Mark Abley is a Canadian poet, journalist, editor, and author of literary non-fiction. He was born on May 13, 1955, in Warwickshire, England, and grew up in Ontario, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. He studied literature at the University of Saskatchewan and, after winning a Rhodes Scholarship, at St. John’s College, Oxford. As a young man, Abley travelled to over twenty countries in Europe and Asia. Aspiring to be a poet, he began work as a freelance writer, becoming a contributing editor of Maclean's, Saturday Night, the Times Literary Supplement, CBC Radio's Ideas, and the Canadian Forum. His first book was a work of literary travel, “Beyond Forget: Rediscovering the Prairies” (1986). Between 1987 and 2003, he worked at the Montreal Gazette as a feature writer, book-review editor, and literary columnist. In 1996, he won a National Newspaper Award for critical writing. In 2003, he returned to freelance writing and continued to write the "Watchwords" columns on language issues for the Gazette. In 2009, Abley joined McGill-Queen's University Press as a part-time acquisition editor. In 2010-2011, he served as the first writer-in-residence for the city of Pointe-Claire, Quebec. He lectured at Oxford University, Cambridge University, Ohio State University, McGill University, Queen's University, and the University of Toronto. He has written four books of poetry, two children's books, and several non-fiction books, e.g., “Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages” (2003), "The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches From the Future of English" (2008), and "The Tongues of Earth: New and Selected Poems" (2013). The memoir of his father, "The Organist: Fugues, Fatherhood, and a Fragile Mind" (2019) was named by BBC Music as one of the top ten classical music books of the year. Abley is married to Annie and is the father of two adult children. He lives in the suburbs of Montreal.

Alan Abouchar was a Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto.

The family of Mr. and Mrs. S. Abracen had a summer residence on Lake Patrick, Quebec in 1978.

Ann Abraham was the aunt of Robert Abraham, the owner and brief editor of the Montreal Gazette in the mid-19th century.

John Abraham was the second child named John of Thomas and Orpah Abraham, the first having died in infancy the year preceding John A.’s birth in Carlisle, Cumberland. He married Maria Hayes Tyerman. He was the younger brother of one-time Montreal Gazette newspaper owner and editor, Robert Abraham. John died in Grassendale, Lancashire, at the age of 66.

Margaret was born on December 20, 1816, in Carlisle, England, to Thomas Abraham and Orpa Clarke. She was the sister of John Abraham (1813-1881) and one-time Montreal Gazette newspaper owner and editor Robert Abraham (1804-1854).

Mary Abraham was born to Orpha Clarke and Thomas Abraham in Carlisle, Cumberland, England. In 1840 she married Henry Murray and they had three children. Her older brother Robert Abraham was the first editor of the Montreal Transcript in 1834 and briefly the owner and editor of the Montreal Gazette in the mid-19th century. She died in San Francisco, California, USA.

Orpha Clarke Abraham was the wife of Thomas Abraham. Their son Robert was the first editor of the Montreal Transcript in 1834, and the briefly the owner and editor of the Montreal Gazette.

Robert Abraham was owner and editor of the Montreal Gazette briefly in the mid-19th century. The eldest child of Thomas Abraham and Orpah Clarke, he was born in Penrith in Cumberland, England. At age 26, he took passage from Liverpool to New York and ended up in Montreal in 1834 as the first editor of the Montreal Transcript. Within the decade he was able to purchase the Montreal Gazette from the firm of Armour & Ramsay, and began publishing it daily (till then it had only appeared daily during the summer) on St. Paul Street, one door west of Custom House Square.
His conservative reputation as a journalist came to the attention of the Montreal municipal council when they appointed patriote Toussaint Peltier as Legal counsel to the city in 1844. The council named Abraham to be Peltier’s assistant as a counterbalancing influence, but neglected to inform Peltier who, when he found out, resigned rather than work with someone he considered a militant. Yet Abraham had written an 81-page treatise praising the French form of legal freehold (franc aleu).
Abraham’s interests were broad, and in 1847 the Gazette published an article describing his discovery of fossil trackways (known as “Protichnites”) of ancient freshwater tortoises in a sandstone quarry in Beauharnois near the St. Lawrence River. The discovery attracted the attention of prominent geologist W.E. Logan who credited Abraham for the find in his writings on the topic. Abraham later accompanied Logan on a visit to the site.
In 1848, he sold the Gazette to James Moir Ferres and subsequently became a member of the Bar. He was involved in a controversy over the Free Banking Act in 1850, denouncing it in print along with other conservatives. The following year he married Sarah Seed and lived at 126 St. Antoine Street, but they had no children before he died in 1854. The Canadian Press Association in their 1858 History of Canadian Journalism cites him as one of the “well-known figures in Canadian journalism” at that time.