Showing 163 results

John Chapman, a geographer by training with a long academic career, helped convert UNBC from a dream to a well-respected university with the highest academic standards. As Chair of the initial Appointments and Standards Committee, he was central to the organization of the new University while ensuring that the best people were recruited to administrative and teaching posts.

George Walter Baldwin was raised in Lavoy, Alberta. He graduated from Law at the University of British Columbia in 1951. He then joined the US Air Force and served in the Judge Advocates department during the Korean War. In 1953, he returned to Canada. He came to Prince George in March 1954 to begin work as an articled student with Wilson, King and Fretwell, and was called to the Bar September 1954. He married Daphne Syson on 2 October 1954. When Baldwin became a partner in 1959, his firm became Wilson, King, Fretwell and Baldwin. Baldwin was a very active member of the Prince George community from the time he arrived until his untimely death 30 September 1987. He served as President of the Kiwanis Club, the Red Cross Society, the John Howard Society, the Cariboo Bar Association, and the Prince George Chamber of Commerce. He was also involved with the Boy Scouts, St. Michael and All Angels Anglican Church and the No Name Group, which contributed to the eventual establishment of the University of Northern British Columbia. In the 1970s Baldwin helped develop the CJCI radio station, and then served as Director for Central Interior Cablevision. He and his wife, Daphne, had four children.

Daphne Syson met George Baldwin when both were students at UBC. They married 2 October 1954, and moved to Prince George in October of that same year. Soon after her arrival, Daphne became Secretary of the Alaska Music Trail Concert Association, later renamed the Prince George Concert Association. At the same time, she also served as Secretary for the Prince George Historical Society and the Studio Society. She remained on the executive of the Alaska Music Trail group for ten years, serving as President for two. She was Charter Member of the Canadian Federation of University Women, and later served as President. When the oldest of Daphne's four children wanted to join the Brownies, she became Brown Owl for four years, then served three years as a District Commissioner. After serving as both member and Chairman of the Public Library Board, Daphne served as a member of the Mayor's Task Force to study the direction of libraries in Prince George. She was later appointed Director of the BC Library Development Commission. She served as Director of the Community Interest Account of Radio Station CJCI, was member and chairman of the Prince George Heritage Commission, and was later appointed Director of the BC Heritage Trust. She was a Director of the Prince George Community Foundation. In 2001, she was appointed Director of the UNBC foundation by the Provincial Government. Throughout her time in Prince George, she was extensively involved with St. Michael and All Angels Anglican Church.

John Backhouse was born in Liverpool, England and acquired his higher education in England at the Newcastle School of Librarianship, and in the United States, at the University of Oklahoma. Backhouse worked extensively as a professional librarian, and gained experience in both public and academic libraries. In 1980, Backhouse began his political career in Prince George as a member of City Council, where he served as an alderman for six years. During this time, Backhouse also served as Chairman of the Senior Citizens' Building Committee and was instrumental in the development of the current Senior Citizens' Activity Centre at Fourth Avenue and Brunswick Street. John Backhouse was elected Mayor of Prince George in 1986 and served in this capacity until 1996. During this time, the City of Prince George underwent many important changes including, the establishment of the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC), the creation of the new Parkwood Place shopping complex, the Civic Centre and the Multiplex – new initiatives in which Backhouse was heavily involved. John Backhouse also served as a Director on the Board of B.C. Transit, and was a member of the B.C. Forest Sector Strategy Committee, the Minister's Advisory Council on Housing, and the UNBC Facilities Committee. In 1992, John Backhouse was elected vice-president of the Yellowhead Highway Association for the B.C. Caucus, afterwhich he served as the Northern Commissioner of British Columbia. He and his wife Vicky are now retired and reside in Prince George.

Parker Bonney was born in 1889 in New Brunswick. In 1911, he graduated from the University of Washington with a forestry degree. He moved to Canada in 1913 and worked as a student in the Nass region. Parker Bonney worked for the Prince George Forestry Division starting from 1913. He was one of the first people to completely survey the Nass River Watershed and the Headwaters of the Skeena. He became the district forester for Prince Rupert in 1926, residing in Ocean Falls, B.C. until 1945. Later on in his life, Parker Bonney worked as a forestry engineer with Alcan and with Columbia Cellulose. Both Bonney Lake and Bonney Creek are named in his honour due to his contributions to the Northern BC forestry industry. Parker Bonney resided in North Vancouver until 1977 when he passed away.

Mabel (nee Scholander) Rutherford participated in the Red Rock Community History Project in 2001. The Red Rock Community History Project was conducted by a team of UNBC students and coordinated by the Northern BC Archives at the University of Northern British Columbia. In their efforts to preserve a community's "collective memory" twelve oral history interviews were conducted with long-time Red Rock area residents to record their memories of life during the mid 20th century. Along with these interview, over 200 photographic images were also collected from them, many of which are found on the project website: http://nbca.library.unbc.ca/pages/archives/LivingLandscapes/ . Mrs. Rutherford’s mother Stephanie (Marcoll) Scholander is a sister to John Marcoll and Kate (Marcoll) Anderson, two individuals also interviewed as part of the Red Rock Community History Project. Mrs. Rutherford is a well-known artist who now lives in the southern interior of British Columbia. Her interview focuses on memories of plowing for spending money, farm life, World War II and her memories of joining the RCAF in the 1950s.

Susan Stevenson is an independent wildlife biologist and an adjunct faculty member at UNBC. She has been studying the effects of forestry practices on habitat for wildlife for nearly 25 years, mostly in the Interior Wetbelt. She is especially interested in wildlife that depend on habitat attributes found in old forests, and how they can be maintained in managed stands. Her interest in the Mountain Caribou and its habitat has drawn her into studies of the ecology of arboreal lichens. She is also interested in wildlife trees, coarse woody debris, and how they are affected by various harvesting practices. As well as conducting research, Susan is active in teaching and extension. She is a Wildlife/Danger Tree Assessor's Course instructor and a frequent guest lecturer at UNBC and the College of New Caledonia. She has prepared a number of extension notes and other publications for forestry and habitat managers and field staff.

Kwah is the usual English form of the name of the famous Carrier leader Kw'eh. He was born around 1755 and died in 1840. Chief Kw'eh was the chief of what is now the Nak'azdli band in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In his time, few people lived at Nak'azdli (Fort Saint James), which attracted people due to the location of the North West Company (later Hudson's Bay Company) fort there, which was not established until 1806. The main village was located at Tsaooche "Sowchea".

Chief Kw'eh held the very important noble name Ts'oh Dai in the Lhts'umusyoo clan. It was Chief Kw'eh who received the explorer Simon Fraser in 1806 when Carrier people brought his floundering canoes in to Tsaooche village in Sowchea Bay. In gratitude, Simon Fraser presented Kw'eh with red cloth. The current Ts'oh Dai, Kw'eh's descendant Peter Erickson, returned red cloth to Canada in 1997.

Chief Kw'eh is also known for the incident in which, in 1828, he spared the life of his prisoner, the fur trader James Douglas, who later became the first governor of the united Colony of British Columbia. He was also known for his acquisition of an iron dagger prior to the arrival of the first Europeans in the area, presumably one traded in from the coast. He is the ancestor of a large percentage of the Carrier people in the Stuart Lake area.

Rose Prince was a Dakelh woman who has inspired an ongoing Catholic pilgrimage. Prince was born in Fort St. James in 1915, the third of Jean-Marie and Agathe Prince's nine children. Jean-Marie was descended from the great chief Kwah, while Agathe had been raised in Williams Lake by the Sisters of the Child Jesus. When the Lejac Residential School was built in 1922, Prince was sent there, along with the other children from her school. When Prince was 16, still attending school at Lejac, her mother and two youngest sisters died in an influenza outbreak. Devastated, she opted not to return home for the summers, staying on at the school instead. After graduation, she remained at the school, completing chores such as mending, cleaning, embroidering and sewing. Prince contracted tuberculosis, and was confined to bed by the age of 34. She died 19 August 1949, and was buried on her 34th birthday. Two years later, in 1951, several graves west of the Lejac Residential School were relocated to a larger nearby cemetery. During the transfer, Prince's casket broke open, and workers were apparently astonished to find Prince's body and clothing in pristine condition, despite the years that had passed since her death. Other bodies were examined, but even those who had died after Prince showed signs of decay. In 1990, Father Jules Goulet called for a pilgrimage to Lejac. Only 20 people gathered that first year, but by 2004, 1200 people were travelling to Lejac to honour the ordinary yet deeply spiritual life of Rose Prince.

John Owen Wilson, Q.C. was born in Nelson 7 November 1898. He moved to Prince George with his family in 1914. He worked as an office boy at his father (P.E. Wilson)'s law firm until 1915, when he enlisted. He served at the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Vimy Ridge, and the Battle of Passchendaele. After working on riverboats and as a surveyor, Wilson attended the University of British Columbia. He was called to the BC Bar and returned to Prince George to practise with his father in 1922. He married Ruth Pine in December of that same year. Wilson served as Secretary of the Board of Trade of Prince George and of the Agricultural Association in the following years. He also became involved with the Liberal Party of BC, serving as campaign manager for first Harry Perry and then Gray Turgeon. Wilson was appointed to the County Court of Cariboo 13 January 1939, and subsequently moved with his wife and three children to Ashcroft. As Cariboo County Judge, Wilson held court in Quesnel, Wells, Barkerville, Williams Lake, and Lillooet. He was appointed to the BC Supreme Court in 1944,and to the BC Court of Appeal in 1962. In 1963 he became Chief Justice of the BC Supreme Court. He retired from the Bench and returned to the practice of law ten years later. He was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1974. He passed away in 1985, and was honoured posthumously with the Law Society Award 19 November 1992. Material donated to the Archives by R.H. Guile who was J.O. Wilson's nephew ; he worked at Russell & DuMoulin with Wilson for ten years

Created by Stuart C. Ross, Architect, PO Box 1804, 1896 Third Ave., Prince George, BC

Trelle Morrow, B.A., B. Arch. is a Retired Member of the Architectural Institute of B.C. Mr. Morrow was a graduate of the UBC School of Architecture and established a practice in Prince George in 1956 and worked on many local and northern projects until he retired in 1997.

Reverend R.W. Large (M.D.) was a Methodist minister and doctor on the Northwest Coast of British Columbia from 1898 to 1920. He worked at the Methodist hospital and mission in Bella Bella until 1906. He then went on to work at Rivers Inlet Hospital in Ocean Falls until he moved to Port Simpson in 1910, where he worked until his death. Reverend Large was the only known observer to document the community of Bella Bella from 1898 to 1906. Reverend Large's son R.G. Large followed in his father's footsteps and was a doctor at Port Simpson, Port Essington and later Prince Rupert.

Playwright born in Anatone, Washington, 1910, died near Williams Lake, British Columbia , 1984 (where she had lived since 1953). Her father was a teacher in small community schools in southern Alberta. In 1926, the family moved to Montana and, in highschool, she acted in plays.

Ringwood graduated from the University of Alberta with an Honours English degree, working part time as a secretary for the Department of Extension's director of drama, Elizabeth Sterling Haynes , and then working at the Banff Centre for the Arts as registrar. It was in Banff that she wrote her first play, The Dragons of Kent in 1935. In 1938, while studying playwriting in North Carolina, Ringwood created the spooky one-act masterpiece Still Stands the House (premiered in North Carolina), one of the most frequently performed plays in the history of Canadian theatre. In 1939 the play won at the Dominion Drama Festival. She returned to Alberta in 1939 and was director of dramatics at the University of Alberta. In that same year she married John Brian Ringwood and they subsequently had two children.

Ringwood also wrote frequently for radio. She and Elsie Park Gowan were approached by CKUA to write a series of history plays, in order to reach an isolated Alberta audience with little opportunity for further education. The series, entitled "New Lamps for Old", featured the "great names" in history -- Socrates, Beethoven, Cromwell, Florence Nightingale, but focused more on their social and personal lives than on their heroic achievements.

While in Edmonton during the war, she received a grant from Robert Gard of the Alberta Folklore and Local History Project to write Alberta folk plays: Jack the Joker (Banff 1944), about the life of the colourful Calgary newspaper editor, Bob Edwards; The Rainmaker (Banff 1945), set in Medicine Hat during the drought of 1921; and Stampede (University of Alberta 1946), about the Black cowboy and rancher, "Nigger John". Her other plays include the satiric comedy about miserliness, Widger's Way (University of Alberta 1952); children's plays The Sleeping Beauty (Cariboo Indian School, Williams Lake, British Columbia, 1965), and The Golden Goose (Cariboo Indian School 1973); and a trilogy entitled Drum Song about the tragic lives of Native women based on Euripides' Greek tragedies (University of Victoria 1982). Her popular comedy, Garage Sale premiered at the New Play Centre - now Playwrights Theatre Centre in 1981).

Like Gowan, Ringwood also wrote historical pageants to celebrate community anniversaries: an Edmonton pageant on Methodist missionary John McDougall and chief Maskapetoon to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Methodist Church in 1940; Look Behind You Neighbour, with music by Chet Lambertson, for the 50th anniversary of Edson, Alberta in 1961; and The Road Runs North, commissioned for the Williams Lake centennial in 1967.

In 1941 she received the Governor General's Medal for Outstanding Service in the development of Canadian drama, and in 1982 published the first volume of her plays, becoming the first Canadian playwright to become anthologized. The theatre in Williams Lake is named in her honour, and an award for drama, given by the Alberta Writers Guild, is named for her.

Frank Samuel Perry was a former newspaperman, Captain in the army, a lawyer, a Provincial Court judge, County Court judge and justice of the British Columbia Supreme Court.

Frank Perry, the son of Florence (Smith) Perry and H.G.T. Perry (Liberal MLA, Speaker of BC Legislature, Mayor of P.G., etc.) and brother to Sidney Perry, was born in Vancouver on November 22nd, 1917. Frank married Janet Horton (legal secretary) on May 29th, 1947. They had three daughters: Elaine Perry, Barbara (Perry) Desmarais and Leslie Perry. – Frank, in his mid to late teens was the editor of his father’s newspaper, The Prince George Citizen. At the outbreak of WWII, Frank joined the army and became a Captain. When he returned he pursued a career in law. He graduated from UBC and then opened up a law practice in Prince George. He battled with John Diefenbaker in court, a case which Frank lost, but helped to raise Diefenbaker’s profile.

In the 1950’s Frank, a City Barrister gave advice to Prince George’s mayor, Gordon Bryant. In 1956 Frank (with the Liberal Party) ran in the 25th British Columbia election. He lost to Ray Williston. In 1969, Frank was named Queen Counsel and a year later he was appointed a Provincial Court judge. In 1975, Frank was promoted to County Court judge in the Cariboo. In 1991, he became a B.C. Supreme Court judge. In 1992 Frank retired. Frank died in Prince George of heart failure on May 2, 2002.

Erika Lambert was a grade one teacher at the Ron Brent School in Prince George

"Celebrities of the Army" was collected and edited by Naval Commander Charles Napier Robinson, and published by G. Newnes in 1902. It consists of a serial collection of lavish coloured portraits and short biographies of senior offices and major heroes of the South African Boer War.

Chander Suri was the Regional District Planner for Fraser Fort George Regional District

Sydney E. Junkins, born in Union, New Hampshire in 1867 and attended Dartmouth College where he received his AB degree in 1887, his AM in 1890, and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Engineering in 1927. He taught school in Newport, NH and Quincy, MA for a few years after graduation, but was also active in engineering projects with J.F. Springfield, between 1884 and 1886. Between 1898 and 1914, he joined the firm of Westinghouse, Church, Kerr and Co. in New York where he eventually rose to the positions of Vice President and Director. In 1916 he married Mary Lyon and the following year he branched out on his own and established the firm of Sydney E. Junkins Co., Ltd., in Winnipeg, Manitoba. His subsequent large scale engineering projects and professional accomplishments included: lining the 5-mile Connaught Tunnel through Mt. MacDonald at Glacier, British Columbia, with concrete (1921); being appointed as one of five commissioners in charge of 12th Street Bridge in Kansas City, Kansas as well as the primary Engineer in its design and construction (1922); and he completed the Canadian Pacific Railway's 1100 foot deep- sea pier at Vancouver, BC (1926). Also in 1926 he started with Hanover Engineering and Development Co., New York. In 1927, the year of the Peace River Expedition, Junkins was in British Columbia compiling a number of reports for Canadian Pacific Railway on grade separation. In 1932, Sydney E. Junkins went into semi-retirement and moved to Hanover, New Hampshire. He passed away on October 3, 1944. (excerpt from Darmouth College at http://ead.dartmouth.edu/html/ms845.html)

This collection relates to an official excursion along the Parsnip and Peace Rivers by a party of 13 men, including the Hon. Dr. James Horace King, Minister of Soldiers’ Civil Re-establishment and Minister of Health (1926-28) and Harry George Perry, former mayor of Prince George and Provincial MLA. The excursion started at Vancouver, B.C., then proceeded by train to Ashcroft, and by motor car to Summit Lake (just north of Prince George). At Summit Lake, they loaded supplies and embarked on their boat trip on 21 August 1927. The party proceeded along the Parsnip River to Finlay Forks, and then down the Peace River to Hudson Hope and just past Fort St. John. The trip then continued by motor car to the Peace River, and then by train to Edmonton.

Noreen is the daughter of Garvin and Bea Dezell. Garvin was a former mayor of Prince George. In 1992, Noreen received the Governor General Award for her community volunteer activities.

Charles Jago (born 1943) is an academic and university administrator.

He was born and raised in St. Catharines, Ontario. He received his BA in Honors English and History from the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario in 1965 and his PhD in History from Cambridge University in 1969. His academic field is early-modern Spanish history.

He received his first academic position at Georgian College of Applied Arts and Technology in Barrie, Ontario in 1969.The next year he moved to the Department of History at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario as Assistant Professor where he remained until 1987. In 1989 he was appointed Principal of Huron University College where he served for eight years before moving to the University of Northern British Columbia to succeed Geoffrey Weller as President.

Jago retired as President of the University of Northern British Columbia at the end of academic year 2005-2006. On the resignation of his successor, Don Cozzetto, in June 2008 he was appointed Interim President of UNBC, serving in this position until a new President, George Iwama, took over in July 2009.

Gordon Noel Humphreys (1883–1966) was a British born surveyor, pilot, botanist, explorer and doctor. Originally trained as a surveyor, Humphreys worked in both Mexico and Uganda. During World War I he served as a pilot with the Royal Flying Corps, was shot down and spent his internment training himself in botany.

After the war it was his survey work and exploration of the Ruwenzori Range in Uganda that brought him to the attention of Edward Shackleton. Humphreys was chosen as the leader and head surveyor of the "Oxford University Ellesmere Land Expedition" (OUELE) by Shackleton, who was the organiser of the expedition. Consisting of Shackleton, photographer and biologist A. W. Moore (sometimes listed as Morris), H. W. Stallworthy of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, geologist R. Bentham and ornithologist David Haig-Thomas, along with their Greenland Inuit guides, Inutuk and Nukapinguaq, they set up camp at Etah, Greenland in 1934. The expedition was sponsored by the Oxford University Exploration Club, the Royal Geographical Society and the Government of Canada.

From the camp the camp Inutuk, Nukapinguaq, Stallworthy and Moore proceeded to Lake Hazen on Ellesmere Island, Canada where they set up camp. From there Moore and Nukapinguaq continued up the Gilman Glacier and then made the first known ascent of Mount Oxford. Naming the mountain after the University of Oxford, Moore estimated the height to be 9,000 ft (2,700 m), it rises to about 7,250 ft (2,210 m).

From the summit they could see a mountain range that the "great imperialist" (as Humphreys was called by Shackleton in 1937) named the British Empire Range. Again Moore was to overestimate the height of the range at 10,000 ft (3,000 m), in fact the highest point, Barbeau Peak, is 8,583 ft (2,616 m).

By the end of May 1935 the group had returned to Etah and to England in late September the same year.

Humphreys retired to Devon and died there in 1966.

Marcus Smith was born in Ford, Northumberland UK on 16 July 1815. After a local education, he started work in railway construction in 1844. He worked his way up to become a railway engineer and was responsible for building 230 miles of railway. He also worked on railway construction in France and the United States before coming to Canada in 1850. Between 1850 and 1860 he was employed in survey and construction work on the Great Western Railway, Hamilton and Toronto Railway and the Niagara and Detroit River Railway. He was engaged in railway work in South Africa, 1860-1864. Returning to Canada, he was resident engineer for the Restigouche Division of the Intercolonial Railway from 1868 to 1872 under the Chief Engineer, Sanford Fleming.

When Fleming became Chief Engineer of the Pacific Railway in 1872, Smith was put in charge of route surveys from the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean. Smith was also acting engineer-in-chief between 1876 and 1878 during Fleming's absence. When the Canadian Pacific Railway was formed in 1881, Smith joined the CPR engineering staff, doing location work and inspecting contractors' work. Smith left the CPR in 1886 and became a consulting engineer and inspector for the federal government on projects such as railroads in the Maritimes. He retired from government work in 1893. Marcus Smith then did preliminary estimates for the Montreal, Ottawa and Georgian Bay Canal, Trans-Canada Railway and Hudson's Bay & Pacific Railway up to 1898. He died on 14 August 1904 in Ottawa.

Marcus Smith's most notable project was surveying a western route for the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1870s. His proposed route went through Prince George to Butte Inlet on the coast. His son Arthur Smith was Deputy Attorney General of BC before heading the Land Registry Office until his retirement in the 1930s. His daughter Anne Clarice worked as a social worker and was Secretary to the Canadian Council on Child and Family Welfare for a time.

H.G.T. (Harry) Henry George Thomas Perry is considered a founding father of Prince George. –Born March 18th, 1889 in Whitwick, Leicestershire, England, he was educated at Coalville Belvoir Road Wesleyan School and at Loughborough Grammar School. Perry was married to the former Florence Annie Smith of Leicestershire, England. They had two sons, Frank (later Judge Perry of Prince George) and Sidney (pharmacist). - H.G.T. Perry came to Canada in 1910 and to Prince George, British Columbia in 1912, on the BX Sternwheeler. He first established Perry's Shoe Store (a menswear establishment) and later established a real estate and insurance business. He founded the local faction of the Liberal Party in Prince George & Peace River area. He was the first President of the Fort George District & PG Local Liberal Associations from 1912 until he retired to Victoria c.1958. He was elected School Trustee in Fort George (P.G.) from 1912-1914. In addition, Perry was a director for the Prince George Theatre Ltd. and Chairman of the Joint Committee for Incorporation of PG. - Perry first served as President of the Board of Trade (1914) before entering civic politics and served as Prince George Mayor (1917-1918; and 1920) before entering provincial politics. He was also the owner and editor of several regional newspapers, including the Fort George Tribune, The Prince George Citizen, The Nechako Chronicle and the Prince Rupert Daily News. Perry went on to provincial politics running for the Liberal Party and was Speaker of the BC Legislature for Fort George from 1920-1928 & 1933-1945. During his political career he served also as Secretary and Chairman of the Municipal and Agricultural Committees of the Legislature and was a Deputy Speaker of the Legislative Assembly from 1924 to 1928. Perry served also as Provincial Minister of Education from 1941-45. Perry also served as President of the BC Branch of the Empire Parliamentary Association in the BC Parliament and attended its overseas conference of delegates in the UK during King George V Silver Jubilee Year in 1935. - HGT Perry is best known as Chairman of the provincial government’s Post-War Rehabilitation Council (1942-45), the first of its kind in Canada. Mr. Perry left provincial politics after an election defeat in 1945. Known as the “golden tongue orator”1 HGT Perry is also remembered for other improvements he oversaw as a provincial minister: improving educational facilities and teachers salaries in rural schools; for establishing Home Economics and Spanish courses at UBC; for instituting the Cameron Commission; for advocating for the rights of the Japanese, and others, during WWII, and is known as “the man who saved and extended the PGE.”2 In addition to these accomplishments, he played an instrumental role for many infrastructure projects: development of a highway south to the Cariboo Region; building of the Peace River Highway; reservation of one million acres of land in Central B.C. for veterans; creation of a Library distribution centre; and the extension of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway. Harry Perry died in Victoria, of a heart attack, in 1959 at the age of 70.

C.H Henderson-Roe married Elizabeth Brewster on September 23, 1879. His son was Jack B. Henderson-Roe.

Dr. John Ferry was born in the County of Durham, England in the mid-1800s. He emigrated to Canada in his twenties and became a Presbyterian minister. He served congregations in Indian Head, Qu'Appelle, Broadview and Kisbey, Saskatchewan. He became the moderator of the synod of Saskatchewan in 1916 and received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from St. Andrew's College, University of Saskatchewan in 1919.

Carney W. Ferry was probably born in Saskatchewan in the late 1800s. He served in the First World War as a Sargent Major. He moved to Prince George in 1919 and became an agent for the Canadian National Railroad. He also served as Vice Chairman of the Canadian Brotherhood of Railroad Employees.

William Dow Ferry (1913 - 1996) was the son of Carney Ferry and served as a judge of the County Court of the Cariboo. He was founding President of the Prince George Junior Chamber of Commerce, served on the Hospital Board from 1949 to 1961 and was elected to City Council four times between 1950 and 1955. He practiced law in Prince George from 1949 until 1961, when he was appointed judge requiring his move to Williams Lake.

William Henry Collison was born on 12 November 1847 in County Armagh (Northern Ireland), to John J. Collison and Mary Emily Maxwell. He was educated at the Church of Ireland Training College in Dublin and began his career as a schoolmaster in charge of an industrial school at Cork. In November 1872 he read of the Church Missionary Society's need for recruits, and determined to apply. The following April he entered the Church Missionary College (CMS) in Islington (London) for a brief period of training. The CMS decided that his qualifications made him a suitable assistant for William Duncan, the lay missionary in charge of the North Pacific mission, centred at Metlakatla, B.C. The CMS, which had difficulty in placing ordained missionaries there, opted to send Collison out as a layman with a view to his later ordination, and gave him permission to marry before leaving. On 19 August 1873 he married Marion M. Goodwin, a woman well prepared for the mission field: she was a deaconess and a trained nurse who had served in the Franco-German War and during a smallpox epidemic in Cork.

The Collisons arrived in Victoria on 25 October 1873 and finally reached their north coast destination a month later. At Metlakatla, his first task was to learn the Tsimshian language. By the following summer he could conduct the greater part of church services without an interpreter. As well as preaching, his duties included visiting and teaching.

He became interested in the Haida peoples when a group from Masset, on Haida Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands) visited Fort Simpson (Lax Kw'alaams) in 1874 and 1875. During these visits he began to evangelize Chief Seegay, whose half-Tsimshian wife acted as translator. In June 1876 Collison was begged to minister to Seegay since he was dying of tuberculosis. Collison made the voyage to Masset, and on his return obtained permission to open a mission there. After the Collisons' move to Masset in November, William expanded his knowledge of Haida, eventually translating portions of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer and composing hymns in this language.

In November 1877 while the Collisons were on Haida Gwaii, Bishop William Carpenter Bompas of Athabasca arrived at Metlakatla and spent the winter. The following March at Kincolith, a CMS mission among the Nisga'a peoples located at the mouth of the Nass River, Collison was ordained deacon and priest by Bompas, and assigned the "spiritual charge" of Metlakatla, Kincolith, and Haida Gwaii. In 1879 Collison left the Haida mission and returned to Metlakatla, and in May 1884 he and his family again changed missions and moved to Kincolith. There he learned more Nisga’a, and soon translated the services of Morning and Evening prayer. In 1891 Collison was unanimously selected as the new diocese of Caledonia's first archdeacon.

Disaster struck Kincolith in September 1893 when the church and three-quarters of the village were destroyed by fire. Shortly after rebuilding had begun, a fervent spiritual revival threatened to undermine the stability of the community. In response, Collison introduced a native branch of the Church Army, a strongly evangelical Anglican organization that emphasized enthusiastic worship, and promoted native leadership within the church-sponsored society. This Army was also characterized by its brass band which assisted in the very musical, evangelistic mission services.

Marion Collison's role was equally significant. Like other missionary wives, she was responsible for teaching European domestic skills to the native women. As a nurse, she helped avert a smallpox epidemic and Collison regarded her medical contributions as central to his work. Together the Collisons had five sons and three daughters: William Edwin (W.E.), Henry Alexander (H.A.), John, Thomas, Herbert, Arthur, Alice, Elsie and Emily. Marion Collison passed away in Kincolith on 9 January 1919.

W.H. Collison was the longest serving Church Missionary College (CMS) missionary in the North British Columbia Mission and he was the only remaining missionary funded directly by the CMS. His memoirs can be read in his autobiography, “In the Wake of the War Canoe” (1915) through which one can see that his interaction with the First Nations peoples to which he ministered was complex. He respected the converts, became fluent in Tsimshian, Haida, and Nisga'a, and was sensitive to the importance of the clan system. According to his son William Edwin, also an ordained missionary, the elder Collison had actually been adopted into the Eagle clan of the Haida Nation. On the other hand, he fiercely opposed potlatching and traditional native medicine, and encouraged the Nisga'a at Kincolith to accept the Indian Advancement Act of 1884, which replaced traditional hierarchies of power with a system of elected chiefs and band councils supervised by an Indian agent.

W.H. Collison died in Kincolith on 21 January 1922.

Dr. Fish held a PhD in Sociology and joined the University of Northern British Columbia as a founding Dean in 1992 after 23 years with the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba. While at the University of Manitoba he was involved in the development of the Northern Medical Unit that provided health services to First Nations throughout Northern Manitoba and the Keewatin District of the North West Territories. He maintained his interest in the health of First Nations and in the transfer of health services to the First Nations upon his arrival in British Columbia. Dr. Fish had extensive experience in developing countries where he worked with communities to develop community-based health programs within the context of social and economic development.

Charles E. McGaughey was born in North Bay, Ontario on November 26, 1917. He graduated from Queens University with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1938 and a Master of Arts Degree in 1939. During the summer of 1939, he attended the Student International Union Conference in Switzerland. He obtained a diploma in International Relations at the University of Chicago in 1940-41, and worked as a political correspondent with Sudbury Star and North Bay Nugget. In October of 1941 he married Jessie Porter; that same year, he joined the Canadian Armed Forces as a Private. He attended the Canadian Army Japanese Language School in Vancouver, and served during WWII in the United Kingdom and South East Asia, receiving his Discharge as Captain from the Armed Forces in 1947.

His first diplomatic posting was as Vice Consul with the Canadian Department of External Affairs to Chicago 1948-49; he was then posted to Tokyo as Third Secretary at the Canadian Embassy until 1952 when he returned to Ottawa. From 1955-57 he was posted as the First Secretary to the Canadian High Commissioners Office in New Delhi, and was then posted as Acting High Commissioner for Canada to Wellington, New Zealand until 1958. Posted at home in Ottawa until 1962, he was then posted to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia as Canadian High Commissioner, and at the same time, as the Canadian Ambassador to Burma and the first Canadian Ambassador to Thailand.

In 1965 he was appointed High Commissioner to Ghana in Accra; and concurrently as Ambassador to Guinea, Ivory Coast, Togo and Upper Volta.

In 1966, he was posted as Canadian High Commissioner to Pakistan in Aslamabad; and from 1966-68 also received the concurrent posting of first Canadian Ambassador to Afghanistan. A year later he was appointed Canadian Ambassador to Israel, and concurrently as High Commissioner to Cyprus until 1972.

In 1972 he returned to Canada and was appointed Deputy Commandant of the National Defence College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. He held this position until 1974 when he chose to take early retirement and move to Cloyne, Ontario, a small community located midway between Kingston and Ottawa. He lived in Cloyne until the fall of 1991 when he moved with his wife to Prince George, British Columbia to join his two sons and their families. He died in Prince George on October 28, 1999.

Celia Schreiber was an active member of the Mexican community in Prince George.

Dr. Bob Ewert was born in Prince George in 1927 and graduated from the Prince George Junior/Senior High School. Following studies at UBC and McGill Universities and surgical training in Detroit, Dr Ewert returned to Prince George in 1961 as the city’s first consultant specialist. Dr. Ewert was a dedicated surgeon with strong ties to the community and a vision for a modern, well-equipped hospital with a full complement of specialists. His roots in the community and commitment to the development of medical services in the North stemmed from his father, Dr. Carl Ewert, who arrived in Prince George on a paddle wheeler in 1913. He came in response to the physician shortage in Prince George and the surrounding area at that time, and practised as a general practitioner in Prince George until his retirement. Bob Ewert remained in Prince George until his death in 2002 at the age of 74. Bob’s family, many of whom are still in the Prince George area, made a generous donation to the University of Northern British Columbia to dedicate and furnish the Bob Ewert lounge, which has become a revered space for students and staff working in the new medical building. The Northern Medical Society created the annual Bob Ewart Memorial Lecture in celebration of the birth of the Northern Medical Program at the University of Northern British Columbia.

Billy Edmund was born off-reserve in Bella Coola, British Columbia, 5 December 1960. He is a member of the Carrier Nation; his father is from Ulkatcho near Anahim Lake and his mother is Cheslatta. After losing some fingers in an industrial accident, his artistic training began in 1986 under Master Carver Randy Adams. He completed a carving workshop with Master Carver Ron Sebastian in Prince George, and has studied at Emily Carr College of Art & Design in Vancouver. He completed a large cedar mural depicting the flood of Cheslatta Ancestral Lands by Alcan for a private patron. He has sold other private collections to Victoria, Regina, and Europe. Some of his pieces have been commissioned for presentation to well-known Native leaders, including Elijah Harper of Manitoba, Wendy Grant of Vancouver and Mary John of Stoney Creek. In art classes he teaches in various school districts around the province, he demonstrates his craft and explains his styles and tools. Over the years he has developed his own style of design using only handmade traditional carving tools. Edmund was one of the first artists to donate art to UNBC

Mayor of Prince George, 2008-2011
Manager of Public Relations for the Prince George Spruce Kings Hockey Club, 1996-1999

Alexander Manson was the first lawyer to practice law in Prince Rupert, BC.

In 1916, he entered Provincial politics under the Liberal Party banner, and became the M.L.A representing the region in the 1920, 1924, and 1928 elections. He was appointed Speaker of the House (1921), and Attorney General and Minister of Labour (1922-28). Upon his defeat in 1933, Manson returned to Vancouver to practice law, and subsequently was appointed Supreme Court Justice - a position he held until his retirement in 1961.

He married Stella Beckwith on June 29, 1909 in Vancouver, BC. In 1916, he successfully entered the world of Provincial politics and became an M.L.A for the Liberal party, winning 473 (67.16%) of the votes for his riding. He continued to represent the Liberals - and winning- in the 1920, 1924, and 1928 elections.

During this time, he was Speaker of the House (1921) and appointed as both the Attorney General and Minister of Labour (1922-28).
It was also during this time (1925-26) that he was elected and served as the Grand Master of the Grand Masonic Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon.

Upon his defeat in Provincial politics in 1933, Mr Manson returned to Vancouver to practice law and was subsequently appointed Supreme Court Justice. He continued in this position until his retirement in 1961. Born in 1883, Mr. Manson passed away on September 25, 1964.

J. Alain D. LeFebvre, B.A., C.A., M.B.A. was born and raised in Prince George. He received his university training at Simon Fraser University, graduating in 1979 with a Bachelor of Arts (Commerce Major, Economics Minor). After graduation he returned to Prince George and completed his term of articles with a national firm, attaining membership in the Institute of Chartered Accountants of British Columbia in 1982. In 1991 Lefebvre obtained a Master of Business Administration from City University, and has lectured on accounting for the College of New Caledonia, and on accounting and finance at the Masters level for City University. Al has held positions outside of public practice including Deputy Treasurer for the City of Prince George (7 years) and thereafter the Director of Finance for the University of Northern British Columbia (5 years). He is currently a partner with Chan Foucher LeFebvre LLP in Prince George.

Born in France in 1886, Charles Bedaux moved to the United States and became a naturalized American citizen. He was a highly successful businessman in the field of management consulting. According to Jim Christy’s 1984 biography, prior to his most famous expedition in 1934 across northeastern British Columbia, he had made hunting and exploratory trips to northwestern BC in 1926 and1929, the central interior in 1931 and to northeastern BC in 1932 and 1933.

Bedaux announced his intention to cross northeastern BC with Citroën half-track trucks on May 25, 1934 in New York City. The Canadian Sub-Arctic Expedition launched from Edmonton, Alberta on July 6, 1934 and contained a formidable array of talent and beauty, including Floyd Crosby, a Hollywood cinematographer, two land surveyors, Frank Swannell and Ernest Lamarque, mining engineer Jack Bocock, a Citroën mechanic, many cowboys, as well as Bedaux’s mistress, his wife and her maid.

Due to a combination of weather, terrain and poor planning, the expedition failed and the Citroën vehicles were abandoned. Although Bedaux returned to northern BC in 1936 with plans to build a road, he did not follow through. In 1937 he hosted the marriage of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor at his French chateau. Collaborationist activities with Nazi-occupied France led to his 1942 arrest in North Africa. Returned to the U.S., he committed suicide in a Florida prison in 1944.