Daniel Miner Gordon was born on January 30, 1845, in Pictou, Nova Scotia.

He was a Presbyterian minister, author, and educator. He attended Pictou Academy, the University of Glasgow (M.A., 1863, B.D., 1866, D.D., 1895), and Berlin University. He was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1866 and was called to St Andrew’s, the oldest Protestant church in Ottawa, in 1867. In 1879, he became part of a team sent to examine the land from Port Simpson through the Rockies to the prairies, to gather further information about the proposed route of the Canadian Pacific Railway. In 1880, he published “Mountain and Prairie: A Journey from Victoria to Winnipeg via Peace River Pass” based on his experiences. He returned to Winnipeg in the autumn of 1883 to serve as pastor of Knox Presbyterian Church. During the 1885 North West Rebellion, he was Chaplain of the 90th Battalion Winnipeg Rifles, earning the Imperial war medal for his service. Failing health prompted a move to St. Andrew’s Church, Halifax, in 1887. In 1894, he became the chair of systematic theology and apologetics at the Presbyterian College in Halifax, and in 1902, he became the 8th principal of Queen’s College in Kingston, Ontario. He was instrumental in bringing about Queen's separation from the Presbyterian church in order to receive the government and private funding needed to run a modern university.

In 1869, he married Eliza Simona MacLennan (1846–1910). He died on August 31, 1925, in Kingston, Ontario.

George William Hamilton Gordon was born on June 15, 1854, in Great Stanmore (now Stanmore), Middlesex, England.

He was educated at Eton College in England and from 1878 to 1882, he served as an assistant to a leading Victorian architect Alfred Waterhouse. In 1882, he formed a new partnership in London with Sir Andrew Thomas Taylor. When Taylor emigrated to Montreal, Quebec in 1884, Gordon remained in London to handle the British branch of the business and Taylor operated the Canadian branch from a new office in Montreal. Many significant Canadian commissions followed over the next twenty years, all of them credited to “Taylor & Gordon”, yet there is no evidence that Gordon ever resided in Canada. He most likely retired from the partnership in 1888 to practise alone under his own name from offices in Moorgate Chambers in London. In 1904, Gordon moved to South Africa and became Director of Public Works in the Orange River Colony.

In 1886, he was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (R.I.B.A.) and nominated as a Fellow in 1906.

He died of severe dysentery on December 31, 1906, in Bloemfontein, South Africa, and is buried in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England.