I he served with the Canadian Field Artillery, where he achieved the rank of Major.

In 1920 Read joined the Faculty of Law at Dalhousie University and from 1924-1929 he served as Dean. He was appointed Legal Advisor to the Department of External Affairs in 1929 and rose to become a Deputy Undersecretary of State. In 1946 he was elected a member of the International Court of Justice, later being re-appointed for a second term and serving until 1958. Returning to Canada, he taught in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa.

Read was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1967; one year later he was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Alberta. He was the first recipient of the Canadian Council on International Law John E. Read Medal. He died in 1973.

Horace Emerson Read, OC, QC, was an eminent legal educator and scholar and Dean of Dalhousie Law School from 1964-1972.

Born on 8 April 1898 in Port Elgin, New Brunswick, he moved with his family in 1911 to Amherst, Nova Scotia, where he graduated from Cumberland County Academy in 1915. In October 1915 he began his studies at Acadia University, but in 1916 enlisted for overseas service with the 219th Battalion of the Nova Scotia Highlanders. In 1917 he joined the Royal Air Force, training as a flying officer and serving as Captain until 1919, when he returned to Acadia to complete his BA in Economics and English.

In 1921 he was accepted into Harvard Business School, but after spending the summer reporting on the Supreme Court for the Amherst Daily News, he decided to switch to law. He graduated from Dalhousie Law School in 1924 and went to Harvard for one year on a Pugsley Scholarship in International Law. In September 1925 Read returned to Dalhousie to begin his career as a law lecturer, and from 1931-1934 he served as George Munro Professor of Law, with a one-year sabbatical spent at Harvard earning his Doctor of Juridical Science degree. In 1934 he accepted a teaching position at the University of Minnesota and was admitted to the Minnesota Bar. He remained at the University of Minnesota until 1950.

During the Second World War, Read served as a Major in the Minnesota wing of the United States Civil Air Patrol. At the request of his colleague and friend, Angus L. Macdonald (then Minister of National Defence for Naval Services), Horace joined the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve. With the rank of Commander, Read became Chairman of the Naval Regulations Revision Committee and served as principal architect in the revision of the Naval Regulations, as well drafting the Naval Service Act of Canada in 1944. Read also served as Chairman of the Canadian Naval Orders Committee from 1944-1945. As a result of this service he was awarded the Order of British Empire in 1946.

In 1950 Read returned to Dalhousie to take up the twin posts of Richard Chapman Weldon Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Law, and established the Nova Scotia Centre for Legislative Research. In 1964, after being appointed Sir James Dunn Professor and Dean Emeritus of Law, Read became Vice-President of Dalhousie, stepping down in 1969 to pursue full-time teaching until his retirement in 1972.

In addition to his service to the University, Read was Chair of the Nova Scotia Labour Board; ex officio member of Council of the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society; Nova Scotia Vice-President of the Canadian Bar Association; President of the Conference of Governing Bodies of the Legal Profession in Canada; President of the Conference of Commissioners on Uniformity of Legislation in Canada; President of Canadian Law Teachers; and Vice-President of the International Law Association. He also served as a United Nations consultant on electoral law and an observer during the 1958 Costa Rica national election. Read received four honorary degrees (Acadia, Queen’s, Dalhousie and Windsor) and was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1973.

Horace Read died on 26 February 1975.

Born at Hythe, Kent, on November 13, 1903, Thomas Head Raddall was the son of British Army Officer Thomas Head Raddall and Ellen (née Gifford) Raddall. At the time, the family lived in the married quarters of the School of Musketry where THR's father taught. In 1909 THR's parents enrolled him in St. Leonard's Primary School for boys in Hythe. He continued there until May 1913, when his family moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in order for his father to assume a training position in the Canadian Militia. Sixteen months after the family's move, THR's father joined the war effort. Acting Lieutenant-Colonel Raddall, D. S. O., of the Winnipeg Rifles, was killed in action in August 1918 at Amiens.

In Halifax, THR attended Chebucto School. His final year there (Grade 9) was interrupted in December 1917, when the school was turned into a temporary morgue following the devastating Halifax Explosion. The Raddall family survived the explosion, an event which Raddall writes about in his memoirs, In My Time, and also in his history Halifax, Warden of the North.

At the age of fifteen, Raddall trained at the Canadian School of Telegraphy in Halifax and shortly thereafter (having given his age as eighteen) obtained work as a marine telegraph operator for the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company. In 1919 he was assigned to Partridge Island, New Brunswick; between then and 1922 he worked at various locations in Nova Scotia (Pictou, Sable Island, and Camperdown) as well as on ships—including the War Karma, the Prince George, the Watuka, and the Mackay-Bennett—in the North Atlantic. This period also saw the publication of his first short story, " The Singing Frenchman" ( Sunday Leader, December 1921).

From September 1922 to the spring of 1923, THR undertook accountancy training at the Maritime Business College in Halifax and by April had been hired as a bookkeeper by Macleod Pulp and Paper Company in Milton, Queen's County, Nova Scotia. It was there that he met Edith Margaret Freeman, a music teacher, in 1924; they became engaged in the spring of 1926 and were married on June 9, 1927, in Milton's Baptist Church. A slump in the pulp and paper industry, the subsequent reduction in his salary, as well as a new mortgage prompted THR to look for employment elsewhere. He worked briefly as a clerk in the construction industry before being hired (February 1929) by the Mersey Paper Company in Liverpool, where he resided until his death in 1994.

Still looking for extra income, THR sent Maclean's a short story, " The Three Wise Men," for which he received $60. From this point on, THR made a serious commitment to writing. His new boss at the Mersey Paper Mill encouraged his writing, and over the next few years, THR published Saga of the Rover (1931) and The Markland Sagas (1934). By 1938 THR was earning enough from his writing to support his growing family—his son Tom was born in 1934 and daughter Frances in 1936—that he quit his job at the Mersey Paper Company and took to writing full-time.

Over the next forty years THR published twenty-five books, dozens of articles on a wide variety of subjects, more than seventy short stories, and an autobiography; made radio and television appearances; became increasingly called upon as a guest speaker by various historical and literary societies; and was asked to become Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia (1968), an offer he declined. His first national recognition came in 1944 when The Pied Piper of Dipper Creek and Other Stories received the Governor General's Award for Fiction. He subsequently won the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-fiction in 1948 for Halifax, Warden of the North (1948) and again in 1957 for The Path of Destiny (1957). Some of his best-known works include His Majesty's Yankees (1942), Roger Sudden (1944), The Nymph and the Lamp (1950), The Wings of Night (1956) and The Governor's Lady (1960).

THR was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1953 and two years later received the Society's Lorne Pierce Medal "for distinguished service to Canadian literature." Also for his commitment and contribution to Canadian literature, THR was made an Officer of the Order of Canada (1971). He received honorary doctorates from Dalhousie (1949), Saint Mary's (1969), University of King's College (Halifax; 1972), and Saint Francis Xavier (1973).

After his death on April 1, 1994, his son donated money to the Queen's County Museum for the purposes of creating a Thomas Raddall Research Centre, and the furnishings of THR's study were moved to the museum to create a replica of his work area. Dalhousie University's Archives and Special Collections are the official repositories of his papers and his library, respectively.

Hugh Francis Pullen was born 9 July 1905 at Oakville, Ont. and entered the Royal Naval College at Esquimalt, B.C. in 1920. He spent two years at sea with the Canadian Pacific Steamships and rejoined the Royal Canadian Navy in 1924. In 1944 he received the Order of the British Empire for his services while commanding a convoy escort group. He retired from the navy in 1960, his last appointment as flag officer Atlantic Coast, Maritime commander Atlantic, and commander Atlantic Sub-Area (NATO), 1957-1960. Rear-Admiral Pullen held executive positions in several voluntary organizations such as the United Appeal, The Royal Commonwealth Society, The Royal Life-Saving Society of Canada, the Canadian Mental Health Society, and the Anglican Church of Canada. In 1960 he was chairman for the World Refugee Campaign in Nova Scotia, and also served as a member of the National Council of the Duke of Edinburgh's Awards, 1963-1969. Pullen was awarded the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) and the Canadian Forces Decoration (C.D.) for his services.

Pullen was a co-founder of the Maritime Museum of Canada in 1948 (now Maritime Museum of the Atlantic), and was a member of the Advisory Council of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic and the Halifax Grammar School. He was also first commodore of the Nova Scotia Schooner Association and a member of the Society for Nautical Research and the Navy Records Society. He was the author of several books and articles on Maritime history. Among his best known works are 'Atlantic Schooners' (1967), 'The Shannon and the Chesapeake' (1970), and 'The Pullen Expedition' (1979), for which he won the John Lyman Book Award in 1980 from the North American Society for Oceanic History. H.F. Pullen died 4 May 1983 in England. He was married to Helen (MacKean); they had seven children.