William Henry Hicks was baptized on February 12, 1817, in Portsmouth, England.

He was an educator. He studied at the London training school of the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church, graduating about 1839. He then taught at Bowyer School, Clapham, London, before joining the evangelical Colonial Church and School Society, formed in 1851 to maintain Anglican parochial schools in British North America. In 1853, he arrived in Montreal, Quebec, and founded a normal school at St. George’s Church. The school soon relocated to a building on Rue Bonaventure. He disapproved of the use of monitors and he advocated mixed schools. In 1856, he helped organize the Lower Canada Teachers’ Association. The success of Hicks’s school earned him an invitation to make it the nucleus of the recently established McGill Normal School. He accepted, and the new school opened its doors on March 3, 1857. The principal of McGill College, John William Dawson became principal of the normal school, and Hicks was given the chair of English literature. Hicks lectured on education throughout the province, was inspector of model schools under the Colonial Church and School Society, and contributed to the Journal of Education for Lower Canada (Montreal) from 1857 to 1879. In 1864, he was elected a vice-president of the Provincial Association of Protestant Teachers. In 1870, he became the principal of McGill Normal School.

In 1843, he married Isabella Barrow (1823- ). He died on August 7, 1899, in Montreal, Quebec.

Lady Hickson (Catherine Dow Hickson) was born approximately 1844. On June 17, 1869, in Montreal, she married Sir Joseph Hickson (1830-1897), a railway official and JP. She died at 3428 Ontario Street, Montreal, on July 11, 1938, aged 94, and was buried in Mount Royal Cemetery.

Philosopher/mountaineer J.W.A. Hickson, son of a wealthy Montreal family, and the product of a private-school education, graduated from McGill University with an arts degree and a gold medal in philosophy in 1893. He headed to Germany to study with Neo-Kantian Alois Riehl for a Phd. in philosophy and metaphysics, and in 1901 was hired by his alma mater, McGill. An eccentric and contentious member of the faculty, he had many arguments with colleagues, particularly with experimental psychologist William Dunlop Tait. This may be one reason the department of psychology split from the department of philosophy. Hickson taught metaphysics and logic and wrote many articles on philosophy, but he retired early, in 1924. He kept in touch with former McGill colleagues, however, and years later, in 1946, helped assemble a collection of books from the personal library of philosopher David Hume after Hume’s own copy of the Olivetus edition of Cicero’s works was found in a cupboard at the faculty club. Retirement gave Hickson more time to pursue his passion of mountaineering which he had done for years despite the handicap of a game leg, the result of a horse-back riding accident. He climbed for 5 seasons in Europe with guide Edward Feuz Jr., and then for another 17 seasons in the Rockies and Selkirks in B.C.; Feuz estimated that they climbed between 200 and 300 mountains together, making 30 first ascents. Hickson was president of the Alpine Club of Canada in 1924-26 and editor of the Canadian Alpine Journal for four years. His collection of mountaineering photographs and slides are in the McGill Archives. His generosity to McGill includes endowments for fellowships in physics and theoretical philosophy. His philanthropy also extended to a $1.9 million bequest to the former Fraser-Hickson Library in Montreal.