Thomas Hector McLeod was born in 1918 in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. McLeod attended Brandon College where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics. After graduate studies at Indiana University, where he attained his A.M. in 1941, he returned to Brandon College as an Assistant Professor from 1941 – 1944. He received a Masters degree in Public Administration (1948) and a Ph.D. in economics and government (1959). Both of these degrees were from Harvard University. From 1944 to 1952 McLeod worked as a public servant for the Province of Saskatchewan; for Tommy Douglas on many political campaigns and became his first economic advisor. By 1952 he was the Deputy Provincial Treasurer (Deputy Minister of Finance). In 1952 McLeod moved to Saskatoon to become a Professor of Administration and Dean of the College of Commerce at the University of Saskatchewan and in 1964 he returned to Regina to become the first Dean of the new College of Arts and Sciences for the University of Saskatchewan, Regina Campus, a position he held until 1971 when he became Special Advisor on University Affairs and Public Administration to the President of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). From 1974 to 1983 Thomas McLeod worked in the public service of Canada. In a fifteen year span McLeod moved around the world. Turkey, Iran, Africa, Central America, the Carribean, Thailand and Nigeria saw him in roles as a consultant advisor for the Ford Foundation in Turkey (5 months). In Iran in 1961-62, he was advising on the preparation of a national seven-year economic development plan and in 1969 he was a member on the special planning commission for the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. From 1971 to 1975, in Africa, Central America, the Carribean and Thailand, Thomas McLeod worked as a special advisor and later Director of Program Evaluation for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and in 1980-81, while on leave from the Government of Canada, he was the Academic Director of the Agricultural and Rural Management Training Institute in Ilorin, Nigeria. From 1952 to 1994, in addition to those involvements mentioned above, Thomas McLeod was also involved with the University of Saskatchewan’s University Hospital as a board member and held various posts with the United Church in Saskatoon; he was a member of the Royal Commission on Public Accounting, Saskatchewan; a member of the Minister of Education’s special committee on Adult Education; Chairman of the Royal Commission on Taxation for Saskatchewan; Chairman of the University (of Saskatchewan) Senate Committee on “The Role of the University in the Province”; President of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada; President of the Association of Colleges of Commerce and Business Administration for Canada, and for twenty years, (1974 to 1994), was Treasurer of the Douglas-Coldwell Foundation. Acknowledging the contributions to his profession and his community he was awarded the Honourary Designation of C.A. by the Institute Chartered Accountants, Saskatchewan; the Vanier Medal was awarded by the Institute Public Administration of Canada; from his alma mater, Brandon University, he was awarded an L.L.D., as well as an Alumni Outstanding Service Award, an L.L.D. from the University of Saskatchewan and in 2002 Thomas McLeod received the Order of Canada. McLeod formally retired in 1985 but continued to work on a biography of Tommy Douglas with his son, Ian McLeod. The book, Tommy Douglas: the Road to Jerusalem was published in 1987, he also edited Post Secondary Education in a Technological Society.
Arthur (Art) McKay was born on September 11, 1926, in Nipawin, Saskatchewan. He studied in Calgary at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art from 1946 to 1948 and later studied at the Academie de La Grande Chaumiere in Paris, France, at Columbia University in New York and at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania.
Returning to Canada, Art McKay was hired as a Special Lecturer in Art with the School of Fine Arts at Regina by Ken Lochhead. He became Associate Professor of Art in 1956 and served as the Director of the School of Art from 1964 to1967.
McKay spent a term teaching art at the Nova Scotia College of Art in 1967-68, and taught at the University of Regina as an Associate Professor until his retirement in 1987.
He attended and helped plan the Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops in 1955 (with Jack Shadbolt), 1957 (with Wil Barnet), and 1959 (Barnett Newman).
McKay is known as one of the Regina Five who exhibited at the National Gallery in 1961. These five artists were considered to be leaders of the Canadian abstract art movement. McKay’s work has been shown all across Canada and in the United States, he was included in the Los Angeles exhibition organized by the New York art critic, Clement Greenberg entitled "Post-Painterly Abstraction" in 1964. Only three Canadians were to be included in this show.
McKay is most noted for his "mandalas" (scraped enamel using circular and rectangular formats creating highly contemplative images which reflect his interest in Zen Buddhism).
James Napier McCrorie was born in Montreal in 1936. At McGill University Jim studied sociology and came to Saskatchewan to work with the Saskatchewan Farmers Union. He completed a Ph.D. degree through the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1964 and the next year he joined the University of Saskatchewan, Regina Campus.
Social activism and teaching were important issues to Jim, issues such as North Sea oil development, Scotland's Roderick MacFarquar, rural development and sustainability. The Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, a part of the International Brigades involved in Spain’s Civil War 1936 to 1939, and the 1935 On-to-Ottawa Trek were also of special interest to McCrorie.
McCrorie became Director of the Canadian Plains Research Center in the 1980's and retired in 1996. He passed away in 2013 and was the author of, or contributed to, many publications.
Dave Margoshes was born in the United States and attended school in New York City and in New Jersey. He received a Bachelor of Arts and a Master's degree in Fine Arts from the University of Iowa.
He worked in newspapers in several American cities before immigrating to Canada in the 1970s; subsequently, he worked on newspapers in Vancouver and Calgary and taught journalism at Calgary's Mount Royal College and Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. Since moving to Saskatchewan in 1986, he's been writer-in-residence in Winnipeg (1995-96) and Saskatoon (2001-02), taught creative writing and journalism at the University of Regina, and has given readings and writing workshops across the country.
Margoshes is the author of two novels, Drowning Man and I'm Frankie Sterne; a novella, We Who Seek: A Love Story; five short story collections, Fables of Creation, Long Distance Calls, Nine Lives, Small Regrets, and Bix's Trumpet and Other Stories, which was a double winner at the 2007 Saskatchewan Book Awards, including Book of the Year. He has four collections of poetry: The Horse Knows the Way, Purity of Absence, Northwest Passages, and Walking at Brighton; he is also the author of a biography, Tommy Douglas: Building the New Society, and of a junior high school resource book, used in both Canadian and American schools.
Dave Margoshes' stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, and have been broadcast on CBC.
Margoshes has been very active in the writing community in both Saskatchewan and nationally. He received the Saskatchewan Writers Guild Volunteer Award in 2000 for, among other things, helping to organize the Saskatchewan Book Awards (he was the first chairman for this event). He's won several awards for his fiction and poetry, including the Stephen Leacok Poetry Award.
Dave Margoshes currently lives in Regina.
Eric Malling was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, on September 4, 1946. He attended the University of Saskatchewan, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, and went on to the School of Journalism at Carleton University. After graduation, he worked for the Swift Current Sun and the Regina Leader-Post. In 1968 he began work for the Toronto Star and in 1974, he started doing interviews on Canada AM for CTV. Malling joined CBCs The Fifth Estate in 1976, hosting it for 14 years. In 1990 he joined W5 at CTV. This program was renamed W5 With Eric Malling. Malling won one Gemini Award and six ACTRA awards. He is the only person to have won the Gordon Sinclair Award for excellence in broadcast journalism three times.
Eric Malling died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Toronto on September 28, 1998.
Grace Maguire was born in Govan, Saskatchewan in 1908. She attended Regina College in 1925 and went on to teach school in several small town schools in Saskatchewan. She married in 1928 and lived in Winnipeg until her death in 1977.