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J. Clark Keith was born 21 January 1886 in Smith’s Falls, Ontario, the son of William M. Keith and Mary Keith (née Sanderson). He attended elementary and secondary school there, obtaining his Junior Matriculation in 1902. In 1906 he gained practical engineering experience as a member of a survey party associated with construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific (later the Canadian National Railway) in Northern Ontario’s clay belt. From 1907 to 1910 he studied for his diploma at the University of Toronto’s School of Practical Sciences, working as District Hydrographer with the Calgary Department of Irrigation during the summer months. He obtained his B.A.Sc. degree from the University of Toronto in 1911, and in that year moved to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, where he joined the city’s engineering staff in 1912. He married his wife, Ida Maud Keith, in 1912, and they had two children.

In 1920 the Keith family relocated to Windsor, Ontario, where J. Clark Keith became Deputy Chief Engineer of the Essex Border Utilities Commission (EBUC). He became Chief Engineer the following year and worked to make the EBUC a vital driver of development in the Border Cities. Under his leadership the city constructed a general hospital, water filtration plant, trunk sewers, and major water mains. He also played an active role in city planning initiatives broadly. Between 1917 and 1934 the EBUC held responsibility for the water supply system, district parks, some aspects of planning, creation of a district health board, and the operation of hospitals in the Border Cities. This mandate enabled Keith to play a wide array of roles in city affairs, including his close association with the functioning of Metropolitan General Hospital (variously as an advisor, business administrator, and member of the Board of Governors) between 1922 and 1946.
When the Great Depression devastated the Canadian economy, Keith was one of five members of a commission that recommended the (controversial) amalgamation of the debt-defaulting municipalities of East Windsor (Ford City), Sandwich, Windsor, and Walkerville. The change was accomplished under the provincial government’s City of Windsor Amalgamation Act, 1935. The EBUC was replaced with a new Windsor Utilities Commission (WUC). Keith became its first General Manager, serving simultaneously as City Controller of the Finance Commission created by the Amalgamation Act to arrange the city’s financial affairs during the transition period of 1935-1936. Keith also devised the renumbering system for all street addresses in the newly-amalgamated city, using Riverside Drive and Ouellette Avenue as starting points.

At this point in his career, Keith was active in a variety of other organizations. He was President of the Canadian Section of the American Waterworks Association in 1934-1935, helped found the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario (and later served as its President), held the Vice Presidency of the Engineering Institute of Canada, and served as Director (1939-1944) of the Windsor Flying Training School during the Second World War. His involvement with Metropolitan General Hospital also led him to serve as President of the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA), and, in 1941, to be a founding member of the Blue Cross Plan for Hospital Care (a non-profit medical and hospital insurance plan introduced by the OHA, prior to the advent of Medicare in Canada).

Keith’s illustrious career was honoured by the WUC in 1951 when a new hydroelectric steam generating station on the Detroit River was dedicated in his name. He resigned as General Manager in 1955 but stayed on in an advisory capacity until 1957. In 1955 he wrote a book detailing the work of the WUC and its predecessors. J. Clark Keith died at Woodslee, Ontario on 17 June 1982 at the age of 96. From 1953 until its demolition in 1997, a coal-powered electricity plant in Windsor's Brighton Beach neighbourhood was named after him.

Sources: 1982 paper finding aid biographical sketch; contents of fonds; J. Clark Keith, The Windsor Utilities Commission and Its Antecedent Commissions: Some of their Accomplishments with Accompanying Statistical Data (Windsor: s.n., 1957).

Cheryl Vance (née Hemstreet) was raised in South Windsor. As a child she lived with her family on Riviera Drive, and attended Glenwood Public School and Centennial Secondary School. She worked for several years in university administration at the University of Windsor, before becoming a Human Resources Specialist in Mississauga. In 1997 she settled in London, Ontario with her husband Jonathan F.W. Vance (a professor of History at the University of Western Ontario) and worked thereafter as a full-time stay-at-home mother, raising their two children.

Source: Correspondence between Archivist Sarah Glassford and Dr. Jonathan F.W. Vance.

Irene R. [surname unknown] was a young woman from rural Southwest Oxford County in the early 1930s. Likely in her late teens or early twenties at the time, in 1933-1934 she wrote newsy and romantic letters from rural addresses in Mount Elgin, Ontario and Ingersoll, Ontario (about 40 km east of London, Ontario), to her sweetheart George Philpot. Irene and George seem to have met and begun their courtship during a mutual year or two at the London Normal School (later Teachers’ College), with Irene returning home to her parents’ farm in Mount Elgin for the summer.

Teaching was one of a limited number of professions open to women at the time, and the London Normal School offered a two-year program with a focus on academic subject. The student population of mostly-rural teens tended to form strong, enduring friendships. Irene had a lively social life in her rural community and kept in touch with many friends and mentors from Normal School. She appears to have taught Primer/I/II students in a rural school prior to earning her teaching certificate, and to have pursued additional qualifications via home study during the summer after she finished Normal School. During that summer she applied to teach at many schools in rural Southwest Oxford County, and eventually found a position for September 1933 in the Junior room (grades I, II, III, and IV) in the two-room school at Foldens near Ingersoll (where she boarded). In 1934 she again applied for schools, including at least one in Windsor, Ontario, likely in the hope of being near George.

Irene’s correspondence with George was a secret from her parents, whom she felt had “ethical” issues with it – possibly because George may have had a son (Harry). The romance was discovered and disapproved of by Irene’s mother, but Irene and George continued their secret correspondence interspersed with occasional meetings. By August 1933 there appears to have been an “understanding” between the pair, that they would be married in 1937. In the final letter (July 1934) Irene speaks of coming to visit George in Windsor and receiving a list of boarding houses from the principal of Kennedy Collegiate (perhaps indicating she had been hired to teach there, or that George taught there). No further information has been uncovered.

Sources: Sharon Hill, “Hidden Love: Demolition of Windsor house uncovers Irene’s old love letters to George,” The Windsor Star, 27 October 2017 https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/hidden-love-demolition-of-windsor-house-uncovers-irenes-old-love-letters-to-george (accessed 30 October 2020); Cassidy Foxcroft, “A Century of Ontario Normal School Yearbooks,” OISE Library News, 13 June 2017, https://wordpress.oise.utoronto.ca/librarynews/2017/06/13/a-century-of-ontario-normal-school-yearbooks/ (accessed 30 October 2020); Susan Gelman, “Stratford (Normal School) Teachers’ College, 1908-1973,” Historical Studies in Education 14, 1 (2002): 113-20.

David Roberts was born in 1949 and raised in the village of Westport on Upper Rideau Lake in Eastern Ontario. He is a former Editor of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography at the University of Toronto, for which he also wrote many biographies of individuals connected to Canadian business history. He previously worked as an historian for the Government of Ontario, and is the author of two monographs: In the Shadow of Detroit: Gordon M. McGregor, Ford of Canada, and Motoropolis (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006) and Boosters and Barkers: Financing Canada's Involvement in the First World War (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2023).

Sources: Personal correspondence between Archivist Sarah Glassford and David Roberts, 2019-2020.

Sean Kheraj (b. 1980) is an award-winning Canadian historian and professor of history. Born in Kingston, Ontario, he grew up in Burnaby, British Columbia before studying History at the University of British Columbia (BA) and York University (MA, PhD). After briefly teaching at Calgary’s Mount Royal University, from 2011-2022 he held teaching and administrative roles in the Department of History and Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies at York University. In 2022 he took up an administrative role at Toronto Metropolitan University, and he has served as a director of the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE), where he hosts and produces “Nature’s Past: Canadian Environmental History Podcast.” Kheraj is the author of Inventing Stanley Park: An Environmental History (UBC Press, 2013), co-author (with Tom Peace) of Open History Seminar: Canadian History (eCampus Ontario, 2020), and co-editor (with Jennifer Bonnell) of Traces of the Animal Past: Methodological Challenges in Animal History (University of Calgary Press, 2021). He has published a host of scholarly articles and blog posts on subjects including oil pipelines, animals in urban areas, parks and conservation, digital history, and open educational resources.

Sources: Sean Kheraj, https://www.seankheraj.com/about/ (accessed 12 April 2021); personal correspondence between Archivist Sarah Glassford and Sean Kheraj, April 2021.

Archibald Love (? – ca. 1872) was a resident of the Township of Dunwich in Elgin County, Ontario. He had at least five daughters: Annie, Mary, Flora, Catherine, and Margaret, to each of whom he left a bequest in his will. He was likely related by marriage or blood to Catherine Love (widow of Neil Love of Scotland) and Mary Love (unmarried), both of St. Thomas, Ontario.

Sources: Contents of fonds.

Joyce Mussio was affiliated in some way with the Faculty of Education at the University of Windsor in 1983. They collaborated with Lynn Hutchinson and Carmen Califano on a religious history project as part of a Local History Series Project within the Faculty of Education. Nothing further is known.
Sources: Contents of fonds

Delos Rogest Davis was born on 4 August 1846 in Maryland, USA, to enslaved parents. He and his family escaped to freedom in Canada and settled in the New Canaan district of Colchester Township, Ontario, in 1850. He finished his schooling in 1863 and worked as a sailor and paper mill labourer before becoming a teacher in 1867 and marrying Nancy Jane Mitchell in 1868. In the 1870s Davis began to study law through the University of Toronto, becoming a paralegal in 1871 and notary public in 1873. The Ontario legislature had to pass a special act in 1884 to enable Davis to write his bar exam without articling, and he aid a local MPP, Davis passed the bar exam on 19 May 1885. and in 1886 Davis was called to the Bar of Ontario, becoming the second Black person in Canada to do so.

Specializing in criminal and municipal law, Davis established a practice based in Amherstburg, Ontario, and practised more widely in Essex County as well. This included serving as Solicitor for the Town of Amherstburg and Solicitor for the Township of Anderdon. For a time he served as clerk, treasurer, and/or auditor for the Township of Colchester North. Davis’ son Frederick Homer Alphonso also studied law, and joined his father’s practice (now known as Davis & Davis) in 1900. On 10 November 1910, Delos Rogest Davis was officially appointed King’s Counsel, making him the first Black person in the British Empire to be granted this recognition of exceptional merit and contributions to the legal field. He was also the first King’s Counsel in Essex County.

Delos Rogest Davis was a member of the British Methodist Episcopal Church, President of the district Sunday School Convention, and President of Wilberforce Educational Institute of Chatham. He married his second wife, Mary Jane Banks, on 14 July 1907. Davis passed away on 13 April 1915, and was buried in the hamlet of New Canaan, in Essex County.

Sources:
“Davis, Delos Rogest,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Volume XIV (1911-1920), http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?BioId=41444; “Delos Davis,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, (2014), https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/delos-davis ; “From Athlete to Judge,” Faculty of Law, University of Windsor, https://www.uwindsor.ca/law/234/athlete-judge. (All accessed 15 March 2022). Also contents of fonds.

Jennifer Soutter earned her Master’s of Library and Information Science degree from Western University in 1992, and worked in special libraries, governmental and non-governmental libraries, and a high school library, before being hired as an academic librarian at the University of Windsor’s Leddy Library in 2004. A self-described “Jill-of-all-trades,” as of 2022 she was liaison librarian responsible for the areas of Criminology, Indigenous Studies, Sociology & Anthropology, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Work & Employment Issues. Soutter’s many community and university service activities included membership on the Windsor Public Library’s Library Board, involvement with the University of Windsor community garden, membership on the university Senate, and a variety of roles within the Windsor University Faculty Association (WUFA).

Sources: “Jennifer Soutter,” Leddy Library website, https://leddy.uwindsor.ca/staff/jennifer-soutter; “Jennifer Soutter,” Open Shelf website, https://open-shelf.ca/jennifer-soutter/. (Both accessed 7 April 2022)

Raymond Knister (1899-1932) was a well-regarded, internationally published Canadian poet who wrote mainly about rural South-Western Ontario. He was born in Ruscom, in Essex County, Ontario on 27 May 1899. He was raised on his father’s farms in the Kent and Essex counties and his poetry became well known for recording the rural Ontario life of his youth. His first attempt at formal schooling, at Victoria College, Toronto, faltered due to a post World War I influenza epidemic. He went back home to the farm and continued his learning through prolific reading of contemporary and classical literature. Then in the early 1920s he moved to Iowa and enrolled in courses at Iowa State University. This was the same period where his work started to gain more regard and his short stories and poems were published in magazines in the United States, England and France. In 1924 he returned to Canada and worked as a free-lance writer in the Toronto Star Weekly.

He married Myrtle Gamble (1901-1995) in 1927, and they had one child together, Imogen (neé Knister) Givens (1930-2010). During this time he published his first novel White Narcissus in 1929, and wrote a second, the prize winning My Star Predominant. Knister was well known in the arts community of Toronto and was an early proponent of Canadian literature. In 1932 he was offered a permanent position at Ryerson Press, the same publisher who had accepted his second novel for publishing. However, he was unable to take up this position due to his untimely death by drowning in August of that year¬. My Star Predominant was published posthumously in 1934. He is known today as one of the first modern writers of Canada and as one of its first professional writers.

Sources:
G. Betts, “Introduction” in After Exile (Exile Editions, 2003); Raymond Knister, The First Day of Spring: Stories and Other Prose (University of Toronto Press, 1976); C. Morris, “John Raymond Knister,” Find a Grave, 12 October 2008, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/30523486/john-raymond-knister (accessed 20 June 2022); C. Morris, “Imogen Roberta Knister Givens,” Find a Grave, 28 June 2010, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/54246613/imogen-roberta-givens (accessed 20 June 2022); P. Stevens, “Raymond Knister,” in The Canadian Encyclopedia, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/raymond-knister (accessed 20 June 2022).