Pierre-Georges Roy, archivist and historian, was born in Lévis, and educated at the Séminaire de Québec and Université Laval. He began working as a journalist for the Canadien and the Quotidien but at age 20 had founded his own historical review, Le Glaneur, and went on to found the Bulletin des recherches historiques in 1895 (which published until 1968). He then worked at the federal archives in Ottawa until he was named chief archivist for Quebec in 1920. Having created the Archives nationales de la province de Québec (now known as the Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec), he was awarded the title of Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1927; in 1931, he was appointed curator of the Musée provincial which originally housed the Archives nationales (now the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec), a post he occupied until 1941. He received the Royal Society of Canada’s J.B. Tyrrell Historical Medal in 1932, as he continued to write hundreds of books and pamphlets on Quebec history.

James Roy was an Anglican clergyman who served in Montréal, Ontario and New York State.

Gerry L. Roy was born in New Brunswick and studied pre-engineering at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia before obtaining his B.Eng (Civil) at McGill in 1952. He spent 3 years as a field engineer on the construction of oil refineries, including the Petro Fina refinery (now Petro Canada) in Montreal.

Roy went into consulting engineering with a small Montreal firm, eventually becoming partner. For a year he was in structural and municipal design before moving on to project management. Roy managed the design and construction supervision of the new towns of Port Cartier, Gagnon, Wabush and Churchill Falls. He managed major infrastructure works of Expo '67 and the cities of Riyadh and Medinah in Saudi Arabia. Roy participated in several joint ventures including those that established concepts for Mirabel Airport and Nuns' Island and the design and construction of the Abu Dhabi International Airport. He also led the preparation of numerous feasibility studies on a variety of projects. In later years he devoted much of his time to marketing his firm's services in Canada and abroad.

Gerry L. Roy retired in 1987 and remained active in community activities and in the St. Francis Xavier and McGill Alumni Associations.

Elizabeth Rowlinson was born in Sutton, England in 1930. She earned a B.A. in 1951, a B.Sc. in 1953 and an M.A. in 1955 from Oxford University. After immigrating to Canada she received her Ph.D. in Mathematics from McGill University in 1965. That year she joined the Mathematics Department as a Faculty Lecturer, she became an Assistant Professor in 1969, she was appointed McGill’s first Associate Dean of Students in 1970, and Assistant Professor of Mathematics in 1971. During her tenure at McGill, Elisabeth Rowlinson was particularly interested in the Students’ Counseling Services, the Students’ Grievance Committee, the role of women at the University and programs for Continuing Education. In 1978 she left McGill to take up the position of Dean of St. Hilda’s College and Dean of Women and Fellow of Trinity College in Toronto until 1991. In 1993 she returned to Montreal, and was ordained in the Anglican Church, taking up the post of Anglican Chaplain at McGill University. Elizabeth Rowlinson is an author and editor of mathematical and other publications.

Kent Rowley was an important figure in the history of the Canadian trade union movement. He spent a considerable amount of time locked up for his activism, starting with a two-and-a-half year internment (1940-42) at Petawawa for refusing conscription. The next year the United Textile Workers of America, an affiliate of the AFL, hired him as their Canadian director. In 1946 he and fellow organizer Madeleine Parent organized workers to strike at the Valleyfield factory of the Montreal Cotton Company, Canada’s largest textile plant at the time and where the employees, mainly women and children, worked a 60-hour week. The illegal strike, which lasted 100 days, landed Rowley in jail for six months, but he and Parent managed to negotiate the first collective agreement in the company’s history. The clergy and management were not pleased with their actions, however, and in 1952, Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis joined in. He accused the two of sedition, and ordered Parent, whom Rowley married the following year, arrested five times. Rowley lost his job at UTWA for alleged (but false) Communist ties. This experience convinced him that Canada should have its own labour organizations free from American interference. By 1968 he had helped establish the Canadian Confederation of Trade Unions. Although the CCTU, where he became secretary-treasurer, remained a small group, it was a major influence in a wave of breakaways of Canadian workers from American unions during the 1970s and 80s.