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René Marquard de Villiers was a journalist, author, historian, newspaper and magazine editor, as well as a liberal parliamentarian and activist in the Republic of South Africa. He was born in Winburg, Orange Free State in 1910, the same year that the Union was established. On his mother’s side, he was related to Leo Marquard, one of the important political figures of the time. On his father’s side, he was related to the de Villiers clan, which traces its roots in South Africa back to the 17th century.

He was educated at Grey College and then at Grey University College in Bloemfontein, where he studied law. After graduating, he was offered a job at the office of the Judge President of Orange Free State, but turned instead to journalism and took a job as a cub reporter at The Friend, one of the Argus newspapers, in January 1930. He then served on the staff of The Farmer’s Weekly for one year. Between 1934 and 1935, he went to England to study international relations at the prestigious London School of Economics. After returning to Africa, he resumed his job at The Friend and became its News Editor in 1939. In 1944, he joined the staff of The Forum, a weekly news review founded by J. H. Hofmeyer, and was appointed Editor three years later. In 1949 he left The Forum to join the editorial team of The Star, the main English-language daily in Johannesburg. He returned to serve as Editor of The Friend in December of that same year.

In October 1957, he accepted the position of Senior Assistant Editor of The Daily News based in Durban. A little over three years later (January 1961), he was appointed Editor. He was appointed Senior Assistant Editor of The Star in January 1962, serving under J. W. Patten. Upon Patten’s retirement, de Villiers assumed the editorship of the paper and remained in that capacity until his retirement in 1970. From 1972 to 1973, however, de Villiers served a brief term as Editor of Optima. He was also responsible for editing the second volume of Better than They Knew, a multi-authored scholarly work on the contributions of English-speakers to South Africa. As well, he contributed to the Oxford History of South Africa.

In April 1974, after being urged by friends, de Villiers came out of retirement and sought election as a member of the South African Parliament, Cape Town. He won his seat as a Progressive Party candidate in the district of Parktown, and became the party’s press and media critic, as well as the spokesman on domestic affairs. In May 1975, he was instrumental in the merging of the Progressive and Reform parties. This resulted in the creation of the Progressive Reform Party, which later became the official opposition. In 1977, after only a single term, de Villiers retired from politics.

Throughout his professional life, de Villiers was active as a member of the South African Institute of Race Relations, which was dedicated to the goal of fighting racial discrimination and prejudice in South Africa. He served as editor of the Race Relations News, the Institute’s official periodical. After retirement from Parliament, he served as Regional Chairman of the Institute’s Cape Western district (1977-1979). In January 1980, he was elected President of the Institute for a two-year term.

De Villiers was a passionate advocate for freedom of the press, and throughout his life he spoke frequently on the need for the press to be unhindered by governments or individuals. He defended the press from attacks by national politicians who believed that reporters and editors were unduly influenced by political or other such interests. In June 1955 he testified before an official commission on the press in South Africa on this issue.

In April 1978 de Villiers was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and he later accepted a Fellowship from Trent University in Peterborough, ON.

De Villiers was married to Grace Moira Franklin in December 1937. The couple had two children: a daughter, Inez Dorothy, and a son, Marq Antoine. He died in 1992.

Marq de Villiers is a veteran Canadian journalist and author of books on exploration, social and natural history, politics and travel. The son of Rene and Moira de Villiers, he was born in 1940 in Bloemfontein, South Africa, and was educated at the University of Cape Town and the London School of Economics. Between 1962-1968 he worked as a reporter for the Toronto Telegram, an editor for Reuters, London, and a senior feature writer at The Cape Times. He was the Moscow correspondent for Toronto Telegram, and resident bureau chief for Look and Venture magazines, reporting from most parts of the Soviet Union and East Europe between 1969-1971. After moving back to Canada, he worked as a freelance magazine writer and contributing editor at Weekend Magazine, Montreal, then spent fourteen years with Toronto Life magazine in consecutive roles of executive editor, editor and publisher. From 1994-1994 he was the editorial director of WHERE Magazines International in Los Angeles.

His books include White Tribe Dreaming: Apartheid's Bitter Roots As Witnessed by Eight Generations of an Afrikaner Family (1989), which won the inaugural Alan Paton Award; The Heartbreak Grape: A Journey in Search of the Perfect Pinot Noir, which was shortlisted for Governor General, Julia Child and James Beard awards; and Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource (1999), for which he received the Governor General Award. With his wife, Sheila Hirtle, he co-authored Blood Traitors (1997); Into Africa: A Journey through the Ancient Empires (1997); Sahara: A Natural History (2002); and Sable Island: The Strange Origins and Curious History of a Dune Adrift in the Atlantic (2004), winner of the Evelyn Richardson Memorial Literary Prize for Non-fiction. They also co-wrote Timbuktu: Africa’s Fabled City of Gold (2007). Witch in the Wind: The True Story of the Legendary Bluenose (2007) also won the Evelyn Richard prize, along with the Dartmouth Book Award for Non-fiction. This was followed by a series of books about the environment: Dangerous World: Natural Calamities, Manmade Catastrophes and the Future of Human Survival (2008); Our Way Out: First Principles for a Post-Apocalyptic World (2011); and Back to the Well: Rethinking the Future of Water (2016), which was shortlisted for the Donner Prize for Best Public Policy Book by a Canadian, as well as the Evelyn Richardson Prize. His most recent title is Hell and Damnation: A Sinner’s Guide to Eternal Torment (2019).

In addition to his own books, he has ghost-written several autobiographies and was the scriptwriter and on-screen narrator for Water Water, a three-hour miniseries adaptation of his book Water, broadcast on the Discovery Channel.

In 2010, Marq de Villiers was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada for his contributions to social and political discourse. He holds an honorary degree with Dalhousie University and lives in Eagle Head on Nova Scotia’s south shore.

Author and educator James De Mille was born 23 August 1833 in Saint John, New Brunswick, the third child born to Loyalists Nathan Smith DeMill and Elizabeth Budd. (The family name was DeMill, but James wrote under De Mille, and used this name after 1865.)

De Mille was educated at the Saint John Grammar School, Horton Academy and Acadia College. During 1850-1851 De Mille toured Europe and Britain with his brother, Elisha. He received an MA from Brown University, Rhode Island, in 1854. In 1858 he married Elizabeth Ann Pryor, daughter of Dr. John Pryor, first president of Acadia College. Together they had three sons and one daughter.

De Mille worked briefly in Cincinnati before returning to Saint John. From 1856-1860 he and a partner ran a bookstore there, a venture that left De Mille in debt; shortly thereafter he began teaching classics at Acadia College. In 1865 he moved to Halifax, where he taught history and rhetoric at Dalhousie University and became well known for his love of Latin and the outdoors. He remained at Dalhousie until he died of pneumonia in 1880.

De Mille was a prolific and popular writer in the later nineteenth century. He began writing for magazines and journals while studying at Brown. Many of his books were published serially in American magazines such as Harper’s, before being published as monographs. His humorous historical romances, adventures and mysteries often reflected his early travels abroad, as did his first book, Martyrs of the catacombs, published in 1864. He also wrote a series of adventure stories for boys set in the Annapolis Valley, which drew heavily on his experiences at Horton Academy, a textbook entitled The elements of rhetoric, and the spiritually-themed poem Behind the veil, which was published posthumously.

Reverend Peter De LaRoche (ca.1752-1795) was a French protestant, educated in Geneva and ordained by the Bishop of London in 1771. He came to Lunenburg as a Society for the Propagation of the Gospel missionary and became the rector of St. John's Church in 1771, at which time he reported that his congregation consisted primarily of English-speaking Germans. In 1773, he founded a school for the French at Lunenburg. He himself studied German, and by 1775 he was able to officiate in three languages.

While in Lunenburg he published several sermons and a commentary on the four gospels, which he had printed at his own expense, to be given away to his congregation. He was married ca. 1772 to a woman named Anna (ca.1752-1772), with whom he had three children, including Francklin Bulkley Gould who was baptized on May 27, 1773. The baptism entry indicates that Francklin was the first child in the province innoculated for smallpox.

De LaRoche left Lunenburg ca. 1786 and moved first to Manchester, Nova Scotia and then to Guysborough in 1787, where he passed away in 1795 at age sixty-three.

G. Cecil Day was born in 1898 in Wales and in 1911 immigrated with his family to Prince Edward Island. After completing six school grades in three years, at the age of 16 he entered pre-law studies at Prince of Wales College. Financial circumstances forced him to leave after one year, and he found employment as a night editor with The Charlottetown Guardian. He subsequently worked for various newspapers across Nova Scotia before moving to Liverpool in 1931 to write for The Advance, which he bought in 1937. By 1940 the paper was recognized as the second best weekly in Canada; in 1951 Day was the first recipient of the R.C. Smith Trophy for the country's most progressive weekly. He retired in 1968, one year after The Advance celebrated the highest growth rate in recorded history. He died in 1976.

Frank Parker Day (1881-1950) was a celebrated Nova Scotia author and educationalist. Born 9 May 1881 to George Frederick and Keziah Day at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, Day had a distinguished academic career, earning degrees from Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB (1903) and Oxford University (1907, 1909), where he was a Rhodes Scholar. After completing a first degree at Oxford, Day spent two semesters at the University of Berlin before returning to England to teach at the University of Bristol. He took further classes at Oxford and distinguished himself by taking a Master of Arts and by winning the Oxford heavyweight boxing championship and later the combined Oxford and Cambridge championship.

In 1909 Day returned to Canada to take up a professorship in the English Department at the University of New Brunswick. On 1 January 1910 he married the artist Mabel Killam of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, whose work was exhibited at the Philadelphia Academy and Chicago Art Institute. In 1912 they moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where Day was appointed Head of the English Department at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. At the outbreak of World War I they returned to Canada where Day enlisted in the Canadian Forces, serving first with the 85th Canadian Infantry Battalion and later recruiting for and commanding the 185th Cape Breton Highlanders. He was promoted to Lt.-Col. on the field at Amiens. During the war, he and his wife had their first and only child, Donald Frank. As Day notes in an autobiographical sketch: "The wartime babies of officers in our regiment were all named Donald because our regimental song was 'Donald from Bras d'Or'" (Box 3, Folder 5).

After the war Day returned to the Carnegie Institute of Technology as Director of Academic Studies and Dean of Freshmen. He left to teach at Swathmore College for two years following the publication of his first novel, and then in 1928 was appointed President of Union College. His term was brought to a premature halt when ill health compelled him to resign in 1933. He spent his remaining years at Lake Annis and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.

Captain Charles Davison was born in April 1854 in Hansport, Nova Scotia, the eldest son of master shipbuilder John Davison and Louisa Kilpatrick Davison. After some years spent working with his father, he went to sea, becoming a master or captain by age 29 and taking command first of the Gloire and, later, of the Recovery.

Forced to retire due to a back injury sustained while at sea, Davison returned to Hansport and opened a grocery store, which he ran until c. 1930.

In 1885 he married Sarah Auld of Pictou County, Nova Scotia, with whom he had six children: Bertha, Rhoda, Bicco, Carl, Lawrence, and Grant. Charles Davison died in 1938.

The Honourable Sir Malachy Bowes Daly was born February 6, 1836 in Marchmount, Quebec to Sir Dominick Daly and Caroline Maria Gore. He attended school in Montreal, at St. Mary’s College in Oscott (England), and obtained a B.A. from St. Mary's College in Halifax. In July 1859 he married Joanna Kenny, with whom he had one daughter, Mary.

Daly was a well-known lawyer, politician and civil servant. He was called to the Nova Scotia bar in 1864 and served as a secretary to his father (then governor of Prince Edward Island) as well as a succession of lieutenant governors of Nova Scotia. In the early 1870s, Daly ran unsuccessfully for the Nova Scotia Legislature. He was an elected member of the House of Commons from 1878-1887, where he served as the First Deputy Speaker, and served two terms as Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia from 1890 until his retirement in 1900. Daly was also active in numerous community organizations before and after his retirement and was knighted in 1900. He passed away in Halifax on April 26, 1920.

George Ramsay, 8th Earl of Dalhousie (1730 – 15 November 1787) was a Scottish peer. He served as a Lord of Police (1775–82) and the Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. he was a representative Scottish peer (1774–1787).

Dalhousie was the second surviving son of George, Lord Ramsay (dvp 25 May 1783) and was the grandson of William Ramsay, 6th Earl of Dalhousie (1660 – 1739). His mother, Jean Maule, was the daughter of Hon. Harry Maule of Kellie and thus the niece of the attainted Earl of Panmure.

George F. Curtis was born in 1906 in Stogumber, England. He came to Canada in 1913 and was educated at Moose Jaw Collegiate and the University of Saskatchewan, where he graduated with a law degree in 1927. He studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, earning his BA in Jurisprudence (1930) and his BCL (1931).

Curtis practiced law in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and taught at Dalhousie University until 1945, when he was appointed the founding Dean of the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law. He served in this capacity until 1971 and was later named Dean Emeritus. He died in 2005.

Melville Cumming was the first principal of Nova Scotia College of Agriculture and the namesake of Cumming Hall, the administration building at the heart of Dalhousie University's Agricultural Campus. He was born in Stellarton, Nova Scotia, on 5 January 1876, to Thomas and Matilda (McNair) Cumming. After graduating from Colchester County Academy as a Gold Medalist, he earned his BA from Dalhousie University in 1897. In 1899 he received a BSc in Agriculture from Iowa State College, USA, and in 1900 he was granted another BSc Agr from the University of Toronto, which was affiliated with the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph, where he held his first professorial appointment from 1900-1905. He also received an honorary Doctor of Laws from Dalhousie in 1918.

In February 1905, Cumming was appointed principal of the newly formed Nova Scotia Agricultural College in Truro, Nova Scotia, where he also taught animal husbandry, agronomy, bacteriology and public speaking. He took on a concurrent appointment in 1907 with the newly formed Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture, which he held until 1925. On leaving NSAC in 1927, he moved to Halifax as the director of marketing for Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources, where in 1933 he became the head of provincial agricultural statistics. He retired in 1947.

Cumming was active in the wider community, serving as an elder in Halifax's Fort Masse United Church, president of the Men’s Club and superintendent of the Sunday School. He was president of the Truro Canadian Club, vice-president of the Nova Scotia Association, chairman for Colchester County of the Canadian Patriotic Club, president of the Truro Golf Club and of the Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children. He was a chairman of the Farm and Finance Committees at the Maritime Home for Girls and honorary vice-president of the Nova Scotia Tuberculosis Association, of which he was a charter member. He was also a charter member of the Canadian Society of Technical Agriculturalists (now the Agricultural Institute of Canada) and a member of the Nova Scotia Institute of Agrologists. In 1905 and again in 1907, he travelled to Scotland to purchase Clydesdale, Hackney and Thoroughbred horses. The administration building (Cumming Hall) at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College was named in his honour.

Melville Cumming was married to Mary Alice Archibald in 1905, with whom he had two sons and three daughters. He died on 16 April 1969.