Lindsay Russel was the Deputy Minister of the Interior in 1882-1883.

Colin Kerr Russel (1877-1956) joined the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University in 1906 as Assistant Demonstrator in Clinical Medicine. In 1913 he became Lecturer in Clinical Neurology and held various positions including Associate Professor from 1937-1945. The fonds includes American Neurological Association material (1934-1941), army files (1939-1943), correspondence, lecture notes, glass slides, large glass negatives, colour screen filters, and reprints with a card index.

Art and social critic John Ruskin was educated privately and at Christ Church, Oxford (B.A. 1842). His extensive travels on the Continent awakened his appreciation of painting and architecture, while his deeply religious nature and love of the Authorized Version of the Bible formed his characteristically prophetic prose style. Modern Painters (1843-1860), which began as a vindication of J.M.W. Turner, gave a whole new idealist dimension to English art criticism. Turning to architecture in The Stones of Venice (1851-1853), Ruskin developed a theory of aesthetic beauty as founded on the moral virtue of the society producing the work of art. In his later works he attacked the effects of industrialism and the Victorian business ethic on English life and art. He was the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford in 1870-1879 and held the post again in 1883-1884.