Job Abbott was born on August 23, 1845, in Andover, Massachusetts.

He was a civil engineer and entrepreneur who helped pioneer the construction of steel bridges in Canada. In 1864, he graduated from the Harvard University's Lawrence Scientific School. He also studied law and became an expert in the field of patents. He worked at the Manchester Locomotive Works in New Hampshire, the Long Island Rail Road, the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad, and Wrought Iron Bridge Company, where he became vice president and chief engineer in 1872. In 1880, he became president and chief engineer of the Toronto Bridge Company. In 1882, he became president, chief engineer, and senior sales representative of the Montreal based Dominion Bridge Company Limited, manufacturing and installing steel bridges and structures throughout Canada, including many for the Canadian Pacific Railway, such as the 3,400 ft Lachine Bridge in Montreal, Quebec.

In 1866, he married Ruth R. Pecker. He died on August 18, 1896, in Andover, Massachusetts.

Writer, photographer, and documentary filmmaker in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, known for her documentation of the culture, heritage, and natural environment of rural and indigenous communities both in Canada and elsewhere. She has authored six books: The Coast Way, The French Shore, A Country So Wild and Grand, The Heart of the Farm, Eeyou Istchee, and Memphrémagog: An Illustrated History. Her films include Nunaaluk: A Forgotten Story. She graduated from McGill University in 1972.

Lyman J. Abbott was born on December 18, 1835, in Roxbury, Massachusetts.

He was an American Congregationalist theologian, pastor, editor, lawyer, and author. In 1853, he graduated from the New York University where he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1856. He soon abandoned the legal profession, and after studying theology, he was ordained a minister of the Congregational Church in 1860. He was a pastor in Indiana, New England, and New York. He was also an associate editor of Harper's Magazine, editor-in-chief of The Christian Union, renamed The Outlook in 1893, and the founder of a publication called the Illustrated Christian Weekly.

In 1857, he married Abby Frances Hamlin. He died on October 22, 1922, In New York, New York.

Maude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott was born on March 18, 1868, in St. Andrews East, Quebec, and died on September 2, 1940, in Montreal. In 1890, she became one of the first women to graduate with a B.A. from McGill University, but was denied admission to the McGill Medical School, since women were not yet admitted. Abbott attended the University of Bishop’s College and received her medical degree in 1894. Following postgraduate studies in Europe, Abbott returned to Montreal where she met the Chair of Pathology at McGill University, Dr. George Adami, who appointed her Assistant Curator of the Medical Museum in 1898. In addition to her efforts at curating and maintaining the specimen collection at the Medical Museum, Abbott became a renowned teacher and an expert in cardiac disease. In 1924, the Medical Museum and the Pathology Department were moved from Strathcona Building, and Abbott was named curator of the new Central Medical Museum until her retirement in 1936. Abbott was a founding member of the Federation of Medical Women of Canada (FMWC), the International Association of Medical Museums, and helped develop and organize the Canadian Medical War Museum. Her main area of medical interest was pathology and she specialized in congenital heart disease. She taught in McGill's Department of Pathology from 1912 to 1935, was the first woman to be honoured by the Pathological Society of London, and published her authoritative Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease in 1936. Her second vocation, one inspired and encouraged by Sir William Osler, lay in museum work and medical history. She was curator of the Medical Historical Museum at McGill and lectured and wrote about various historical topics, her major publication being the History of Medicine in the Province of Quebec (1931). Her honours and awards include: the Lord Stanley Gold Medal (1890), the Senior Anatomy Prize from Bishop’s College (1894), the Chancellor’s Price from Bishop’s College (1894), the Person of National Historic Significance from Parks Canada (1993), and an induction into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame (1994).

William Abbott, brother of Joseph Abbott, was born in Little Strickland, Westmoreland, England. He began theological studies and then accepted a request from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts to leave his homeland to pursue missionary work in Canada. He came to Canada with his brother in 1818. In 1824, he was ordained deacon by the bishop of Québec, and sent to the mission at Yamaska Mountain (later named Abbotsford). In the following year he exchanged parishes with his brother, at that time Rector of St. Andrews. Under William Abbott's direction, the building of Christ Church, St. Andrews, was completed and the parish consolidated.

John Jacob Abel was born on May 19, 1857, in Cleveland, Ohio.

He was an American biochemist and pharmacologist. He earned his Ph.B. (Bachelor of Philosophy, 1883) from the University of Michigan. He then went to Johns Hopkins University and University of Leipzig and Strasbourg, Germany (M.D., 1888). Abel returned to the University of Michigan as the chair of Materia Medica and Therapeutics, where he played an important role in developing the first pharmacology department in North America. In 1893, Dr. William Osler of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine asked Abel to come to the school and accept a position of America's first full-time Professor of Pharmacology. During his time at Hopkins, he made several important medical advancements, especially in the field of hormone extraction. In addition to his laboratory work, he founded several significant scientific journals such as the Journal of Biological Chemistry and the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

In 1883, he married Mary H. Hinman (1851–1938). He died on May 28, 1938, in Baltimore, Maryland.

American-born Walter Halsey Abell, one of the first professors of art in Canada, spent much of his early career at Acadia University, in Nova Scotia, where he taught from 1928 to 1943. While there, he helped found the Maritime Art Association and was founding editor of the magazine, Maritime Art (1940), the first magazine in Canada about the visual arts and the precursor of Canadian Art (1943). He became noted for his theoretical Marxist and psychological viewpoints on art. In 1943 he moved to Ottawa to briefly join the staff of the National Gallery of Canada before heading to Michigan State University. He taught there until his death in 1956.