The Honourable John Black Aird was Lieutenant Governor of Ontario (1980-1985).
John Black Aird was born on May 5th, 1923, in Toronto, the grandson of financier Sir John Aird. He attended Upper Canada College and Trinity College at the University of Toronto. During the Second World War, Aird served in the Royal Canadian Navy volunteer reserve. He was admitted to Osgoode Hall Law School in 1946 and was called to the Bar in 1949. Based in Toronto, Aird practised law at his own firm, which became Aird & Berlis in 1978. In addition to his legal career, Aird was appointed a Liberal senator in 1964 and served in that role until 1974, when he resigned to become chairman of the Institute of Research on Public Policy. He was also chairman of the Canadian section of the Canada-US Joint Board on Defence between 1971 and 1979. From 1980 to 1985, Aird served as the Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario. During this period, he was also chancellor of Wilfrid Laurier University (1977 to 1985) and became chancellor of the University of Toronto in 1986. Aird was appointed to the Order of Ontario in 1987 and was made a companion to the Order of Canada in 1993. John Black Aird died in Toronto on May 6th, 1995.
The Ajalon Lodge was first organized on 10 March 1929 as the Ajalon Club of Young Judaea. The founding members were Abe Bohnen, Hyman Cohen, Isaac Gringorten, George (Hamell) Himmelstein and Lou Hochman. The group met at the Zionist Institute at 206 Beverley Street in Toronto. The name was selected by Abe Bohnen and Mark Zimmerman, the Young Judaea supervisor, from a map of Palestine which hung in the Young Judaea library.
The first leader of the club was Morris Kertzer followed by Al Zimmerman. In 1930 the lodge began to record its activities in scrapbooks, which it later named the Ajalon Archives. The archivists over the years included Max Schwadron, Ben Marks, Myer Bromberg and Willie Zimmerman.
The club was actively involved in Young Judaea literary, social and fundraising activities. In 1935, the club graduated from the Young Judaea movement and become a lodge of the Zionist Order Habonim. By 1939 however, the Ajalon, Balfour, Bialik and Jaffa lodges merged into the Toronto Habonim Lodge due the waning membership as many men went off to war. After the war, the four lodges returned to their original state. In 1940, the lodge acquired club rooms on the third floor of the Zionist Building and in 1944 several wives of lodge members organized the Ajalon Ladies Auxiliary. By 1953, Habonim became the Zionist Men’s Association of Canada, an affiliate organization of the Zionist Organization of Canada and by the 1960s, Ajalon Lodge became directly affiliated with ZOC. Over the course of its existence membership in the lodge has been between 40 and 90 members.
Ajalon Lodge participated in many fundraising campaigns for Jewish organizations in Toronto, such as the Jewish National Fund and the United Palestine Appeal. Many of its members also served on the Board of Directors for organizations such as the Toronto Zionist Council and Young Judaea. The lodge was involved in several fundraising initiatives, including the establishment of a kindergarten in Ashkelon, Israel in 1972. In later years the Ajalon Lodge was affiliated with the Zionist Organization of Canada.
Professor Alan Brunger was educated in England (B.Sc.Hons. Southampton 1963) and came to Canada in 1964 for graduate work, first in Alberta (M.Sc. Calgary 1966) and later in Ontario (Ph.D. Western Ontario 1973). He joined the faculty in Geography at Trent University in 1969 and has lectured and undertaken research mainly in historical geography within Canada, Australia and South Africa. His main research interest is in the pattern and process of nineteenth century immigration and settlement. Professor Brunger retired from the Geography Department at Trent University in 2008.
John Alan Lee (1933-2013) was professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. Prior to his academic career, Lee was a labour organizer, journalist and educator.
Lee was born on August 24, 1933 in Maxville, Ontario. Lee received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto (1956) and his PhD. from the University of Sussex (1971). In 1971 he became a U of T faculty member, where he worked until his retirement in 1999.
Lee was one of the first professional Canadian's to come out in public, he did so on TVOntario's 'The Judy LaMarsh Show' in 1974, after a decade of working as an undercover gay activist, where he wrote to protest discriminatory depictions of the LGBT community members. Lee was actively involved in a gay sit-in at the Ontario Attorney General's office, as well as a gay kiss-in in the Ontario Legislature. In 1975 he was the inaugural chair of the Gay Academic Union, and elected chair of the Right to Privacy Committee after the 1981 Toronto bathhouse raids.
Lee wrote extensively throughout his life publishing 300 articles and books, including: Colours of Love: An Exploration of the Ways of Loving (1973); Getting Sex: A New Approach (1978); RCMP vs. The People: Inside Canada’s Security Service (1979); and Gay Midlife and Maturity (1991). In 2004, Lee published his autobiography on http://johnalanlee.ca consisting of 26 chapters. Over the next 8 years Lee added six additional chapters, two appendices and a bibliography of his publications.
Along with his LGBT activism he also advocated for multiple organizations and causes, including socialist groups, trade unions, anti-war movements, Amnesty International, the Sierra Club, and in later life he became an advocate for the right-to-die movement and helped found the organization Dying with Dignity.
In 2005 Lee was inducted into the CLGA's National Portrait Collection. He fathered two children.
Lee chose to end his life on December 5, 2013 in Toronto.
Albert College was established as Belleville Seminary in 1857; its name was changed to Albert College in 1866, and it affiliated with Victoria University in 1884 and gave up its right to grant degrees.
Edgar Tilden Alberts (1905- ), businessman, was president of the Toronto Flying Club in the 1950s and sat on the Organizing Committee and later the Provisional Board of Governors of York University (1957-1959). Alberts was invited to Moscow in 1955 and 1956 to view the Soviet air show and in 1958 he was part of a business delegation that travelled to Moscow to investigate Canadian business opportunities there. He organized a second trip to Moscow in 1964 that was attended by representatives of several major Canadian companies.