Born in Wales, Ontario, Keith Markell graduated B.A., with honours in history, from McGill in 1938. He took his theology degree from Presbyterian College in 1941, and was ordained the same year. He served in churches in Vancouver and Ottawa and began doctoral studies at University of Chicago. Markell joined the staff of the Presbyterian College in 1947 as lecturer in church history, and was promoted to a professorship in 1950. In 1960, when the College entered McGill's Faculty of Religious Studies, he was appointed Assistant Professor; at his retirement in 1980 he was an Associate Professor. Markell received his Ph.D. from Chicago in 1971, and wrote a number of works on Canadian Presbyterian history.

Frederick Henry Markey was born on June 8, 1870, in Bath, Somerset, England.

In 1887, he immigrated to Canada. He was a lawyer with Smith Skinner & Hyde, joined the King's Council in 1906, and was the governor of the Montreal General Hospital.

In 1907, he married Laura Howland Toller. He died on June 18, 1928, in Montreal, Quebec.

Daphne Marlatt (née Buckle) was born on July 11, 1942, in Melbourne, Australia.

She is a Canadian poet, novelist, editor, and playwright. After spending her childhood in Malaysia, her family moved to Canada in 1951. She studied at the University of British Columbia (B.A., 1964) and Indiana University (M.A., 1968). She taught creative writing and literature at Capilano College, Vancouver, and edited many literary journals and magazines. In 1983, she helped organize the first Women and Words conference in Vancouver, which united writers from both English- and French-speaking Canada. With her deepening feminism, she became one of the founding editors of Tessera, a Canadian journal of feminist theory and writing (1984). Marlatt has published more than twenty books that are hybrid forms of poetry, autobiography, prose, travelogue, essay, theory, historical fiction, journal, and manifesto, e.g., "Frames of a Story" (1968), "Rings" (1971), "Vancouver Poems" (1972), "Steveston" (1974), "Zócalo" (1977), "Touch to My Tongue" (1984), "Rivering: The Poetry of Daphne Marlatt" (2014), and "Intertidal, collection of poems" (2017). In 2006, she was made a Member of the Order of Canada. Her play “The Gull”, the first Canadian play staged in the ancient, ritualized tradition of Japanese Noh, won the prestigious 2008 Uchimura Naoya Prize. She is also a recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (2009) and George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award (2012).

Marlatt lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.