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Isaac Lea was an American conchologist, geologist, and publisher, who was born on March 4, 1792, in Wilmington, Delaware. After fighting in the War of 1812, he married Frances Ann Carey (1799–1873), daughter of Irish-American publisher Mathew Carey. Mathew Carey. When Carey retired in 1825, he left his publishing business in the hands of his son (Henry Charles) and Isaac Lea. In 1846, when Henry Charles Carey retired, the publishing house became Lea & Blanchard, and, when Lea himself retired and his sons took over the business, it became known as Lea Brothers.
In retirement, Isaac pursued his scientific interests in natural history, collecting objects and publishing scientific papers in the transactions of Philadelphia's scientific societies on the topic of freshwater and land mollusks. The National Museum at Washington owns his immense collection of freshwater mussels, as well as other collections. He died in 1886 in Philadelphia.
In 1829 Edgar Allan Poe wrote a poem dedicated to Lea called "To Isaac Lea".

David Skirving Leach was born in July 1841, in Toronto, Ontario. He was a lawyer based in Montreal, Quebec. In 1867, he married Frances Harriet Pillans (1850–1924). He died on November 15, 1921, in Quebec, Canada.

Louisa Gwilt Leach was born in 1850 in Quebec, Canada.

She was the third wife of William Turnbull Leach (1805-1886), Archdeacon, professor and vice-principal of McGill University, and the first rector of St. George’s Church. Her daughter Milda Emilie Leach Day (1871-1939) was one of the first women graduates of McGill University (1892).

She died on June 24, 1935, in Montreal, Quebec.

William Turnbull Leach was born on March 1, 1805, in Berwick-upon-Tweed, England.

He was a clergyman and educator. In 1827, he graduated from the University of Edinburgh (M.A.) and after studying theology he was licensed as a minister of the Church of Scotland. He moved to Canada in the early 1830s and accepted a call to be a minister of St. Andrew’s Church in Toronto in 1835. In 1842, he resigned from St. Andrew’s, turned to the Church of England, and in 1843, he became the first rector of St. George's Church in Montreal. In 1846, Leach established a connection with McGill College which lasted until his death. Over the course of 40 years, he was professor of classical literature and lecturer in mathematics and natural philosophy (1846–1853); fellow and vice-principal (1846–1886); lecturer in logic, rhetoric, and moral philosophy (1853–1872); dean of the Faculty of Arts (1853–1886); and Molson professor of English language and literature (1872–1883). Due to all these duties, he resigned from his position at St. George's Church in 1862.

In 1835, he married Janet “Jessie” Carnegie Skirving (1805–1848); in 1850, he remarried Eliza Margaret Easton (1809–1866), and in 1869, he remarried Louisa Gwilt (1849–1935). He died on October 13, 1886, in Montreal, Quebec.

Stephen Leacock, humourist and professor of economics at McGill, was born in England, but emigrated in 1876 to Ontario. After graduating B.A. from University of Toronto in 1891, he taught at his old school, Upper Canada College, until 1899. At the University of Chicago, he pursued doctoral studies in economics and political science, and received his Ph.D. in 1903. Leacock taught economics at McGill from 1901 until his retirement in 1936, serving as department chairman from 1908 onwards. Leacock's scholarly writings on economics, political science, sociology, history and literature total more than a hundred articles and two dozen books. Moreover, he was a talented and popular lecturer. His fame, however, is based on his humorous writings; of his more than thirty books, the most famous are Literary Lapses (1910), Nonsense Novels (1911), Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich (1914), and especially Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912).