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John M. Blaikie was a merchant and shipbuilder in Great Village, Nova Scotia. He was born in Upper Stewiacke in 1837 to Harris and Maria Blaikie and moved to Great Village from Maitland ca. 1850. In 1863 he went into partnership with his brother-in-law, A.W. McLellan, with whom he would be associated for many years in merchandising and shipbuilding.

Blaikie, first in partnership and later on his own, commissioned the building of many ships during the period 1863 to 1891, including the John M. Blaikie, a 2000-tonne, four-masted barque, which was launched in October 1885 from Great Village. A model of this ship was among the exhibits at the Great London Exhibition in 1886 as well as the World's Fair in Paris.

He had at least one son by his first wife, and by 1898 he was widowed and married to Malinda Gould. Blaikie passed away in 1929.

The Reverend D.B. Blair was born in Strachur on Loch Fyne, Argyleshire, Scotland, to John Blair and Catherine MacGregor. His father was employed as manager of a large sheep farm. Blair received his education at Edinburgh University and was licensed to preach in 1844. Two years later he left Scotland for Barney's River, Pictou County, where he was ordained on 29 October 1846. From 1850-1890 he preached at the Free Church congregation established in Barney's River, which derived from the Garden of Eden, Blue Mountain and Barney's River, and was named "Blair Presbyterian Church" in his honour.

In 1851 he married Mary Sibella of Brolas, Mull, Argyleshire. She died in 1882. They had six children: Anna Margaret, Thomas Chalmers, Laughlan MacLean, John Knox, Ewan Alexander and David Welsh. Blair was considered, in his day, to be the best Gaelic scholar in North America. He died in 1893 and is buried at Laggan, Pictou County.

Elisabeth Mann Borgese was born in Munich in 1918 to Katia Pringsheim and Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann. The fifth of six children, Elisabeth was raised in an intellectual family whose views supported the post-war movement for World Federalism. In exile from Nazi Germany, Elisabeth earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Classics and a diploma from the Conservatory of Music in Zurich before her family immigrated to the United States in 1938. The following year, Elisabeth married Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, an Italian-born writer and professor at Princeton University, with whom she had two children, Domenica and Angelica.

Working as a research associate with Giuseppe Borgese and other international scholars at the University of Chicago, Elisabeth helped to form "The Committee to Frame a World Constitution" and edited their monthly journal, Common Cause. Her publishing and translation work expanded to include editorial positions in Italy with the Ford Foundation's Intercultural Publications, Perspectives USA, and Diogenes, a UNESCO quarterly. She also served as Executive Secretary with the Board of Editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Widowed in 1952, Elisabeth continued to pursue the ideas articulated by the committee, writing a critical introduction to the Constitution of the World, which was reissued in 1966 by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, California. It was through the Center, where she was Senior Fellow from 1964 to 1978, that Elisabeth first focused her attentions on the law of the sea as an area of critical international concern. She began to publish ocean-related research, including The Ocean Regime, a blueprint for a "constitution for the world's oceans," in an effort to urge world leaders to re-examine ocean governance. In the late 1960s, she organized the first Pacem in Maribus conference as a forum for discussing the law of the sea, bringing it to the attention of international governmental and non-governmental organizations.

The first Pacem in Maribus conference was held in Malta in 1970. The annual event has since been hosted by countries including Algeria, Cameroon, Canada, China, India, Japan, and Sri Lanka. Over time, the dialogue of diplomats, civil servants, industrialists, fisheries experts, oceanographers, biologists, economists, and legal experts regarding the factors affecting "the common heritage of mankind" laid the foundation for the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea. A founding member of groups such as the Club of Rome, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and the Group of '78, Elisabeth invested great effort in working with organizations to influence international policy. In 1972, she established the International Ocean Institute (IOI) at the Royal University of Malta with the cooperation of the United Nations Development Programme and the Government of Malta. As Chairman of the Planning Council, she worked with the IOI to sponsor Pacem in Maribus, to conduct training programmes, and to facilitate and publish research with the goal of promoting peace and a deeper understanding of oceans and their resources in world policy and sustainable economic development.

In 1978, Elisabeth relocated to Halifax, Nova Scotia, taking up Canadian citizenship. As a Killam Fellow at Dalhousie University, she taught courses in political science and continued to pursue projects relating to disarmament, international development, integration of marine resources, and marine management. Serving as a member of the Austrian Delegation to the Third United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, the Preparatory Commission for the International Seabed Authority and the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea, Elisabeth was instrumental in the 1982 adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and its entry into force in 1994.

Elisabeth's career was prolific and diverse. Attracted by Ghandi and his policy of sovereignty through peace, fascinated by the lives of animals and their methods of communication, a curious and creative writer of poetry, plays and fiction, Elisabeth expressed her interests and dedication to the environment through the written word and countless addresses. She published fifteen books, including The New International Economic Order and the Law of the Sea, The Drama of the Oceans, and The Ascent of Woman, as well as essays and short stories in publications such as New Directions, Nation and Atlantic Monthly. Embracing challenge and diversity, Elisabeth acted as a consultant to the World Bank, UNIDO and UNESCO, lectured internationally, and was awarded with three honorary doctorates. She received prizes and honours from the governments of Austria, Canada, China, Colombia, Germany and the UK, as well as awards from the Francis of Assisi Environmental Committee, the United Nations and the World Conservation Union. In 2001Germany bestowed its most prestigious award on her, the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit. She was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. A true citizen of the world, Elisabeth Mann Borgese — the "Ambassador of the Seas" — died at the age of 83 in St. Moritz after a morning on the slopes.

In 2018 Elisabeth Mann Borgese was named one of 52 Dalhousie Originals, a list of individuals identified as having made a significant impact on the university and the broader community since Dalhousie's inception in 1818. https://www.dal.ca/about-dal/dalhousie-originals/elisabeth-mann-borgese.html

Ross Boutilier is an LGBTQ activist and community volunteer who pursued a number of successful challenges to his federal employer to gain equal treatment and benefits for same-sex relationships. He and his partner, Brian Mombourquette, also challenged both federal and provincial legislation to gain equal access to marriage and became one of three couples married as a result of the 2004-09-24 Marriage Decision.

Born in 1956, Ross is a retired geophysicist with a 30-year career with Natural Resources Canada at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He began community work as a volunteer and resource person with the Metro Area Committee on AIDS in 1989-1993. From 1993-1998 he was a member, producer and coordinator of the editorial collective producing the Gaezette (now Wayves). He served as treasurer of Safe Harbour Community Church between 1993-2003 and as a volunteer, coordinator and city liaison officer with the Halifax Pride Committee from 1994-2003. In 1996 he founded Manna For Health special needs food bank, for which he also served as a treasurer and liaison officer until 2003. Ross was a steward and elected official with the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada from 1996-2006—in that capacity he served in multiple roles, including as chair of the Human Rights Committee.

Gena Branscombe was a Canadian-born composer, conductor, educator, and pianist. Born in Picton, Ontario on November 4, 1881, she received her Bachelor of Arts in composition from the Chicago Musical College (1900), studying with Felix Borowski, Alexander von Fielitz, Florenz Ziegfield, Arthur Friedheim, Hans von Schiller, and Rudolph Ganz. She also spent some time in Berlin studying with Engelbert Humperdinck. In 1932, she received an honorary Master of Arts from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, where she had been director of the piano department from 1907 to 1909.

Branscombe spent most of her life in the United States, although she visited Canada frequently and some of her compositions have Canadian connections (e.g., Quebec Suite). She is best known for her choral compositions, particularly those written for women's voices, and she frequently conducted her own works in Canada, England, and the United States. She was also the founder and conductor of the Branscombe Chorale in New York (1935-1953), and conducted various choirs in New Jersey. She was also the president of the Society of American Women Composers and the vice-president and director of the National Association of American Composers and Conductors.

She married John Ferguson Tenney and had four daughters. She died at the age of 95 in New York on July 26, 1977.

David Braybrooke was born 18 October 1924 in Hackettstown, New Jersey. While an undergraduate at Hobart College, he joined the United States Army, serving from 1943-1946. He resumed his formal education and received a BA in Economics (magna cum laude) from Harvard in 1948, and an MA (Philosophy) and PhD (Ethics, Epistemology and Economic Theory) from Cornell in 1951 and 1953, respectively. As a graduate student and over the following decade, he taught at Hobart, the University of Michigan, Bowdoin College and Yale.

In 1963 Braybrooke joined Dalhousie University, holding a joint appointment in political science and philosophy until his retirement in 1990, after which he was made Professor Emeritus. Soon after he moved to the University of Texas at Austin, where he held the Centennial Commission Chair in the Liberal Arts as a Professor of Government and Philosophy, a position that he held until his second retirement in 2005.

Braybrooke was an active member of many professional associations, including the American Philosophical Association and the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy during the late 1960s; in 1970 he was a founding member of and presenter at the initial conference of the Atlantic Region Philosophical Association (ARPA) in Halifax. He served on the Executive Committee of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) from 1970-1971, and variously as the Director, Vice President and President of the Canadian Philosophical Association (CPA) during the early 1970s. From 1981-1982 he was Vice-President of the American Political Science Association. He acted as the local representative for the Canadian Peace Research and Education Association during the 1981 Learned Societies Conference at Dalhousie. Under the auspices of the Council for Philosophical Studies, he helped to plan and stage a Summer Institute on Public Choice Theory at Dalhousie in 1984. He was elected a member of the Royal Society of Canada in 1980 and was involved in its activities throughout the following decade, in particular helping to elect new fellows and contributing to the Royal Society's Canadian Global Change Forum from 1986-1990.

Concurrently with his appointment at Dalhousie, Braybrooke was a visiting professor at universities including Pittsburgh, Toronto, Minnesota, California at Irvine, Waterloo, Chicago and Tulane, as well as holding visiting fellowships at Wolfson College, Cambridge, the University of British Columbia and Queen's University.

Braybrooke's research interests included problems in ethics, philosophy, and political and social science. He wrote over eighty articles and a number of monographs, including A Strategy of Decision: Policy Evaluation as a Social Process (with C.E. Lindblom, 1963), Traffic Congestion Goes through the Issue Machine (1974), A Case Study In Issue Processing, Illustrating a New Approach (1974), Logic on the Track of Social Change (with B. Brown and P.K. Schotch, 1995), Natural Law Modernized (2001), and Analytical Political Philosophy: From Discourse to Edification (2005).

Braybrooke married Alice Noble in 1948, with whom he had three children: Nicholas, Geoffre and Elizabeth Page. He later married Michiko (Gomyo), with whom he lived in Austin and spent summers in Halifax. He died on 7 August 2013 in Texas.