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Ernest Guptill was a physicist and Dalhousie professor for three decades. He was born on 5 September 1919 on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, where he attended school until his family moved to Wolfville, Nova Scotia, in order that he and his two brothers could attend university. He received his BSc from Acadia University (1940) and his MA from the University of Western Ontario (1942). He earned his PhD at McGill University (1946), where he worked on radar research in collaboration with the Canadian National Research Council. He and W.H. Watson co-invented slotted waveguide antenna, a device used by aircraft, ocean vessels, fishing boat, and NORAD’s nationally linked radar stations.

Guptill moved to Halifax in 1947 to take up an appointment at Dalhousie University. His research included an early experiment in nuclear magnetic resonance with W.J. Archibald. In 1958, following a year-long sabbatical at the University of Leiden, Guptill was appointed George Monroe Professor of Physics and head of the physics department. He served on the National Research Council and with the Nova Scotia Research Foundation. In addition to his research and teaching, Guptill was a passionate sailor. On 20 March 1976, he died of hypothermia in a boating accident in Halifax's Northwest Arm, one hundred feet off Point Pleasant Park. His family established a memorial trust fund in his name to provide an annual scholarship for a Grand Manan High School student, and he is also commemorated by the annual E.W. Guptill Memorial Lecture series in Dalhousie's department of physics and atmospheric science.

Barry Guy (b. 1947) is a British composer and double bass player. From 1997 to 2006, he lived in Ireland, before moving to Switzerland with his wife, Maya Homburger, a Baroque violinist.

Guy worked for Caroe and Partners Architects in London for three years while studying the double bass and taking composition classes at Goldsmith’s College in London, England. He gave up a potential career in architecture in the late 1960s to study double bass full-time with James Edward Merritt at the Guildhall School of Music in London.

Since graduating, he has performed internationally as a solo, chamber, and orchestral musician, performing a range of improvised, baroque, and contemporary music. Guy has collaborated with a number of other musicians and ensembles, including the City of London Sinfonia, Academy of Ancient Music, London Classical Players, Maya Homburger, Paul Lytton, and Evan Parker, to name a few, and is the founder and artistic director of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra (formed in the early-1970s) and the Barry Guy New Orchestra (formed in 2000).

Many of his compositions arise from commissions from ensembles and orchestras with whom he also has a performing relationship. His compositions often feature improvisational elements and/or extended techniques, and he has experimented with graphic notation in a number of his works, including "Nasca Lines," a graphic score commissioned by the Upstream Ensemble in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Although Guy began to discuss a commission with Jeff Reilly (artistic director of the Upstream Music Association, or UMA) circa 1996, his first appearance in Halifax was not until 1999, when he performed one of his works, "Octavia," with the Upstream Ensemble at the Open Waters Festival of New and Improvised Music. Since then, Guy has collaborated regularly with the ensemble, through performances (sometimes with Maya Homburger), workshops, and compositions. Most recently, the Upstream Ensemble performed his "Witch Gong Game" at the 2012 Open Waters Festival. The "Witch Gong Game," like "Nasca Lines," is a graphic score partially inspired by the work of Scottish artist Alan Davie.

Guy and Homburger also have a CD label, MAYA Recordings, for the production of new, improvised, and early music. He has more than 200 recordings as a solo, chamber, and orchestral musician, 26 of which are under the MAYA label.

Les Haley was the ninth principal of the Nova Scotia Agricultural College and a former professor of biology at Dalhousie University. He began his post-secondary studies at the agricultural college in Truro, Nova Scotia, serving as secretary-treasurer of the student council and graduating in 1958 with a degree course diploma. He pursued further studies at the Ontario Agricultural College before earning a BSc in agriculture from the University of Toronto. He returned to the Ontario Agricultural College to study genetics and animal breeding before completing a PhD at the University of California, Davis.

After a brief stint teaching at the University of Saskatchewan, Haley returned to Nova Scotia in 1970 with a job in the Department of Biology at Dalhousie. His research activities included investigations on the genetic variations of oysters, lobsters and mussels; he was also an enthusiastic teacher, serving as a student advisor, supervising graduate students and playing a key role in developing the honours program in marine biology. In 1988 he took up his appointment as principal of the Agricultural College, where he remained until his retirement in 1996. For two years after that he served as deputy minister of Nova Scotia's Department of Agriculture and Marketing. In 2017 he received Dalhousie's Faculty of Agriculture’s Distinguished Alumnus Award.

George Montagu-Dunk was the 2nd Earl of Halifax, succeeding his father in 1739. Born in 1716, he was educated at Eton College and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was married in 1741 to Anne Richards (d. 1753), who had inherited a great fortune from Sir Thomas Dunk, whose name George Montagu took.

From 1749 to 1761 he served as president of the Board of Trade. It was during his tenure in this position that he helped to found Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia, which was named after him. He entered the Cabinet in 1757, was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1761, and also served as First Lord of the Admiralty.

Montagu-Dunk left office in July 1765, returning to the Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal under his nephew, Lord North, in January 1770. He passed away in 1771, having recently been restored to his former position of Secretary of State.

Brian Hall taught biology at Dalhousie University and did research in evolutionary developmental biology (EVO-DEVO), bone and cartilage formation in developing vertebrae embryos, and the neural crest tissue of embryos. Born in 1941, he studied zoology at the University of New England in New South Wales, earning a BSc in 1963 and a PhD in 1968. He came to Dalhousie in 1968, was appointed full professor in 1975, and served as department chair from 1978-1985. He was Izaak Walton Killam Research Professor from 1990-1995, Killam Professor of Biology from 1996-2001, George S. Campbell Professor of Biology from 2001-2007, and a University Research Professor from 2002-2007. His books include Evolutionary Developmental Biology; The Neural Crest in Development and Evolution; The Origin and Evolution of Larval Forms; and Variation: A Central Concept in Biology.

Hall retired from teaching as an emeritus professor in 2007 to focus on research and writing on embryonic skeletal development and evolutionary developmental biology, as well as removing gout weed from half an acre of Nova Scotia. He was appointed Visiting Distinguished Professor at Arizona State University in 2008, and received an honorary Doctors of Laws from the University of Calgary in 2014.

Born in Russia, Boris Hambourg moved to England with his family in 1891 where he studied cello with Herbert Walenn. In 1898, he entered the Hoch Konservatorium in Frankfurt, Germany to study with Hugo Becker and Ivan Knorr. Following his graduation in 1903, he toured widely as a soloist and a member of the Hambourg Trio (with his brothers, Mark and Jan). He moved to Canada with his family in 1910 and established the Hambourg Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Ontario. After the death of his father, Mark Hambourg, in 1915, Boris became the director of the conservatory.

Boris Hambourg married the pianist Maria ('Borina') Bauchope in 1923. During this year, he also founded the Hart House String Quartet, with whom he toured regularly from 1923 to 1946. He also founded the Toronto Music Lovers' Club and was an active member of the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto. He died in Toronto on November 24, 1954.

Oscar Hanson of Little Lepreau, New Brunswick, was a descendant of John Hanson—a pre-Loyalist settler on Minister's Island—and the great-grandson of Quaker Loyalist Joshua Knight of Beaver Harbour and Pennfield. Oscar's father, Robert Varden Hanson (1795-1884), first settled at Little Lepreau in 1836, where he built a sawmill that he later sold to sons Oscar and Gideon.

Oscar has many concurrent careers and activities: landowner; sawmill owner and operator; canning factory owner; ship's merchant and charterer, shipowner, storekeeper; postmaster of Little Lepreau (until 1898); justice of the peace; active organizer for the Liberal Party; member of at least four fraternal organizations; holder of various offices in the parish of Lepreau; and Baptist Sunday school superintendent. He and his brother Gideon owned lands leased to New Brunswick Anthracite Coal Company

Oscar and his wife Helen (Lomax) had seven children who for many years maintained summer residences at Little Lepreau.

Charlotte Geddie Harrington (1840-1906) was a Presbyterian church worker and editor. She was born in 1840 in Prince Edward Island. Her parents were John Geddie and Charlotte Lenora Harrington MacDonald. She married William Harris Harrington on Sept. 21 1865, and they had two daughters and a son. She died in Halifax on March 7 ,1906.

Charlotte Geddie Harrington's early life involved accompanying her parents to the New Hebrides (Aneityum) where the family moved to pursue missionary work. She was sent to England for education for eight years, after which she returned to the New Hebrides and assisted her parents' missionary work in 1856. She returned to Halifax in 1859, where she settled to marry and raise a family.