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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.

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.

The Halifax Visiting Dispensary (HVD) was established in 1856 in response to the need for free and subsidized medical services for low-income individuals and families. Regarded as a "red feather" agency—a privately sponsored charitable organization—it was financed by private donations, endowment funds, Halifax and Dartmouth city grants, and the community chest. The dispensary operated out of a clinic on Brunswick Street, with the city morgue situated in the building's basement, and provided specialized services for the treatment of women and children, as well as daily medical and surgical clinics and weekly dental, eye, ear, nose and throat clinics. The dispensary also provided medical services and drugs for diseases such as diabetes, arthritis, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, diphtheria, small pox and consumption. A rotating staff of physicians offered home visits.

In 1924 the dispensary moved into the newly built Dalhousie University Public Health Clinic, which took over the medical and surgical work, while the dispensary continued to distribute prescriptions and surgical supplies. The dispensary remained a separate organization, with its own board of directors and a staff of two—a registered druggist and a certified clerk. Visiting physicians were reimbursed for their work through the dispensary's funds.

Beginning in 1988 with Halifax's first Pride March, members of the city's gay and lesbian community organized Pride Week without the benefit of legal protections. Amidst growing unrest about rampant prejudice and discrimination, the first Pride March was primarily a protest over the lack of legal protection from discrimination, and the all-too-common threat of homophobic violence.

Approximately 75 people marched through Halifax's North End that first year. A handful wore paper bags over their heads out of fear for their livelihoods and their safety. Since then, the Halifax Pride Festival has grown into a celebration that includes numerous events that highlight the unique character of a diverse community, and welcomes 120,000 participants each summer.

The Halifax Graving Dock Company was incorporated in 1885 by English investors for the purpose of constructing and running a dry dock in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The company was subsidized $10,000 annually for 20 years by each the British Admiralty, the Dominion government and the City of Halifax.The dock opened in 1889 on the western shore of Halifax Harbour in the community of Richmond. The following year the company purchased the Chebucto Marine Railway in Dartmouth Cove, at the mouth of the former Shubenacadie Canal.

Initially unprofitable, under the management of Samuel Manners Brookfield, and later his son, John Waites Brookfield, the company had paid off its arrears by 1918. On December 6, 1917 the graving dock facilities on the Halifax side of the harbour were badly damaged by the Halifax Explosion, which occurred 300 metres north of the graving dock.

Although Samuel Brookfield had the graving dock back in operation within two months of the explosion, the government used the situation to expropriate the company's properties in order to build an integrated building and repair facility for steel-hulled ships. The Halifax Graving Dock Company was compensated $1,250,000. Brookfield and the other shareholders unsuccessfully contested the expropriation before the Exchequer Court of Canada, which resulted in only a slight increase in compensation when the judgement was received in 1920.

The new shipyard facility was first leased and then sold to the newly formed Halifax Shipyards Limited. In 1920 the British Empire Steel Corporation acquired control of the shipyard's stock, which was subsequently purchased in 1930 by Dominion Coal and Steel Corporation. Over the next sixty years the shipyard was owned by various interests; in 1994 it was purchased by the Irving-owned Saint John Shipbuilding Limited and renamed Halifax Shipyard Limited.

The Halifax Camerata Singers is a not-for-profit society and chamber choir based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Jeff Joudrey founded the choir in 1986 and is its Artistic Director. The society is managed by a volunteer board of directors and funded through performances, donations, and grants from the Canada Council for the Arts; Nova Scotia Communities, Culture and Heritage; and the Lloyd Carr-Harris Foundation.

The choir performs a wide variety of repertoire with a special focus on Canadian compositions, and they actively commission new choral music from Canadian and international composers. The choir often collaborates with other Atlantic Canadian music ensembles, including Symphony Nova Scotia. The group has been a core part of the Symphony Nova Scotia Chorus since 2001. They perform regularly at regional concert series, including Music at the Three Churches (Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia), Musique Royale (Lunenburg, Nova Scotia), Music at Trinity (Amherst, Nova Scotia), Dartmouth Community Concert Series, and Indian River Festival, P.E.I.

The choir also actively supports emerging choristers and composers through their Youth Mentoring Program, bursaries for the Nova Scotia Youth Choir, and a Young Composer’s Competition. In 2008, Xara, a choral theatre ensemble for women aged 18-30, was founded as a youth initiative of the Halifax Camerata Singers.

The choir won the Wealy Willan Grand Prize in the 2010 National Competition for Canadian Amateur Choirs.

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.

Launched in 1978 by Bob Atkinson, John Bell, and Alain Chabot as an outgrowth of the Dalhousie University School of Library Service's Halycon I, the Halcon Science Fiction Society was a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of Science Fiction and Fantasy in the Atlantic Canada region. The Society held yearly conferences in Halifax, Nova Scotia, during the 1970s-1980s.

After laying dormant for a number of years, it was revived in 2010 and renamed Hal-Con. The convention is now being held at the World Trade and Convention Centre and Scotiabank Centre in downtown Halifax. Notable Guests of Honour and Toastmasters included A.E. Van Vogt, Spider and Jeanne Robinson, Robert Sheckley, Gordon R. Dickson, Galad Elfandsson and Ben Bova.

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.

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.