Diminutive international star Petula Clark was born in Ewing, Surrey, daughter of a Welsh mother and English father. They went to live outside London during the blitz, and it was there, at age nine, that she made her radio debut inadvertently: she was at a BBC event when there was an air raid; the organizers asked if someone could sing to calm the studio audience, and it was enthusiastic when she did so. She sang for the BBC for the remainder of the war, giving 500 performances, including 200 to entertain the troops. Meanwhile in 1944, a filmmaker had seen her at a show at Royal Albert Hall and promoted her as a child actress for several movies and television series. In 1947, when 15, she met Glasgow pianist Joe Henderson (known as “Mr. Piano”); they collaborated for the next decade. For her stage name “Petula,” she used a combination of the names of her father’s former girl friends, Pet and Ulla. In 1949 she recorded her first song, Teresa Brewer’s “Music, Music, Music.” In 1954 she hit the charts with “The Little Shoemaker” and later hit No. 1 twice in Britain with “Sailor” and “This is My Song.”
A new career singing in French began in 1957 when she fell in love with Parisian Claude Wolff, an executive with Vogue Records whom she married in 1961. Although she was now touring Europe, recording hits in French, Spanish, Italian and German, her career in Britain began to falter. Tony Hatch, one of her collaborators, proposed some new songs; she turned them down, but heard him fiddling with chords on an unfinished melody that she loved. This became “Downtown,” an immediate hit in Britain and No. 1 in the United States in 1965, selling 3 million copies. She reached the U.S. top 40 some 15 times in the next three years, winning three Grammy awards, two for “Downtown" and another for “I Know a Place.” She also made several films, among them, “Finian’s Rainbow In 1981 she turned to the stage and acted in shows in London and on Broadway, once playing the role of Maria von Trapp in “The Sound of Music” so well that von Trapp pronounced her the best Maria she had seen. Before the pandemic shut it down in 2020, she was playing the “Bird Woman” in Mary Poppins. Her honors include Commander of the Order of the British Empire (1998), Commander of the “Ordre des arts et des lettres” in France, the “Grand prix national du disque français, and the induction of “Downtown” into the Grammy Hall of Fame. She sold more than 70 million records in five languages during her eight-decade career.

Born in London, England, Thomas H. Clark was educated at Harvard University from which he received an A.B. in 1917, A.M. 1921, and Ph.D. in 1923. He joined the staff of McGill University in 1924 as Assistant Professor of palaeontology in 1924 and was Logan Professor of palaeontology from 1930 until 1962. He served as chairman of the Department of Geological Sciences from 1952 until 1958 and has been Emeritus Professor since 1963.

Rev. William Brown Clark was born on January 25, 1805, in Biggar, Lanarkshire, Scotland.

In the 1840s, he was a Free Church minister at the Parish of Half-Morton in the County of Dumfries in Scotland. In 1851, he moved to Canada and participated in the Presbyterian missionary work in British Columbia. He also served as a Presbyterian minister in Quebec City and Montreal.

In 1836, he married Jane (Jean) Brown (1803–1854). In 1870, he remarried Amelia Torrance (1813–1890). He died on March 15, 1893, in Dundas, Ontario.

Douglas Clarke was born in Reading, England, and received his musical training at Reading University and at Cambridge, where he earned B.A. and Mus. B. degrees. He practiced as an accompanist, and studied composition under Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Charles Wood. In 1927, Clarke came to Winnipeg as conductor of the Philharmonic Society and the Winnipeg Male Choir. In 1929, he was appointed Director of the McGill University Conservatorium, and in 1930, Dean of the Faculty of Music. In the same year, Clarke was invited to be guest conductor of the newly formed Montréal Orchestra, and shortly thereafter was asked to become its permanent director. He held this post for more than a decade. Clarke also performed as a pianist and guest conductor, and published both vocal and instrumental works. He passed away in 1962.

Elizabeth Lawrence Clarke was born on September 3, 1893, in Williamstown, Berkshire, Massachusetts, the daughter of Samuel Fessenden Clarke (1851-1928), a professor of natural sciences at Williams College and the founder of the American Society of Naturalists in the 1880s.

She was an American scientist. She became one of the few women scientists in the emerging field of agribusiness. After graduating from Smith College in 1916, she spent a year at the Massachusetts Agricultural College (now the University of Massachusetts Amherst). During World War I, she joined the Woman's Land Army. Discovering her passion for agriculture, she secured a position at Dimock Farms in Vermont, which later became the Dimock Potato Corporation. Clarke served as the chief inspector of seeds, and in 1929, she made history as the first woman field inspector for the Vermont Seed Potato Certificate Service.

She died on December 29, 1994, in Sarasota, Florida.