Edward Pelham Winslow was born in Woodstock, Carleton Co., New Brunswick, Canada, on 14 September 1858. In 1884, he married Sarah Maria Spragge Winslow (1857–1950) of Toronto. The couple lived in Montreal, where they had seven children. Edward P. Winslow died in Montreal on 22 September 1946.

Guy Desbarats, a Canadian architect was born on July 30, 1925, in Montreal, Quebec. He studied engineering at McGill University before turning to architecture. He graduated in 1948 and started to work at the firm of architects James William Abra, James Watson Balharrie, and David Shore in Ottawa until 1952. Then he returned to McGill University as a research fellow of the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation (Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation) to conduct research on duplexes in Montreal.

In 1953, he founded one of Canada's most prestigious architectural firms, ARCOP (Architects in Co-partnership). As an associate architect, he collaborated on several of the firm's major projects, including the thematic pavilions L'Homme à l'oeuvre and L'Homme interroge l'Univers for Expo 67, the Beaver Lake pavilion on Mount Royal (1955-1958), the National Arts Centre (1969) in Ottawa, Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier (1963), and Place Bonaventure (1967). After the agency's dissolution in 1970, Desbarats held a few positions in the public service, notably with the Department of Public Works Canada. He was Assistant Deputy Minister of Design in 1975 and Assistant Deputy Minister of Design and Construction from 1976 to 1985. He returned to private practice in 1985 and founded Canadian Construction Information Services Limited.

Committed to the training of the next generation, Desbarats became a lecturer at McGill University in 1953 and he also set up an internship program at the Centre des métiers de la construction. In 1964, he became the first director of the new School of Architecture at Université de Montréal. In 1968, through the merger of the School and the Institut d'urbanisme, he formed the Faculté de l'aménagement and became its dean until 1975.

In 1952, he married Aileen Anne Cobban. He died on August 30, 2003, in Sherbrooke, Quebec.

The Papineau Family preserved within this fonds were extremely connected and influential in the political, legal, social and civil environment of Quebec and Ontario starting from the early nineteenth century. Papineau family members are responsible for civil constructions such as the Montreal Polytechnique School and the Lachine Canal. The Papineau Family was connected by marriage to many other influential families in French Canada, most notably the Trudeaus, Mackays, Cherriers and Bourassas.
The Papineau Family settled in Lower Canada in the 17th century. Joseph Papineau (1752-1841) was born in Montreal and was granted a seigneury in nearby Montebello. Two of Joseph’s sons, Louis-Joseph (1786-1871) and Denis-Benjamin (1789-1854), would become important political figures: Louis-Joseph led the Patriote movement, while Denis-Benjamin served as the joint premier of the Province of Canada after the unification of Upper and Lower Canada. This fonds comprises personal and professional papers of Louis-Joseph and Denis-Benjamin Papineau, their children, and their grandchildren, as well as related family members. Conspicuous persons include Louis-Joseph-Amédée (1819-1903), Auguste-Cyrille (1828-1915), Casimir-Fidèle (1826-1892), and Louis-Gustave (1855-1931, son of Auguste-Cyrille).

In 1901, the Union of Canadian Municipalities (UCM) was founded by William Douw Lighthall (also known as W.D. Lighthall) and Oliver Aiken Howland. The union was created as a resistance from municipal mayors to the encroachment of corporations and monopolies on Canadian municipalities. Essentially, the Union sought to protect the rights of municipalities and their constituents from corporate exploitation via unfair corporate advantages or by legislative acts from politicians and other members of parliament who collaborated with corporations. It was also formed to remind utility companies that they could not assume municipal consent for the removal of public infrastructure without consideration of the municipal governments when building their infrastructure. Municipal rights-of-way must be negotiated beforehand.
In addition to resisting corporate encroachment, the union was created as an organization for the cooperation and collaboration of municipalities and mayors. It allowed for unionized action, sharing of resources to cut costs and save money for municipalities, and the ability to exert greater influence on municipal affairs.
In 1937, the UCM and the Dominion Conference of Mayors merged to form the Canadian Federation of Mayors and Municipalities (CFMM). It was then renamed the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) in 1976.
William Douw Lighthall (December 27, 1857 – August 3, 1954), also known as W. D. Lighthall, was a Canadian lawyer, historian, novelist, poet, and philosopher and played a significant role in the political and cultural life of Montreal and Canada. W.D. Lighthall grew up in Montreal and attended McGill University, where he received degrees of Bachelor of Arts in 1879, Bachelor of Civil Laws in 1881, Master of Arts in 1883, and, received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws in 1921. He was admitted to the Quebec Bar in 1881, and practiced law in Montreal for the next 63 years, from 1881 to 1944. There are several notable activities of his long tenure in Canadian public and political life. In 1900-1903, he served as the mayor of Westmount and co-founded the Union of Canadian Municipalities with Oliver Aiken Howland, the mayor of Toronto. In addition to the Union of Canadian Municipalities, he served as the vice-president of the National Municipal League of America.
W.D. Lighthall was also a known philanthropist. In 1883, he did the legal work pro bono necessary for the incorporation of the Montreal Women's Club and founded the Canadian Association of Returned Soldiers in 1915. He also founded numerous literary associations and published numerous literary works like history, poetry, philosophy, arts, and literature.
He was also a notable McGill figure, having served as Representative Fellow in Arts at McGill University from 1911 to 1913. After David Ross McCord, the founder of the McCord Museum, passed away in 1930, he served as the executor of the McCord Estate and the McCord Museum.
These records of the Union of Canadian Municipalities were compiled and organized by William Douw Lighthall before donated to the McCord Museum.

Antiquarian book dealer, author, publisher, and reviewer, John Newton Mappin was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1926 and died there in 2008. Mappin lived in Montreal with his wife Judith (Judy) Taylor, who had co-founded The Double Hook, a Canadiana bookshop, while she was a student at McGill University. John Mappin took over the family jewelry business, Mappin & Webb Limited, after his father’s death. He sold the business in 1962 and entered the book trade business shortly thereafter. Mappin graduated with a Master of Arts in political science and economics from McGill University in 1968. His thesis was titled The political thought of Francis Maseres, attorney general of Canada, 1766-69.

For over 40 years, Mappin himself was a collector and dealer of antiquarian books in Montreal, as John N. Mappin Rare Books. He operated out of his home office and as thus never had a brick and mortar store, nor did he participate in book fairs. He issued book lists and met privately with his customers, many of which were libraries building their Canadiana collections.

As an author, Mappin is most known for his book Bernard Amtmann 1907-1979: a personal memoir, which has been cited multiple times in scholarly literature. Antmann was a fellow Canadian antiquarian bookseller from Montreal.

A.P. (Arthur Parry) Eardley-Wilmot was a British naval officer born on 24 April at Berkswell Hall in Warwickshire, England. He was the fourth son of Elizabeth Emma Parry and Sir John Eardley Eardley-Wilmot, Baronet, MP for Warwickshire and Governor of Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania, Australia). He joined the Royal Naval College on 7 August 1828, and was first deployed in 1830. His early assignments included postings in south-east Asia, southern China, and the Sandwich Islands. He was promoted to the rank of Mate in 1834, Lieutenant in 1840, and Acting -Captain in 1847. Notably, Eardley-Wilmot held the post of Commodore Commanding West Coast of Africa between 1862 and 1865. This was a command created to disrupt the trans-Atlantic slave trade following the 1807 Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. He married Charlotte Louisa Mackenzie Wright on 28 July 1868. They had a daughter together named Flora. Eardley-Wilmot died on 2 April 1886, with the title of Vice-Admiral.

Born in Québec in 1929, France Gagnon Pratte studies architecture and arts history at Laval University after obtaining her arts and philosophy baccalaureate. Graduating in 1981, she's elected in 1985 to the presidency of the Québec Council of Monuments and Historical Sites, an organism devoted to the preservation and valorization of Québec's cultural heritage. In 1986, France Gagnon Pratte takes charge of les Editions Continuité, and the journal of the same name. In 1995, she creates the Fondation québecoise du patrimoine ( Québec's cultural heritage foundation).
France Gagnon Pratte is the author of many books, most notably Country House For Montrealers : the architecture of E. and W.S. Maxwell, and pronounced several lectures on architecture and cultural heritage. In 1994, she donated the material used to write this book to McGill University, in order to preserve a picture of a part of Canadian architecture which was, at that time, demolished or renovated in another taste.
A member of the Order of Canada since 1999, France Gagnon Pratte has been the Québec commissary for the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, and is or was a member of the C.D. Howe Memorial Foundation, the Canadian Mediterranean Institute, the Canadiana fonds, the National Trust for Historic Preservation (United States), the Commission d'urbanisme et de conservation de la Ville de Québec. She also is Officière of the Ordre National du Québec since 2005.

Emily Phyllis Buchanan, born in 1914, is the daughter of William and Emily Gould, niece of the Canadian-American author Palmer Cox. In the 1930s, she lived in Montreal and worked as a secretary, frequently vacationing in different places in Québec. During that time, she meets John Edger Buchanan, whose father was a soldier during the First World War. She marries him some time later. During the later part of her life, she assisted several projects or institutions in preserving and transmitting the legacy of Palmer Cox. To this end, she donated part of her collections of Palmer Cox-related material to McGill University in 1996.