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Jean Purvis emigrated from Scotland to Montreal in the 1930s. Prior to coming to Montreal, Jean Purvis was employed temporarily as a cashier at Fifty Shilling Tailors in Glasgow in 1929. She was appointed a deputy registrar for polling division for the Montreal electoral district of St. Lawrence - St. George in 1940.

C. B. Purves was born in Scotland, and received his B.Sc. (1923) and Ph.D. (1929) from St. Andrew's University. As a Commonwealth Fund Fellow, he conducted postdoctoral research in Washington on his special area of interest, sugar metabolism. After a period as a research fellow at Aberdeen University he received an appointment at the U.S. National Institute of Health in 1931. From 1936 until 1943, Purves was Associate Professor of organic chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and it was there that his research interest shifted to the chemistry of cellulose and wood. In 1943 he was appointed E.B. Eddy Professor of Industrial and Cellulose Chemistry at McGill and chief of the Wood Chemistry Division of the Pulp and Paper Research Institute, where he made fundamental advances in the isolation of lignin. From 1947 until 1949, Purves was Chairman of the Physical Sciences Group of the Faculty of Arts and Science, and from 1961 until his sudden death, he served as Chairman of the Chemistry Department.

Alfred Wellington Purdy was born on December 30, 1918, in Wooler, Ontario.

He was a Canadian poet, one of the finest of his generation. He attended Albert College in Belleville, Ontario, and Trenton Collegiate Institute in Trenton, Ontario, but dropped out of school at 17 and led a nomadic life, working at a variety of jobs and travelling extensively. He worked in a factory, served in the Royal Canadian Air Force (1940-1945), was a store clerk, a visiting professor at Simon Fraser University, and a creative writing teacher at the Banff School of Fine Arts (1971-1973). His works include thirty-nine books of poetry; a novel; two volumes of memoirs and four books of correspondence, in addition to his posthumous works. The central focus of his poetry was “the country north of Belleville”, Ontario, which provided a title for one of his best-known poems. While his first collection of verses appeared in 1944, Purdy did not discover his distinctive poetic voice until the 1960s. He received the Order of Canada in 1982, the Order of Ontario in 1987, and the Governor General's Award, in 1965 for his collection “The Cariboo Horses”, and again in 1986, for “The Collected Poems of Al Purdy.” His other volumes of verse include “North of Summer” (1968), “In Search of Owen Roblin” (1974), and “The Stone Bird” (1981). Most of his best work is collected in “Being Alive: Poems 1958–78” (1978). He also wrote radio and television plays. In 2008, a large bronze statue of Purdy was unveiled in Queen's Park in downtown Toronto.

He died on April 21, 2000, in North Saanich, British Columbia.

William Edwin Pugsley was born on September 27, 1850, in Sussex, Kings, New Brunswick.

He was a lawyer, politician, premier, and lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick. He was educated at the University of New Brunswick (B.A., 1868; B.C.L., 1879; honorary D.C.L, 1884 and L.L.D, 1918). In 1872, he was admitted to the bar and entered a partnership with his brother Gilbert R. Pugsley and John Herbert Crawford. Pugsley was created a Queen's Counsel in 1891. He was a tough politician who employed patronage blatantly to win support for the Liberal cause. Pugsley served as Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick, Solicitor-General, and Attorney-General in various Liberal governments before becoming the 11th premier of New Brunswick in 1907. He resigned after a few months to enter the federal Cabinet as minister of public works. Following a term as the 15th Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick (1917-1923), he was appointed commissioner of the settlement of war claims in Ottawa, a position he held until his death.

In 1876, he married Fanny Jane Parks (1858–1914), and in 1915, he married Gertrude MacDonald (1874–1963). He died on March 3, 1925, in Toronto, Ontario, and is buried in Saint John, New Brunswick.