John Shingler was born on 27 October 1936 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He was educated at Kingswood College and Rhodes University in Grahamstown, where he graduated in 1956 (B.A.). He subsequently studied Law at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and International Relations at Yale University (M.A. 1964, Ph.D. 1973). His doctoral dissertation was on "Education and Political Order in South Africa 1902-1962", a study of the attempt to use education as a political instrument in a racially and ethnically mixed society.

Shingler was involved in South African politics during the 1950's as a member of the Liberal Party and as a leader of student opposition to University apartheid. He became President of the Students' Representative Council at the University of Witwatersrand in 1958 and served as President of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) in 1960. NUSAS was at that time the largest anti-apartheid organization having a membership open to all races in South Africa.

Shingler left South Africa in 1961 and subsequently lost both his South African passport and citizenship. He came to Canada in 1966 and obtained a Certificate of Identity from the Canadian Government in 1971.

John Shingler has taught at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the University of Western Ontario, the University of California, Berkeley, and in 1967 joined the Faculty of Arts at McGill University in Montreal, where he is an Associate Professor of Political Science.

A graduate of the McGill School of Architecture, Anthony Shine was a partner in John Bland, Roy LeMoyne and Anthony Shine in the late 1960s and the early 1970s in Montreal. He was involved in architectural and planning projects in partnership with John Bland, Vincent Rother, Charles Elliott Trudeau, Roy E. LeMoyne, Gordon Edwards, and Michel Lacroix. McGill’s Rare Books and Special Collections, Blackader-Lauterman Collection, holds his student paper "Report on the architects' building now the CIL house, corner of Dorchester and Beaver Hall Hill, Ross and Macdonald architects 1931, Montreal, Canada."

Joseph Gordon Shillingford was born in 1960 in Moosomin, Saskatchewan.

He was a Canadian publisher. He graduated from Kelvin High School, Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1978. From 1980 to 1984, he managed the music band Dub Rifles and, after it disbanded, he studied music, history, and literature at the University of Winnipeg (B.A. in English). In 1986, he and a friend started Blizzard Publishing. When the partnership ended, he went to work for the Manitoba Arts Council. He later returned to literary publishing, starting Scirocco Drama and J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing (1992). He acquired the firms Watson & Dwyer and the Muses’ Company, publishing work in theatre, poetry, Canadian social history, politics, religion, true crime, and biography. Several of his publications received Governor General’s Awards. A patron of the arts in Manitoba, Shillingford supported Theatre Projects Manitoba and a playwriting competition at local high schools.

He died on January 25, 2016, in Winnipeg, Manitoba.