Eva Wolotko was born in November 1903 to parents Anton Wolotko and Mary Fox Wolotko in Chapleau, Ontario. Wolotko had one brother, Joseph Wolotko (October 1910 - December 12, 1949, AKA Joe Wolotko), who played hockey for teams in Chapleau and Falconbridge, Ontario in the Nickel Belt League. In 1938 Eva Wolotko moved to Sudbury, Ontario and in 1940 she married Earle Cram (aka Erle C. Cram, Ernie Cram, 1907-1964), a firefighter and former lumber and construction worker. The marriage ceremony occurred in Wolotko's hometown of Chapleau but the couple lived in Sudbury. Eva Wolotko Cram had a career as a dressmaker and later as a school crossing guard. She belonged to St. Andrew the Apostle Roman Catholic Church and died on September 26, 1987 at the age of 83.
Terry Copp was born in 1938 and grew up in the Montreal suburb of Notre Dame de Grace. He attended Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) where he earned his bachelor’s degree. His career as an educator began prior to graduation when, in his third year, a teaching position at the University. As a condition of his employment, he was required to graduate before the beginning of classes in September and enroll in the Master of Arts program at McGill. After his year of teaching at Sir George Williams, he taught history at Westmount Junior High School. While there, he became concerned about the conditions at a local residential house where a number of his students lived, known as Weredale House. When he had a letter outlining his views published in the Montreal Star, many supporters of Weredale were upset and Copp left his position with the school board.
Copp completed his MA in 1961 and soon after was accepted into the PhD program at McGill. After a realization that his thesis would not work out, he took a job at a high school in Lindsay Ontario as an emergency replacement geography teacher. After this, was offered a full-time position teaching history at Loyola College and part-time teaching courses at McGill. He became a full-time faculty member at Loyola for the 1965/66 academic year while still teaching the Canadian history survey at McGill.
In 1968, Copp married and became a father to two step-children and later a third. In 1970, he took a position at Sir George Williams, which led to a year-long position as visiting professor at the University of Victoria. While in this position he was able to complete much of the manuscript for what became The Anatomy of Poverty: The Condition of the Working Class in Montréal 1897-1929, which was published in 1974. In 1975, Copp and his family left Montreal when he took up a position at Wilfrid Laurier University. In 1980, Copp’s research interest shifted from labour history to military history. He has published extensively in this area of study, including the five-volume Maple Leaf Route series with Robert Vogel, and numerous articles in Canadian Military History and other journals. In 1991, Copp and Marc Kilgour were awarded a grant from the Security and Defense Forum to finance what became the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies.
Copp has been involved in numerous projects outside of the university. He has served as a research director and on-camera historian for the television documentary series “No Price Too High”, which was produced in response to the controversy caused by the CBC’s “The Valour and the Horror”. He was involved in the Canadian Battle of Normandy Foundation raising money for a Canadian Memorial Garden and student bursaries.
Copp retired in 2005 and is currently professor emeritus of history and director of the Laurier Centre for Military, Strategic and Disarmament Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. He also writes a series of feature articles that have been published in Legion Magazine since 1994.
Gordon Conn (ca.1888-1977) was an art collector and supporter of visual art in Toronto. He studied to be a musician and worked as a painter in his youth. Although he did not pursue a career as an artist, he maintained connections with many artists. He was a friend of the painter Kenneth Forbes (1892-1980) who painted Conn’s portrait in 1935. Together with Forbes, Gordon Conn founded the Ontario Institute of Painters devoted to the display of painting based on what Forbes called “traditional” art values. Conn turned over his studio in Wychwood Park in Toronto—The Little Gallery—to a series of one-man shows of its members. Near the end of his life, he donated paintings by artists represented in this collection to public art galleries in Ontario.
Eeva Annikki Kantokoski was born May 8, 1924 in Alajärvi, Finland to Matias (Matti) Niilo Kantokoski (born 1901), and his wife Anna Milia (born 1903). The family name was shortened from Kantokoski to Koski, but it is unclear when exactly this occurred. Eeva Annikki and her parents immigrated to Canada in 1924. They arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia on August 2, 1924, and then settled in Sudbury, Ontario. In December 1925, Eeva Annikki’s brother, Veikko Vesa Matias Kantokoski (Koski) was born. Sometime after their arrival in Canada Eeva Annikki's name was changed to Ann Eva, though others often referred to her as Anne, Anni or Annie. The family's early years were spent in Sudbury, Ontario. After the death of their mother in 1933, Ann and her brother Veikko lived with their father in Sudbury during the summer months and their aunt Ida Marie (Koivula) Lehti in Oshawa during the winter. Ann completed her education in Sudbury, Ontario in 1939, and gained a High School Entrance Certificate, though she did not attend due to the cost. Once she completed her schooling in 1939 she found employment in domestic service for Mrs. J. Ferrier, in Sudbury. Between 1940 and 1941 she worked at Korpela's Grocery Store on Bancroft Drive, and Maki's Restaurant on Elgin Street in Sudbury, Ontario. In 1942, Ann moved to Malartic, Quebec to work in a bunkhouse and kitchen in a mining town. There she met Archie Chisholm, whom she married in Montreal on May 24, 1942. Their first child, Carl Richard, was born on December 24, 1943. When her husband was posted overseas during World War II, Ann returned to Sudbury to stay with relatives, and completed a Red Cross Volunteer Nursing Service course during that time. After the Second World War, Ann and Archie had two more children; Leslie Karen, born March 8, 1947, and Barry Neil, born October 8, 1955. While living in North-western Quebec, Ann contributed her time to the Protestant Elementary School Board and the Canadian Air Force Ground Observer Corps. In 1974, she separated from her husband and moved to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. There she completed high school and went on to study nursing. She became a Certified Nursing Assistant, and obtained a post-graduate diploma in psychiatric nursing. Between 1976 and 1986 she worked at the Nova Scotia Hospital. Ann Eva Chisholm died on March 12, 2000 at the age of 74, and is buried in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
Jack (John Richard) Chambers, artist and experimental filmmaker, was born in London, Ontario in 1931. He studied at the Escuela Central de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid from 1957 to 1959. In Spain he met Olga Sanchez Bustos, whom he married in Canada in 1963. They made their home in London and had two children, John (b. 1964) and Diego (b.1965). Chambers’ style of painting and drawing in the 1960s was characterized by a dreamlike quality. Toward the end of that decade, his work became intensely focused on the depiction of reality, often relating closely to source photographs, most of which were taken by the artist himself. Between 1964 and 1970 Chambers also directed eight films. The subjects of his work were often domestic or regional, focusing on his experience in London. In 1967, Chambers founded Canadian Artists’ Representation to try to establish fee scales for reproduction rights and rental fees for works in public exhibitions, and served as president from 1967 to 1975. In 1969 Chambers published his essay “Perceptual Realism”, and that same year, was diagnosed with leukemia. From 1971 to 1977 he worked on “Red and Green,” a study of art and perception (unpublished). Chambers died in London in 1978. His work is in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and numerous other Canadian galleries.
Frederick Sproston Challener, painter, was born in Whetstone, England in 1869 and came to Canada in 1870. He studied at the Ontario School of Art, was first exhibited in 1900 at the Royal Canadian Academy and subsequently worked as a newspaper artist. After a tour of Europe and the Middle East in 1898-99, he began working as a muralist and participated in the decoration of the recently completed Toronto City Hall. At the end of the First World War, Challener worked as a painter for the Canadian War Records Department. He made his career chiefly by creating murals for passenger boats, restaurants, hotels—such as Fort Rouillé in the King Edward Hotel,Toronto—office buildings and theatres, including the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto. He also produced easel paintings, watercolours and drawings in a realistic, romantic style. From 1927-1952 he taught at the Ontario College of Art, during which period he made notes and assembled material on Canadian artists. He died in Toronto in 1959. Challener was a member of numerous arts organizations including the Toronto Art Students’ League, Ontario Society of Artists, Royal Canadian Academy, Society of Mural Decorators of Toronto and the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto (founding member, 1908). His work is in the National Gallery of Canada, the Civic Art Gallery, Winnipeg, the Art Gallery of Ontario and numerous public buildings.
John Hamilton Bush (1909–1977), primarily known as Jack Bush, was a Canadian painter best known for his Abstract Expressionist style. Born in Toronto, he lived in London, Ont. and Montreal during his early years. Jack Bush began his career in advertising, working in his father’s firm, Rapid Electro Type Company in Montreal. During this time, he studied at the Art Association of Montreal with Edmund Dyonnet and Adam Sherriff Scott. In 1928, he transferred to the company’s office in Toronto, where he took evening classes under Frederick Challener, John Alfsen and Charles Comfort at the Ontario College of Art. Bush’s early work as a painter was influenced by Comfort and the Group of Seven, and throughout the 1930s and ‘40s he produced largely landscape and figurative paintings. His first exhibition was with the Ontario Society of Artists in Toronto in 1936.
In 1934, Jack Bush married Mabel Mills Teakle, a family friend from Montreal, and together they had three sons, Jack Jr (b. 1936), Robert (b. 1938) and Terry (b. 1942). In 1953, dissatisfied with Canada’s place in the international contemporary art scene, Bush and several other Toronto abstract artists founded the group Painters Eleven. William Ronald, another member of Painters Eleven, and an artist who had worked in New York, introduced U.S. art critic Clement Greenberg to the group, which led to a lasting friendship between Bush and Greenberg. The contact with Greenberg in 1957 led to Bush’s international breakthrough in the early 1960s, beginning with his 1962 exhibition at the Robert Elkon Gallery in New York. Between the late 1950s and mid ‘60s, Bush painted in loose brushstrokes with diluted oils, staining paint onto unprimed canvas. In 1966, concerned by the health hazards associated with oil-based paints, he switched to water-based acrylics, less textured than oils but more brightly coloured.
In 1964, Jack Bush’s work was included in Greenberg’s Post-Painterly Abstraction at the Los Angeles County Museum, an exhibition that travelled to Minneapolis and Toronto. Along with Jacques Hurtubise, Bush represented Canada at the Bienal de São Paulo (Brazil) in 1967. In the year preceding his death in 1977 (from a heart attack), he received the Order of Canada. That same year, the Art Gallery of Ontario mounted a retrospective exhibition of his abstract works that travelled to several Canadian galleries. Jack Bush’s work is in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, London’s Tate Gallery and others.
Dr. Yehoshua (Shieky) Brownstone is a photographer in London, Ontario. He was formerly a Professor in the Biochemistry Department at the University of Western Ontario.
Elaine Briere is a Vancouver documentary-maker, photographer, journalist and social justice activist. Her documentary, Bitter Paradise: The Sell-Out of East Timor, won the best political documentary award at the Hot Docs Festival, North America’s preeminent documentary film showcase, in 1997. In addition to her work on East Timor, which includes a published collection of photographs (Testimony: Photographs of East Timor, Between the Lines, 2004), Briere has directed a documentary on Canadian merchant seamen, Betrayed: The Story of Canadian Merchant Seamen (1997), and has produced photo-journalism and print articles for "The Tyee", "Briarpatch", "Our Times", and other publications dedicated to labour and social justice issues. Briere’s photographs have appeared in many publications including, Carte Blanche Photography 1 (2004); The Other Mexico: The North American Triangle Completed (1996), South East Asia Tribal Groups and Ethnic Minorities (1987) and The Family of Women (1979). Her photographs have been featured in exhibits in Canada, Japan, Sweden and the United States.