W.C. Dobie (b.1839-d.1929) was federal fisheries inspector for the western Lake Superior region, police magistrate, and justice of the peace. He was born in Liverpool in 1839, came to York Township in Ontario in 1849 and grew up in Bruce Mines. In 1865 he married Sarah Dorothy Coatsworth of Missouri. She was daughter of J. Coatsworth, manager of the Montreal Mining and Lands Co. and postmaster at Bruce Mines, Ontario. Dobie came to Prince Arthur's Landing in 1872 to work as a bookkeeper for Thomas Marks and Co. and in 1884 formed a general store of his own in partnership with John Hasking. In 1887 he entered into partnership with George Marks and H.A. Wiley to form W.C. Dobie and Co. He then purchased the interests of his partners and, in 1894, disposed of his business to his son, J.C. Dobie, who amalgamated it with other businesses to form the Marks, Clavet and Dobie Co. William served on the Shuniah council for five years before 1884 and was a member of the school board for 30 years. He was at one time Dominion Inspector of Mines. He served as magistrate for 32 years from 1890 to 1922. His first wife died in 1879 and he remarried in 1887 or 1888 to a woman by the name of Mary who left him shortly thereafter. Dobie died in 1929.
George Brown Macgillivray was president and publisher of the Daily Times-Journal newspaper in Fort William from 1959 to 1975. He was also a writer and amateur historian.
Bernard I. Black, Q.C., Fort William barrister, solicitor, and notary, opened his practice at 105 N. May St. in 1950-1951. He joined Morris, Babe, Pugsley, and Black in 1954. This company acted as solicitors for the City of Fort William at the time and continued to do so until about 1964. Mr. Black formed Black and Hatherly in about 1967-1968 with offices in the Chapples building. He was a former president of the Thunder Bay Historical Society and he took an interest in collecting material relating to the legal history of Thunder Bay.
Saul Laskin (b. Fort William 1918) was educated in Fort William and Toronto. He returned to the Lakehead in 1937 and worked at Stitt's Clothing store in Fort William in 1938 and in his father's Port Arthur business after that. Mr. Laskin served overseas in the army in World War II. He began to take over operations of his father's store in 1938, bought the property and built a new store that year (expanded in 1947). This he operated successfully from 1946-1958. He entered politics as alderman of Port Arthur (1959-1960) and served as mayor from 1962 to 1969 (Port Arthur) and 1970 to 1972 (Thunder Bay). He was Thunder Bay's first mayor. He ran as a Liberal in the 1963 Federal election but failed to achieve office. Amalgamation of the Lakehead communities was a principal goal for Laskin as a politician. Mr. Laskin belonged to the Chamber of Commerce and Rotary International. He served as president of the Port Arthur Bearcats hockey team and sat on the advisory committee of St. Joseph's Hospital. He married Adele in the 1940s. His father emigrated from Russia in 1903 and began farming in Neebing area and in ca. 1918 rented and operated a small, clapboard second hand store (clothing, furniture, hardware) in Port Arthur on S. Cumberland St. Saul Laskin’s mother was born in Latvia. His brother was Bora Laskin, Chief Justice of Canada. Mr. Laskin claims the Jewish religion to be formative in his personal life.
William Benjamin Frue was born in County Down, Ireland but spent most of his life in the U.S.A.. He became general superintendent of the Silver Islet Mining Co. in 1871 and was responsible for the mine's great early prosperity. He left Silver Islet in 1875 and died a few years later. He was responsible for erecting the crib work around the islet. During his tenure the mine became one of the world's richest.
Arthur Widnall (b. 1897 in Yorkshire, England- d. ca.1982) came to Canada in 1903 where he settled on homesteads at Silver Mountain and Whitefish Lake. He moved to Fort William in 1908. His father, Fred, operated Widnall Dairy until 1930. Art was a noted athlete and runner competing in the 1922 Caledonian Games in Calgary. He served in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I and after the war worked as a private secretary for the Canadian Pacific Railway. He later entered the University of Manitoba, specializing in dairying. He worked in his father's dairy from 1923-1930, then became secretary manager of the Fort William Parks Board and later director of recreation and director of tourism for the City of Fort William. He acted as voluntary secretary for the Northwestern Ontario Associated Chambers of Commerce and later became its president. Widnall was for a long time associated with the Fort William Chamber of Commerce and, until 1975, Rotary International. He was a past president of the Fort William Rotary Club and district governor of Rotary International. During World War II he was chairman of the Victory Loan Sales and Salvage Committee locally and secretary of the local ration board. He married Olive Eunice Atkins (school teacher and artist) in 1931 and had one son, Arthur Lloyd. Olive died in 1979 and Art ca.1982. Widnall was a Progressive Conservative and served as secretary of the Fort William P.C. Riding Association in the 1960s and 1970s. He ran unsuccessfully as P.C. candidate in a Federal election in the late 1950s or early 1960s. He served as alderman of Fort William in 1968-1969.
A.T. Hill (b. in Finland 12 Oct. 1898-d. 1978) arrived in Port Arthur in 1917 and was a leading young Communist and secretary of the Finnish Organization of Canada from 1921-1924 and 1926-1929. He became secretary of the Young Workers' Party of Canada in 1922 and attended the fifth Comintern Congress in Moscow in 1924. From that point onward he was a Communist Party organizer serving as a liaison between the Party and the Finnish community in Canada.
James D. Doty, politician and speculator was born in Salem, Washington County, New York in 1799 and died in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1865. He began practicing law at Detroit, Michigan Territory in 1819 and in 1823 became a judge of the judicial district of Northern Michigan. He became Wisonsin's delegate to Congress in 1839 and served until 1941. After Wisconsin acheived statehood, Doty served as a representative in Congress from 1849 to 1853. He had much interest in the Indigenous peoples of the Michigan and Wisconsin areas.
Mr. Walter MacKay Draycott was born 1883 in England and emigrated to Canada and Fort William in 1907. He moved to Vancouver in 1911 and then settled in Lynn Valley in 1912, He left to serve in WW1 with the Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry. He returned to Lynn Valley in 1918, and published his first history of that community the following year. He served as Justice of the Peace from 1923 to 1975 and was a school trustee for three years in the 1920s. He was a feature writer for the North Vancouver and Vancouver newspapers on an irregular basis, particularly in the 1920s and 1930s, and an occasional contributor to scientific journals. He was employed by the Geological Survey of Canada for various months from 1949 to 1952. In 1972, he opened the first North Shore Museum and Archives building. His second history of the Lynn Valley, "Early Days in the Lynn Valley" was printed in 1978.
Mrs. Jessie Catherine Crawford (nee Baker, d. 1971), of Owen Sound, Ont., took a one-year kindergarten assistants' course followed by one year at the Toronto Normal School before coming to teach at Port Arthur. In September 1908, the year she left the Toronto school, she was engaged as the first kindergarten director of the Port Arthur Public School System and operated out of Cornwall School under its principal Miss Gowanlock. She had one assistant, Miss Mills. Later she married Joseph Crawford a chartered accountant and politician (he served as Mayor and MPP in Fort William).
Helmer Borg (b. Greefe, Sweden, 25 Dec. 1900-d. Thunder Bay, 3 Oct. 1973) was a special field representative of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America for the Lumber and Sawmill Workers' Union, primarily Local 2693, Port Arthur. He was a field representative in 1953 and was appointed special representative on 26 May 1954. His employment was terminated on 5 July 1958, due primarily to his inability to change with the times (to communicate effectively with modern-day workers). After 1958 he did mostly odd jobs. He lived in Port Arthur.
Peter McKellar, along with his brothers John, Donald, and Archibald, was a pioneer of Fort William. He was born of Capt. Duncan McKellary and Margaret Brodie of Glencoe, Ont.. He became a surveyor in upper Michigan in 1853 and came to Thunder Bay in search of mineral wealth in the 1860s, settling in 1863. McKellar staked many mining claims along the North Shore of Lake Superior in partnership with his brothers and others, discovering Thunder Bay Silver Mine in 1866, Black Bay Bonanza in 1865, and Huronian Gold Mine in 1871. He was Municipal Health Officer in 1873 and played a prominent role in the selection of the Lake Superior terminus of the transcontinental railway in 1873. He edited and published the first local newspaper, the Perambulator, in 1874. He was reeve for McTavish ward on the first Shuniah municipal council in 1874, was a charter member of the Kaministiquia Club in 1879 and was on the committee to negotiate the dismantling of the Hudson's Bay Co. fort and the establishment of Thunder Bay harbour in 1881. McKellar was involved in land sales to the C.P.R. for its shops and principal works. He donated land for the first St. Andrew's Presbyterian Chruch in 1889 and laid the cornerstone of the new church in 1908. He also donated with his brother Donald land for McKellar Hospital in 1900. He married Carlotta Burgess Spence (1874-1960). Peter McKellar was the founder of the Thunder Bay Historical Society in 1908 and served as its president from 1908 to 1923. He was also known as a writer and research on geology, mineral resources, and historical subjects.
Rev. S. C. Murray was minister of St. Paul's Presbyterian church in Port Arthur from 1893 to 1911. He was a Christian Socialist actively involved in the local labour movement. He was also convener of the Home Mission Committee of the Presbyterian Church of Canada an chairman of the Educational Committee of the Port Arthur Board of Education.
William Wilson (b. Dec. 20, 1833 in Scotland-d. 1930 in Port Arthur) was a master miller in Scotland and a farmer in Canada. He emigrated to the Lakehead in May 1889 from Ayrshire, Scotland, with his wife Agnes and six children. Their first home was called Rockford Farm near the present day St. Patrick's Square and three years later they moved to Privick Hall, six miles from Port Arthur.