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.

Valentine Francis Rowe was born on August 2, 1841, in Exeter, Devon, England.

He was an engineer and military officer. He joined the Royal Engineers and received his Lieutenant's commission in 1862. He was promoted to Captain in 1872 and later to Major.

In 1873, he married Emma Isabella Mann (1847–1927). He died on May 8, 1920, in Torquay, Devon, England.