James Reid was born in 1769 in Scotland and died in 1848. He came to Canada around 1788. In 1808, he married Elizabeth McGillivray, the sister of William McGillivray, and two years later, purchased a large property situated in the Faubourg, in Montreal. Reid was called to the bar of Lower Canada in 1794 and was appointed a judge of the Court of King’s Bench in Montreal in 1807. He became a Chief Justice by 1825 and was an active member of the Executive Council in 1838 for a few months, before he resigned from the bench. Reid handled many of the North West Company’s contractual and litigation matters.

Helen Richmond Young Reid was born on December 11, 1869, in Montreal, Quebec.

She was a Canadian social reformer and author. She was educated at the Montreal School for Girls. She and several classmates decided to apply to McGill University, though the school was not open to female students. Her mother persuaded Donald A. Smith (future Lord Strathcona) to make an endowment to the university, to cover the cost of separate classes for women. In 1884, Helen was in the first class of "donaldas", as women admitted to McGill were called (B.A., 1889). She continued her studies at the University of Genova, Switzerland, and after her return to Montreal, she dedicated herself to social work. She served on the board of the Montreal Council of Women (1900-1903) and helped start Montreal's chapter of the Victorian Order of Nurses. She founded the McGill School of Social Work and participated in the creation of the School of Nursing. She was an officer of the Canadian Public Health Association, of the Family Welfare Association of America, of the Canadian Welfare Council, and she served on the Dominion Council of Health. She was president of the Montreal Council of Social Agencies and of the Child Welfare Association. A great traveller, polyglot, and golf player, she acquired a national and international reputation. In 1935, Reid was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of her lifetime of "philanthropic services in the Dominion of Canada".

She died on June 8, 1941, in Montreal, Quebec.

Dennis "D. C." Reid was born on August 5, 1952, in Calgary, Alberta.

He is a Canadian poet, novelist, and short-story writer. He also writes about fly fishing, high-end automobiles, round-the-world yacht races, and the human brain. The latter subject covers the last fifteen years of human brain science, creativity and how poets do their art. His work has been published in the U.S., United Kingdom, Mexico and India and has been translated into Spanish and Hindi. Reid is a fishing columnist for the Victoria Times Colonist. He is also the author of books of poems “The Women Who Surround Me” (1991), “Open 24 Hours” (1997), “What It Means To Be Human” (2009), "The Spirit of the Thing and the Thing Itself" (2015); a novel “The Knife Behind the Gills” (1995) and several non-fiction books, e.g., "A History of the Salmon Arm Golf Course, 1928-1992 (1993) (with Todor Davies), “How to Catch Salmon” (1995), “Fishing for Dreams: Notes from the Water's Edge” (2005), “Vancouver Island Fishing Guide” (2008) and “Catch Fish Have Fun - Langara Island, BC” (2011). Two of his poetry collections, “Love And Other Things That Hurt” (1999) and “The Hunger” (2004), have been nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.

He lives in Victoria, British Columbia.