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Andrew Doane Merkel was a journalist and poet. Born in New York State in 1884, he came to Nova Scotia when his father, Rev. A. Deb Merkel, took over a parish in Digby. He was educated at King's College, Windsor, and spent most of his adult life in Halifax.

Merkel began his career writing for the Philadelphia North American and the Sydney Record. He was news editor of the Saint John Standard from 1908 until 1910, when he came to Halifax as editor of the Halifax Echo. In 1917 he was hired as the Maritime News Editor for the Canadian Press in Montreal. He returned to Halifax in 1919 when he was appointed Superintendent of the Canadian Press's Atlantic Division. By his retirement in 1946 Merkel had covered a range of regional, national and international stories that included Marconi’s transmission from Cape Breton; the sinking of the Titanic; the first airplane flight in the British Empire; and two world wars. He retired to Port Royal where he purchased a large property adjacent to the Port Royal Habitation, hoping to establish a radio station and tourist attraction in the area. After the death of his wife in the early 1950s, Merkel returned to Halifax, where he died in 1954.

His first book-length poem, The Order of Good Cheer, completed in the early 1920s, was not published until 1944. His second, Tallahasse, was published the following year. Both works illustrate his abiding interest in Nova Scotian history. He also published two works of non-fiction: Letters from the Front (1914) and Bluenose Schooner (1948). In the 1920s Merkel was a member of the Halifax literary group The Song Fishermen; he and his wife, Florence (Tully) E. Sutherland, regularly hosted writers and artists at their South End home, including Bliss Carman, Charles G.D. Roberts, Charles Bruce, Kenneth Leslie and Robert Norwood.

The Hon. John Stewart McLennan, industrialist, historian and publisher, was born 5 November 1853 in Montreal to Hugh McLennan and Isabella Stewart. He was educated at McGill and Cambridge universities before moving to Syndey, Nova Scotia. In 1881 he married Louise Bradley, with whom he had three children, Hugh, Margaret and Louise. He married Grace Henoys Tytus in 1915, with whom he had one son, John Stewart, Jr.

In 1904 McLennan bought the Sydney Post (later the Post Record). He was also a director of both the Dominion Iron and Steel Company and the Dominion Coal Company, and the author of Louisbourg, from its Foundation to its Fall, 1713-1758, which was first published in 1918. In 1916 Robert Borden appointed McLennan to the Canadian Senate, where he served until his death on 15 September 1939.

Archibald Woodbury McLelan was a shipbuilder, merchant, and politician, serving as the sixth lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia. He was born in Londonderry, Nova Scotia in 1824 to Martha Spenser and Gloud Wilson McLelan, a member of the House of Assembly. He was educated in Great Village, Nova Scotia and Mount Allison Wesleyan Academy in Sackville, New Brunswick before joining his father's shipping and retail business.

McLelan went into partnership with his brother-in-law, John M. Blaikie, with whom he built ships on the Great Village River into the early 1880s. Upon his father's death in 1858 he succeeded him in the House of Assembly. He strongly opposed Confederation and was elected as the first federal member of parliament for Colchester as an Anti-Confederate. After reconciling himself to Confederation he was summoned to the Canadian Senate in 1869, where he sat as a Liberal-Conservative. He resigned from the Upper House to run again in the 1881 federal election and was returned to parliament as a Conservative. He served as minister of finance from 1885 to 1887 in the second administration of Sir John A. Macdonald. Following this position he became postmaster general and was responsible for introducing the parcel post system into Canada. In 1888 he accepted the position of lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia.

McLelan married Caroline Metzler in 1842, with whom he had three children. McLelan passed away in Halifax at the age of sixty-five in 1889.

Ian McLaren is a marine biologist and professor emeritus at Dalhousie University. He was born in Montreal and received his BSc (1952) and MSc at McGill University (1955). He spent summers working on an arctic research vessel and studying marine life in Nunavut. After earning his PhD at Yale in 1961, he taught at McGill from 1963-1966 and joined the Department of Biology at Dalhousie in 1967.

McLaren has published over 100 scientific papers, primarily in the discipline of marine biology, as well as a popular book called All the Birds of Nova Scotia. He has served on national academic grant committees and on the boards of regional and national natural history and conservation organizations including the National Science and Engineering Research Council; the Nova Scotia Institute of Science; the Whales and Whaling Advisory Committee, 1977-1980; and the Eminent Panel on Seal Management, 2000-2001. He was a scientific advisor and/or witness to federal and/or provincial review panels of environmental impact statements, including the Hibernia (1985) and the Sable Offshore Energy Project (1997).