Gillespie, Moffatt & Company was the largest wholesale dry goods importing and exporting house in Montreal. It was founded in 1816 by Robert Gillespie, George Moffatt, and several other partners, including Samuel Gerrard, Jasper Tough, and John Jamieson. George Moffatt was the principal associate overseeing the business in Montreal. By the early 1820s, Robert Gillespie managed the business in London. The firm also acted as an agent for the London-based Phoenix Assurance Company. By 1842 partners of Gillespie, Moffatt, and Company in Quebec, Toronto, and London provided important links with the major commercial centres of Canada, Britain, and the West Indies. Robert Gillespie retired from the business in 1856 and George Moffatt in 1865. They were replaced as directors by Alexander T. Pattinson, who ran the Montreal business, and James B. Greenshields, who managed the London business. The company changed its name in 1886.

Charles Ripley Gillett was born on November 29, 1855, in New York, New York.

He was a clergyman, librarian, and author. He was educated at the University of New York (B.A., 1874, B.Sc., 1876, M.A., 1877, D.D., 1898) and at the University of Berlin (1881-1883). In 1883, he began his post of Librarian at the Union Theological Seminary, New York that lasted until 1908, becoming Librarian Emeritus from 1929 to 1948. As a librarian, Gillett was involved with the acquisition of funds for the McAlpin Collection, the Gillett Collection of British history and theology, he oversaw the transfer of the library’s 60,000 volumes to Union’s newly-expanded campus on Park Avenue and guided the development of the library’s collection of books and pamphlets as Union transitioned to an interdenominational seminary at the turn of the 20th century. He also served as Secretary of the Faculty (1898-1929), Registrar (1898-1900, 1908-1924), Dean of Students (1913-1929), and Alumni Secretary (1913-1948). Gillett was ordained with the New York Presbytery in 1886. From 1891 to 1897 he worked as an editor at the Magazine of Christian Literature. In 1899, he received an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters (L.H.D.) from Beloit College, Wisconsin. From 1900 to 1910 he was an Assistant Curator at the Department of Antiquities at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He wrote the book "Burned Books: Neglected Chapters in British History and Literature" (2 vols, 1932).

In 1881, he married Kate VanKirk (1857–1940). He died on September 3, 1948, in Norfolk, Connecticut.

Margaret Gillett was born on February 1, 1930, in Wingham, Australia, and died on October 19, 2019, in Montreal. She earned her bachelor’s degree and a diploma of education from the University of Sydney in 1950, completed a master’s degree at Russell Sage College in 1958, and earned her Ph.D. in education at Columbia University in 1962. Gillett was hired as an associate professor of education at McGill University in 1964, after working at Haile Selassie I University in Ethiopia as a registrar for two years. She became a full professor in 1967 and worked at McGill until her retirement in 1994. Gillett is a founding editor of the McGill Journal of Education. She introduced women’s studies to McGill, and she wrote two major works on education titled A History of Education (1966) and Foundation Studies in Education (1973). Her work was often oriented towards the history and philosophy of education. She also wrote a novel on the life of the poet Francis Thompson in 1968, titled The Laurel and the Poppy. One of Gillett’s major interests was the status of women and women's history. She organized the McGill Committee for Teaching and Research on Women and has served as a member of the Senate Committee on Women and as a coordinator of the Women's Studies Minor. She also represented Canada on the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. In 1981, Dr. Gillett published We Walked Very Warily: A History of Women at McGill, and in 1986, Dear Grace, a Romance of History. In 1988, she became the first director of the McGill Centre for Research and Teaching on Women. Dr. Gillett was awarded with the Governor General’s Persons Award in 1996 and the Royal Society of Canada’s Award in Gender Studies in 2004. The Margaret Gillett Award for Research on Women has been granted by McGill University in her honour since 1994.

Rev. Archibald Charles Gillies was born on February 17, 1834, in Quebec, Canada.

He was a Presbyterian minister and author. He served in several parishes in Quebec, Ontario, and Nova Scotia. In 1882, he became a minister of the Presbyterian Church in Dunedin, New Zealand. He is the author of "Daily Meditations. A Collection of Poems" (1860) and "Popery Dissected Its Absurd, Inhuman, Unscriptural, Idolatrous and Antichristian Assumptions, Principles and Practices Exposed from Its Own Standard Works; Being a Series of Unanswered Letters Addressed to the R.C. Bishop of Arichat, N.S. [i.e., C.F. MacKinnon]" (1874).

He died on October 1, 1887, in Dunedin City, Otago, New Zealand.