John Alfred Spender was born on December 23, 1862, in Bath, Somerset, England.

He was a British journalist, editor, and author. He was educated at Bath College and Balliol College, Oxford. He sought out a career in journalism. In 1886, his uncle William Saunders, the owner of the struggling Hull newspaper Eastern Morning News, offered him the editorship. Spender eagerly accepted and spent a little over four years in the post. In 1893, he returned to London and became an editor of the Liberal evening newspaper Pall Mall Gazette. In 1896, he became editor of the Westminster Gazette, a position he held until 1922. Spencer received the credit for making it the most influential evening newspaper in Britain. He was the author of several books on nonfiction subjects, including histories, travelogues, biographies, and memoirs, e.g., "The State and Pensions in Old Age" (1892), "The Comments of Bagshot" (1908), "The Life of The Right Hon. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman” (2 vols., 1924), "Life of Herbert Henry Asquith, Lord Oxford and Asquith" (2 vols., 1932), and his memoir "Life, Journalism and Politics" (2 vols., 1927). Spender also served on many public commissions and inquiries, and after refusing public honours three previous times, he accepted an appointment as a Companion of Honour.

In 1892, he married Mary Rawlinson (1872–). He died on June 21, 1942, in Bromley, Kent, England.

Harold John Author Spence-Sales was born in Lahore, India on October 22nd 1907; he died in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on March 12th 2004. He has become recognized as one of Canada’s most important and influential urban and town planners.

Spence-Sales was home schooled as a child and teenager. He went on to study Architecture at Victoria College in Wellington, New Zealand and The Town Planning Architectural Association in London, England. While studying in London, Spence-Sales met friend, colleague and professional partner John Bland. After completing his studies, Spence-Sales had a successful planning and architectural business in London England. During the Second World War, he designed several sites and munition-material factories for the war effort, and went on to play a role in redeveloping areas of London that were damaged during the Second World War as well.

In 1946, Spence-Sales relocated to Montreal, Quebec, and took up a post at McGill University as a professor of architecture; he would teach at McGill until 1970. While teaching at McGill, Spence-Sales created a graduate program for town planning; it was the first town planning program in Canada. While teaching, he worked on urban development and town planning projects across Quebec and Canada. Between the years 1946-1970, Spence-Sales also became an important figure in developing urban planning legislation in Canada.

After retiring from McGill, Spence-Sales moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, with Mary Filer (1920-2016), a Canadian artist of great renown. After moving to Vancouver, Spence-Sales gravitated away from teaching and began a full time career as an urban and town planning consultant throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He worked on projects across Canada during these years, but he primarily worked on projects in British Columbia.

During the 1990s, Harold Spence-Sales focused less on professional aspirations and turned to personal pursuits. He actively curated art, dabbled in photography, sculpted and created museum exhibitions often about urban landscapes and architectural formations. Harold Spence-Sales also created exhibitions for his personal art gallery and collaborated on projects with Mary Filer.

A native of Dundas, Ontario, Joseph Spencer graduated from McGill in Applied Science in 1874. After postgraduate studies in geology and mineralogy at Gottenberg University (M.A., Ph.D. 1877) and King's College, Halifax (M.A. 1880), Spencer taught at Hamilton Collegiate Institute (1877-1879) and King's College (1880-1882). From 1882 to 1887, he was Professor of geology and mineralogy as well as director of the Museum of Geology and Natural History at the University of Missouri. In 1888 he moved to the University of Georgia, and from 1890 to 1893 combined teaching duties with those of State Geologist. The later part of his career was devoted to independent research.

David Jerome Spence was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1873. He studied architecture at M.I.T and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He moved to Montreal around 1900 and became a member of l'Association des Architectes de la Province du Québec in 1901. He established architectural firms with Samuel Arnold Finley from 1901-1912, and F. David Mathias from 1937-1952. Between 1940 and 1945, while Mathias was called to war, the firm practised under the name of Spence, Mathias and Burge. He operated an architectural firm under his own name from 1913-1937.