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George Farquhar was born 17 July 1880 in Wetherby, England, to James and Margaret Ann MacDonald Farquhar. He came to Canada in 1883 and attended public school in Windsor and then Dalhousie University where he earned a B.A. (1907), M.A. (1910), and L.L.B. (1927). He also studied at Pine Hill in Halifax, Edinburgh, and Halle a Salle, Germany. Farquhar married Ruby M. Duffus in 1917 with whom he had three children: Margaret, Mary and Ian.

Farquhar’s career varied from working as a pastor, a newspaper editor, and a civil servant. He was ordained as a minister in 1910 and served as a pastor in Hampton, New Brunswick, (1910-1912) and assistant pastor in Winnipeg (1913-1914) before enlisting to serve in World War I in 1915. He then traveled to England (1916), France (1917-1918), and Russia (1918-1919). Following the war, Farquhar returned to Nova Scotia and worked as a pastor in New Glasgow from 1919-1925.

In 1927 Farquhar was admitted to the Nova Scotia bar but only two years later became editor-in-chief of the Halifax Chronicle. He remained with the paper until 1938 and between 1926 and 1927 wrote a column called “Men and Things.” From 1938 until he retired in 1953, Farquhar served as a member of the Nova Scotia Public Utilities Board.

In addition to these activities, Farquhar was involved with local community organizations, including the Nova Scotia Historical Society and the North British Society. He also sat on Dalhousie’s Board of Governors from about 1941 to 1953.

Charles Fenerty was born in 1821 in Springfield Lake, Nova Scotia, the second son of James Fenerty and Elizabeth Lawson, farmers and sawyers. He is most well known as the first inventor of wood pulp paper, although no commercial success came out of his own discoveries. He subsequently turned to writing verse and took first prize at the Nova Scotia industrial exhibition in 1854 for “Betula Nigra,” a poem celebrating a giant black birch on the family farm.

Fenerty moved to Australia in the late 1850s, where he may have worked in the goldmining industry. After his return to Nova Scotia he married Ann Maria Hamilton in 1868 and farmed in the Sackville area. At various times he served as health warden for his district, measurer of wood, overseer of the poor, and county tax collector. He was also active in the Anglican Church as a lay reader. He was a staunch Conservative, supported the temperance cause, and opposed tobacco smoking. He died in 1892 in Sackville, Nova Scotia.

Roscoe Fillmore was an horticulturalist, author and political activist. He was a principle organizer for the Socialist Party of Canada in the Maritimes before World War One and joined the Communist Party of Canada in the early 1920s. Born in Lumsden, New Brunswick, on 10 July 1887, in 1923 he spent time at an experimental farm in Kuzas, Siberia, working as an horticultural expert. He was president of the New Brunswick Fruit Growers' Association before losing his job as a large orchard manager in 1924 and moving his family (wife, Margaret, and children, Dick, Ruth, Rosa and Alexandra) to Centreville, Nova Scotia. He built a house and a nursery, and in 1938 became Head Gardener for the Dominion Atlantic Railway, where he was also responsible for gardening at the Grand Pré Memorial Park.

Fillmore was politically active in Centreville and a strong supporter of socialist causes. He wrote numerous political articles for magazines and, with Charles MacDonald, Frank Parry and Jim Sim, he helped to form the Centreville Socialists, a small group that met on Sundays at Sim's residence to discuss politics and government. When the Communist Party of Canada was banned in 1940, Fillmore helped refound the party as the Labour-Progressive Party of Canada. In the 1945 federal election he ran as the Farmer-Labour Candidate in the Digby-Annapolis-Kings riding. He received 362 (1.4%) of the 25,944 votes cast. The Centreville Socialists met regularly until 1951 when Jim Sim died.

After the Centreville Socialists broke up, Fillmore and Parry focused on developing Valley Nurseries. Fillmore developed new plant varieties suitable for Nova Scotia's climate. He also published four books on gardening, which were written without the obscure terminology found in many contemporaneous gardening books, and he became a popular speaker on radio and across Canada under the nickname "Mr. Green Thumbs." Fillmore renounced the Labour-Progressive Party of Canada in the 1950s, but continued to remain politically active until his death in 1968. Since 1978, semi-annual picnics have been held in his honour.

Judth Fingard is an historian with research interests in Canadian social history, including religion, class, gender, race and disability. She was educated at Dalhousie University and the University of London, where she earned a PhD in 1970. From 1967-1997 she taught history at Dalhousie University, also serving as coordinator of Women's Studies (1989) and Dean of Graduate Studies (1990-1995).

From the late 1990s Fingard served terms as president of the Canadian Historical Association and the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Association. For her contributions to Canadian history she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1991. She received a number of other awards and honours, including the John Lyman Book Award (1982), the Hilda Neatby Prize (1990) and the Evelyn Richardson Memorial Award (1990).

In addition to a wide range of scholarly articles, biographical entries and book reviews, Fingard wrote The Anglican Design in Loyalist Nova Scotia (1972); Jack in Port: Sailortowns of Eastern Canada (1982); The Dark Side of Life in Victorian Halifax (1989); Halifax (Canada): The First 250 Years (1999), with Janet Guilford and David Sutherland; Mothers of the Municipality: Women, Work, and Social Policy in Post-1945 Halifax (2005), with Janet Guildford; and Protect, Befriend, Respect: Nova Scotia’s Mental Health Movement, 1908–2008 (2008), with John Rutherford.

Brian Flemming was born 19 February 1939 to Everett F. J. Flemming and Margaret Meagher. He received a B.Sc. from St. Mary’s University (1959), a LL.B. from Dalhousie University (1962), a LL.M. in Public International Law from University of London, England (1964), and the Hague Diploma in International Law (1964).

Flemming has led a multifaceted career as a lawyer, educator, and author. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s he lectured at Dalhousie and Saint Mary’s universities on the law of international institutions, the law of the sea, and commercial law. He also served as a consultant in international law to U.S. Naval War College from 1968 to 1971, was a senior partner of Stewart, MacKeen & Covert, Halifax, and was made a Queen’s Counsel in 1978.

In the 1970s Flemming became more involved with government. He became an advisor to the Department of External Affairs and the Department of the Environment in 1972 on the subject of marine and environmental conferences. He also served as Principal Secretary and Policy Advisor to Prime Minster Trudeau between 1976 and 1979. In 1974 and again in 1979, Flemming entered the federal elections as a Liberal, losing the 1979 election by a mere fifteen votes. More recently, he served as chairman for the Canada Transportation Act Review Panel in 2000.

In addition to these activities, Flemming has been active in business, publishing, and in various other organizations. He has held directorships at Noranda Inc., VGM Capital, and Brunswick Mining; written a substantial volume of literature related to the law of the sea and international law, as well as article and book reviews; was a member of the executive committee and ultimately the chairman of the Canada Council (1972-1975); and he served as a director of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He has also been involved with artistic organizations such as the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, Neptune Theatre, and the Maritime Conservatory of Music among others.

A recognized community leader, Flemming was awarded the Order of Canada in 1989 for his contributions to law and his volunteer community activities. He also received a honourary doctorate from the University of King’s College in 1991.

Brian Flemming currently resides in Halifax and writes weekly columns for the Halifax Daily News and AOL Canada.

Ormand E. Flewelling was born in 1840 in Clifton, New Brunswick, the son of William Puddington Flewelling, Surveyor General of New Brunswick, and Esther Ann Merritt. In 1863 he married Charlotte Whitney Whelpley of Westfield, New Brunswick, born in 1839 to Titus Brown Whelpley and Elizabeth Anne Belyea.Together they had four children of their own, Douglas Scoville, Esther Ann, Bertha Brown and Stanley Elting, as well as an adopted son, Frederick.

Flewelling was by trade a cabinetmaker. He was actively involved in the Episcopal church as a layreader, vestry man and warden, in both New Brunswick and Somerville, Massachusetts, where the family moved c. 1890. In 1908 ill health caused Flewelling and his wife to move to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where they lived with their married daughter, Esther Holloway. He died of Bright's disease on 5 August 1908. His wife remained in Halifax until her death in 1927.