Thomas Heathfield Carrick was an English portrait miniature painter who portrayed many leading political and literary figures of his age. He developed the method of painting portraits on marble rather than the usual ivory.
He grew up in Upperby, near Carlisle in Cumberland (now Cumbria), where he trained and traded as a chemist, painting miniatures in his spare time. He became renowned in the district for his portraits, including one of the actor Charles Kean. In 1836, he moved to Newcastle upon Tyne, and after a few years relocated to London, where he exhibited his work at the Royal Academy from 1841 to 1866. Amongst his illustrious subjects were Thomas Carlyle, Sir Robert Peel, Lord John Russell, William Wordsworth, Samuel Rogers, Caroline Norton, Eliza Cook, William Charles Macready, Nellie Farren, Luigi Lablache, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Daniel O'Connell and Robert Owen. In 1845, he received a medal from Prince Albert for his work in painting miniatures on marble. He retired on an annuity from the Royal Academy.

Austin Carroll was born in Guelph in 1899. He received his LL.B. from McGill University in 1923 but never practiced law. A star football player at McGill, he made this student interest his life’s avocation. He became the traveling road secretary for the Toronto Maple Leafs of the International Baseball League, worked in advertising, publishing, and pursued a career as a writer and sports journalist, publishing as a freelancer in The Montrealer, Esquire, Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, The Reader's Digest, Liberty, and the Toronto Star Weekly. His columns on hockey and other sports ranging from boxing to salmon fishing appeared in the Montreal Gazette from 1941 until 1987. He died in Montreal in 1991. He also wrote fiction with sports settings. Carroll was probably the most literate Canadian sportswriter of his generation, and corresponded frequently with noted Canadian writer Morley Callaghan.