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Electa MacLennan was the first director of Dalhousie School of Nursing, serving from 1949-1972. She was born in Brookfield, Nova Scotia, on March 31, 1907. Despite being kept home from school in the tenth grade to learn the art of homemaking, she skipped a grade on her return. She earned a BA from Dalhousie, where she was active in the choral, biology and dramatics clubs. After training at the Royal Victoria Hospital School of Nursing in Montreal, she earned a diploma in Teaching in Schools of Nursing from the School for Graduate Nurses at McGill University, followed by an MA in Public Health Supervision at Columbia University.

MacLennan became a staff nurse with the Victorian Order of Nurses (VON) in Montreal, taught in the School of Nursing at the Vancouver General Hospital, and then returned to the VON in Montreal as a supervisor and later as National Office Supervisor for the Maritimes. She was the assistant secretary of the Canadian Nurses’ Association in 1942, and assistant director of the Faculty of the McGill School for Graduate Nurses in 1944. Hired at Dalhousie in 1949, she was responsible for launching the university's first nursing program. During her tenure, she created annual Nursing Institutes sponsored by Dalhousie and organized in-service education programs in Nova Scotia hospitals. She was appointed an associate professor in 1950 and full professor at Dalhousie in 1970.

A founding member of the Canadian Nurses Foundation, MacLennan was instrumental in ensuring that more nurses could finance their education and pursue research. She fought to increase the numbers of nursing teachers and qualified nurses in hospitals across Canada. MacLennan was president of the Canadian Conference of University Schools of Nursing from 1954 -1956; a board member of the International Congress of Nurses from 1962-1969; a Fellow of the American Public Health Association; and a member of the Royal Society of Health. In 1976 she was recognized with the Canadian Public Health Association’s Honorary Life Membership. MacLennan was also named as an Elder of the Church in Brookfield.

Electa MacLennan retired from Dalhousie in 1972 and died in 1987. The Electa MacLennan Memorial Scholarship is awarded annually to students in Dalhousie graduate nusring programs.

For over fifty years the Dalhousie Art Gallery has been offering a diverse program of exhibitions, films, lectures and artists' presentations, serving as a cultural resource to the university and its community.

Prior to the establishment of the physical gallery, the University Art Group was formed by faculty members and administers in 1943. Housed in an ad-hoc space in the science department, the group sponsored exhibitions, screened films and loaned out its small collections of art reproductions. They also joined the Maritime Art Association, which enabled them to host travelling exhibitions from the National Gallery as well as to promote Maritime artists across other regions of Canada.

The Dalhousie Art Gallery was officially opened in October 1953 in a single room in the Arts and Administration Building, run by a volunteer committee of faculty members. The same year marked the beginning of the annual Student, Staff, Faculty and Alumni Exhibition, which both showcased Dalhousie’s talent and firmly identified the Gallery as a university facility.

During the 1950s and 1960s the University Art Gallery underwent rapid expansion in its collections and programming. In 1963 Classics professor Mirko Usmiani served as Honorary Curator, succeeded the following year by Evelyn Holmes, who was appointed as Acting Curator. Since 1972 the gallery has employed a series of professionally qualified directors, curators and registrar-preparators, assisted by part-time staff and volunteers and guided by an advisory committee of individuals from across the university and community.

In the early 1970s the Art Gallery held exhibitions in the Killam Library, but in November 1971 it moved into its current home in the newly built Dalhousie Arts Centre. The permanent exhibition area and work and storage spaces enabled the gallery to establish itself as a credible cultural organization, able to meet international standards for displaying and handling works of art. The move also allowed for the expansion and care for the gallery’s permanent collection.

The University Senate officially approved the gallery as an Academic Support Unit in 1985. In 1994, threatened with closure due to funding cuts, the gallery was saved by a donation from Dalhousie alumnus, John Scrymgeour. Currently the gallery’s operating budget is paid by the university and supplemented by an endowment fund. Additional financial support for programming is achieved through provincial and national grants.

Victor Oland was born in 1913 to Sidney Culverwell Oland and Linda de Bedia. He married Nancy Jane Metcalf in 1939, with whom he had four children: Sidney, Peter, Susan, and Victoria. He was educated at Dalhousie University and Pembroke College, Oxford. Between 1946 and 1950 he served with the Canadian Army Reserves and was deployed in the South Pacific, attached to the United States Forces. He rejoined in 1956 and retired in 1960 with the rank of Brigadier. He was president and general manager of the family business, Oland and Son Limited, and was responsible for convincing Maritime Cans to build their plant in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, which enabled Olands to become the first Canadian brewery to sell their products in aluminium cans. He resigned from the company in 1968 to become the 24th Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia.

As with many of the Olands, Victor Oland was actively involved with a wide range of organizations. He was president of both the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the International Chamber of Commerce; vice-president and director of Canada Council; a member of the Canadian-American Committee; director of the Canadian Corporation for the 1967 World Exhibition; vice-president of the Canadian Olympic Association; president of the Canadian Tourist Association; a member of the Board of Governors of Dalhousie University; and honorary consul-general of Japan in Halifax. He was also a member of the Corps of Commissionaires; a charter member of the Halifax Junior Board of Trade; president of the Halifax Board of Trade; chairman of the Halifax 1980 Committee (a planning group formed in 1960); and vice commodore of the Nova Scotia Schooner Association. He died in 1983.

The Oland family was involved in the brewing industry for more than one hundred years. John James Dunn Oland and Susannah Woodhouse Culverwell immigrated from England to Nova Scotia with their nine children in 1865. By 1867, they began brewing beer in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. The family tradition of brewing continued until they sold Oland and Son, Limited and A. Keith and Son Limited in 1971.

Members of the Oland family were active philanthropists and contributors to their Nova Scotia communities, supporting a variety of activities and organizations, including sports, art, education, agriculture, and the Army and Navy. Members of the family continue to reside in Atlantic Canada.

A comprehensive diagram of the Oland family tree can be found in G. Brenton Haliburton's What's Brewing: Oland, 1867-1971, A History (Tantallon, NS: Four East Publications, 1994).

Gertrude (“Gussie”) Leighton was a professor of political science with a specialty in international law and psychiatry. She was born in 1914 in Belfast, Ireland, the daughter of Archibald and Gertrude Leighton. Her mother and brother, Alexander, were visiting family in Ireland when the First World War broke out; due to her pregnancy they were refused passage back to the United States. It was March 1915 before they returned to their home in Narbeth, Pennsylvania, on the Philadelphia Main Line.

Gertrude received her early education at the Phebe Anna Thorne School for Girls, an open air model school within Bryn Mawr College. She returned to Bryn Mawr as an undergraduate, earning a degree in Classical Archeology in 1938. In 1940 she was hired as a lecturer in the English Department at Barnard College, but left in 1942 to enter law school at Yale. She received her JD in 1945. Between 1944 and 1947 she practised law with Carter, Ledyard & Milburn in New York City, then returned to Yale as a lecturer in law, including world law. In 1950 she again returned to Bryn Mawr, where she was appointed assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, retiring from her alma mater in 1986 as professor emeritus. From 1959-1961 she lectured in law at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was also appointed as a visiting associate research professor in law and psychiatry from 1961-1965.

Like her parents and brother, Alexander, Gertrude maintained close ties with her Irish relatives. She made extended visits to Ireland in 1920-21 and 1932-34, and during many summers, about which she writes in an unpublished biography. She lived with her longtime partner, Catherine M. Fales, until her death in 1996.

Bruce Oland was born in 1918 to Sidney Culverwell Oland and Herlinda deBedia Oland. He attended King's Collegiate School (Windsor, Nova Scotia) and joined the Cadet Corps at the age of ten, in which he remained until he attended Beaumont College (England) in 1933. In 1937, Bruce registered in the Royal Canadian Artillery Halifax 1st Coast Regiment, through which he served during the Second World War. He was promoted to the rank of Captain in 1941 and Major in 1950. By 1951, Bruce decided that his true interests were in the Navy and he transferred to the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve, accepting the lower rank of Lieutenant with HMCS Scotian. By 1970, Bruce had climbed the ranks to Commodore and was appointed Senior Naval Reserve Advisor to the Director General, Reserves, and Aide-de-Camp to Governor General Roland Michener.

Bruce was active in the brewery industry throughout his life. He attended the United Brewers Academy in New York and, among his several positions, held the title of President of the Brewery Executive of Oland and Son Limited, A. Keith and Son Limited, Oland's Brewers Grain and Yeast Ltd., and Oland's Brewery Limited (Saint John).

Like his father and siblings, Bruce was devoted to community development and volunteer work. Titles he held with different volunteer organizations include Director of the Eastern Claims Committee; Director of the Royal Canadian Naval Benevolent Fund; Chairman of the Board, Honorary Governors, Nova Scotia Division, Canadian Association for Retarded Children; Chairman of the Board, Halifax School for the Blind; Director, Canadian Association for the Mentally Retarded (National Committee); Member, St. George's Society; Member, United Services Institute; Member, Naval Officers' Association; and Governor, Brewers Association of Canada. In addition, he was a rear commodore in the Royal Canadian Naval Sailing Association and an active volunteer for the Maritime Museum and the Halifax Symphony Society.

Bruce married Ruth Hurley in 1956 and had two children, Richard Hurley and Deborah Ruth. He was an avid sailing enthusiast, squash player, deep-sea fisherman, and skier. He was also a numismatist and philatelist. Bruce Oland passed away in 2009.

The Leightons of Philadelphia originated with Archibald Ogilvie Leighton, who emigrated from the north of Ireland in 1906, followed shortly by his financé, Gertrude Kerr Hamilton, who was from County Sligo, in the south. Together they had two children, Alexander (Alec or Alex) and Gertrude ("Gussie").

Archie Leighton was one of eight children born to John Alexander (1841-1928) and Caroline Wilson (1889-1845), who lived in Ballycarry, Northern Ireland. Elizabeth Ogilvie (1870-1904) died without marrying; Margaret Currie (1872-1947) married John Allen Duff and had one daughter, Mary Allen; Caroline Mary (1874-1876); John Murray (1876-1940) married Elizabeth McF. and had five sons: John Alexander, High G.B., William James, Robert Ogilvie and Denis Ponsonby; Robert Henry (1878-1941) married Winifred Coupland from Winipeg, MB; Catherine Campbell (1881-1956) married Joseph Magowan and had two daughters, Caroline Wilson (Carrie) and Ruth Margaret; and Ruth (1884-1947), who remained unmarried and lived in the family home—"Springbrook"—until her death.

Gertrude Kerr Hamilton (Gertie) was one of five children born to William Hamilton (Faddy) and Gertrude Kerr Hamilton (Muddy), who lived in Balincar, County Sligo.The eldest, Wilhemina (Mina, Min, Midge or Mi) remained unmarried and stayed at home; George ("Maggog") married Jessie and had a daughter named Netta; Henry Albert Alexander (Harry) was twice widowed with one stepson, Philip; Angus ("Mooney") married Laura and had three children: Marguerite (Daisy), Angus Kerr, and Harry; and the youngest, Ethel Jean (Ettie, sometimes Jeannie), moved to the United States to train as a nurse and lived with Archie and Gertrude before settling in New Jersey. She married Lewis Link and had one daughter, Betty.

Alexander Leighton married Dorothea Farquar Cross in 1937 and had two children, Frederick (Ted) and Dorothea Gertrude (Doreen). In 1965 they divorced and Alex married Jane Murphy in 1966.

Gertrude Ann Hamilton was born in 1883 in the small village of Balincar on the west coast of Ireland, one of six children born to William Hamilton and Gertrude Hamilton Kerr: Wilhemina, George, Henry, Gertrude Ann, Angus and Ethel Jean.

She was raised in a close-knit family across from the village mill, which her father ran. As a young woman she worked as a clerk in the nearby town of Sligo, which is where she met her future husband, Archibald Leighton, who was there supervising the building of a new post office. After several years of courting and corresponding, they were engaged to be married. In 1906 Archie moved to the United States to pursue his building career and, shortly after, Gertrude made the journey alone to New York, where they were married before settling in Philadelphia.

In 1908, soon after her son, Alexander, was born, Gertrude contracted typhoid fever. After regaining her health, she took Alec home to Ireland for an extended visit. They returned again in 1914, and Gertrude (“Gussie”) was born. The outbreak of World War One kept them in Ireland until the spring of 1915. Five years later they made another visit, this time staying for a year for the sake of economy. From 1931-1934 she again lived apart from Archie in order to accompany their children to England, where Alec went to Cambridge University and Gussie attended boarding school. These extended family separations were marked by abundant letters back and forth across the Atlantic, as was her move from Ireland to the United States.

Gertrude Leighton died in 1958.

Dorothea Cross Leighton was a medical anthropologist known in particular for her research focused on the psychiatric health of Indigenous peoples in America, including the Navajo in New Mexico and the Inuit of Alaska. She was born in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, on 2 September 1908, the second daughter of Dorothea Farquhar and Frederick Cushing Cross. Her siblings were Rosamond (b. 1907), Mary Farquhar (b.1910) and Frederick C, Jr. (1917-1943).

Dorothea received her undergraduate degree from Bryn Mawr College in 1930 and an MD from Johns Hopkins in 1936. She was married to Alexander H. Leighton from 1937-1965, with whom she had two children, Dorothea G. and Frederick A. They divorced in 1965.

From 1930-1932 Dorothea Leighton was a chemistry technician at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and from 1936-1937 she was a medicine intern at Baltimore City Hospitals. She remained there as house psychiatrist from 1937-1939 and, with Dr. Alexander H. Leighton, received the Joint Post-doctoral Research Training Fellowship at the Social Science Resource Council in 1939-1940. From 1941-1945 she was a Special Research Physician for the United States Indian Service, after which she was appointed Social Science Analyst for the United States Office of War Information. Her academic appointments included: Professor of Child Development and Family Relations at New York State School of Home Economics, Cornell University (1949-1952); Senior Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology (1952-1965); assistant, then associate professor at the Psychiatric Medical College (1954 -1965); Professor of Mental Health at the School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1965-1974), and department chair (1972-1974). Dr. Leighton was Professor Emeritus of Mental Health at Chapel Hill and at the Department of Epidemiology and Internal Health, University of California, San Francisco, from 1974 until her death in 1992.

Dorothea Leighton wrote two books: Character of Danger: Psychiatric Symptoms in Selected Communities (1963) and People of the Middle Place: A Study of the Zuni Indians (1966). With Alexander Leighton she co-wrote The Navajo Door: An Introduction to Navajo Life (1944); Gregorio The Handtrembler (1949); and Psychiatric Disorder Among the Yoruba (1963). In addition, she wrote two books with Clyde Kluckhohn.

Born on May 9, 1895, Howard Creighton was the oldest son born to Graham and Catherine Creighton. He was educated at Halifax Academy and graduated from Dalhousie Medical School in 1924. Howard went on to pursue post-graduate studies in Great Britain, including general medicine and surgery at London Hospital, obstetrics and gynecology at Dublin, and surgery at Edinburgh. He also served in the First World War and received the Military Cross in 1919.

In 1928, Howard Creighton moved to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia to practice medicine. In addition to a private practice, he also served as the community's Port Physician for twenty-eight years, helped establish the Fishermen's Memorial Hospital in 1952, and was a member of the hospital's staff before he retired in 1972. He also served on the Lunenburg Town Council and was active in local organizations. In 1933, Howard Creighton married Catherine (Oxner) of Lunenburg, with whom he had three children: Graham, Ruth, and Ann. He died at the age of 83 on October 27, 1978.

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.