Philip Ludwig (Louis) Beithaupt was born in Allendorf an der Werra, Kurhessen, Germany November 8, 1827 to parents Liborius Breithaupt and Barbara Catharina Goetz. The family moved to Buffalo, N.Y. in 1843, where his father owned a sheep skin processing factory. After the death of Liborius in 1851, Louis, as he was known, continued his father's business and is also listed as a carpenter. On a visit to Berlin, Ontario he met Catherine Hailer, to whom he was married February 8, 1853. The couple lived in Buffalo, and were living in Albany, New York according the United States Civil War draft records of June1863. It is not known if Louis fought in the Civil War. The family are listed in the 1871 Ontario census as living in Berlin (later Kitchener) Ontario where Philip established a leather business followed by the establishment of a tannery. He became one of the leading businessmen in Berlin, serving as Mayor from 1879 to 1880.

Louis and Catherine had ten children: Louis Jacob; William Henry; John Christian; Caroline Margaret Barbara; Melvina Emilia; Ezra Carl; Daniel Edward; Albert Libroius; Catharine Louise; and Friederich Adolph. Louis died July 3, 1880 and is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery, Kitchener.

James Horace King was born on January 18, 1873, in Chipman (Queens Co., New Brunswick) to George Gerald and Esther King (nee Briggs). He attended McGill University and earned a medical degree in 1895. He practiced in New Brunswick until 1898, when he moved to the Kootenays (British Columbia). In 1907, he married Nellie Mae Sadler (1876-1949). And, in 1951, King married Flora May Johnson (1881-1967).
In 1903, James Horace King was elected as a member of the Liberal party in British Columbia and served in the Legislative Assembly for Cranbrook riding. In 1916 he won a provincial seat, becoming a representative of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. In 1922, King joined the federal government with Prime Minister Hon. William Lyon Mackenzie King as the Minister of Public Works (1922-1926), later becoming acting Minister of Labour (1925-1926), Minister of Soldiers’ Civil Re-establishment (1926-1928), Minister of Health (1926-1928), and Minister of Pensions and National Health (1928-1930). In 1942, King became Minister without Portfolio (1942-1945) and Senator until his death on July 14, 1955.

Camilla Young was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey (United States of America) in 1946, and grew up in Woodbridge, New Jersey. Young was a professional writer, a fashion commentator, a consultant, and a model. She coordinated New Jersey's Miss Black America Pageant and judged other pageants.

Mabel Welma Fox was born in 1903 in Grand Rapids (Michigan) to Cornelius Fox and Jennie Gertrude Fox (nee Fisher). Fox attended Grand Rapids Junior College for her freshman and sophomore years. In 1921, Fox enrolled in the School of Education at the College of Literature Science and Arts at the University of Michigan from where she graduated in 1923 with a Bachelor of Arts in Education. During her time at the University of Michigan, Fox lived at the Betsy Barbour Women’s Residence Hall and the Martha Cook Building and worked as a botany assistant. After graduation, Fox worked as a teacher. In 1938, she became a teacher at Chelsea High School (Michigan).
During her life, Fox was an active member of the Michigan Education Association and a member of Chelsea Methodist Church, as well as president of the Church board.
Mabel Welma Fox died at 57 on December 23, 1960, in Chelsea (Michigan).

Alfred Henry Tyrer was born in Birkdale, Lancashire (England, United Kingdom) around 1870, to William and Anna Williams Tyrer. He emigrated to Canada during his twenties. In 1894, Tyrer married Mary “Minnie” Adelaide Golden (1868-1929) in Hamilton (Ontario). The couple had one child named Elliott Golden Tyrer (1902-1972). Alfred Henry Tyrer worked as a Reverend for the Church on England in Canada and published several books on the matters of sex education and birth control. Tyrer died in York (Ontario) on April 28, 1942.

Christina Eidt was born June 30, 1834 in Germany.

Ratz died March 29, 1974 in Hamilton, Ontario and was buried at Woodland Cemetery.

Ekwele Lobe Nwalipenja was a Cameroonian teacher and government official. Nwalipenja was November 26, 1930 at Lobe Batanga in the Ndian division of what is now Cameroon. He attended elementary school in Kurumeh and Kumba, going on to study at the Government Teachers Training College, Kumba, in 1950 and then to Bambili where he studied rural science in 1958. He worked as a school manager from 1961 to 1964. In 1964 he was awarded a scholarship from the Presbyterian Church in Canada, where he travelled at the age of 35 to study at St. Paul's University College in Waterloo, Ontario, leaving a wife and four children in Cameroon. He graduated from St. Paul's with a Bachelor of Arts in history and political science in 1966, returning to Cameroon where he went on to spend the remainder of his career in various government roles. He served as Secretary for all council schools of what was then West Cameroon in 1967, and a year later was appointed Education Officer in the North West Province. In 1972 he was appointed Secretary of State of the economic division of the Prime Minister's office and went on to serve as Member of Parliament for Ndian Division, among other roles, including Minister Plenipotentiary.

[Rob?] Gurdebeke worked at the Record 1988-1989.

Mabel Edena Neiley was born in Greenwood, Nova Scotia on September 27, 1887 (although some census records indicate 1889 as her birth year). She lived in Greenwood, Kingston, and Yarmouth (Nova Scotia) before migrating to the United States of America on December 11, 1913.
Neiley trained as a nurse and was called into active service on July 1, 1918. Since then and until April 15, 1920, Neiley worked as a U.S. Army nurse living in New York, Washington D.C., Georgia, and Ohio being part of the nursing U.S. staff during part of the First World War and the 1918 Influenza pandemic. During that time, she served in at least three hospitals: Walter Reeds in Washington D.C., Camp Gordon in Georgia, and the Columbus Barracks in Ohio.
In March 1925, Neiley moved to Los Angeles County and lived in Palo Alto, Pasadena, and Ventura. While in California, Neiley worked at the Pasadena Preventorium (Pasadena, California) as a nurse and superintendent.
Mabel E. Neiley died in Ventura (California) on March 14, 1976, at 88 and is buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Los Angeles.

James (Jim) William Saint George Walker was born on August 5, 1940, in Toronto, and grew up in Agincourt, Ontario. Walker received his Bachelor's degree in History from Trinity College at the University of Toronto (1962), his Master’s degree in History from the University of Waterloo (1967), and his Ph.D. in History from Dalhousie University (1973). In 1976, Walker published his Ph.D. dissertation under the title The Black Loyalists: the search for a promised land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783-1870 with Longman International Education, which he later republished with the University of Toronto Press in 1992 and 2017.

During his time as a student in the 1960s, Walker worked in a Gandhian ashram in India under the auspices of Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO) and he participated in the local support group for the US civil rights movement (“Friends of SNCC”) in Toronto. During Canada’s Centennial, he was Youth and Education Director for the Centennial International Development Programme. While at Dalhousie, Walker co-founded and taught the "Transition Year Program" designed to prepare African-Canadian and First Nations students for university entrance.

James Walker joined the University of Waterloo as a History professor in 1971. At the University of Waterloo, he created the first university-level course in African-Canadian History offered in Canada and Canada's first Public History graduate program; served as Chair of the Department of History (1981-1986); and taught courses in general History and Race relations, courses focused on Black Canadian and African History, and courses on Social History and Public History. During his research, teaching, and public speaker career his talks, publications, and courses focused on the history of African-Canadians, Canadian and international human rights, Racism in Canada, Race relations in Canada, Immigration, the Holocaust, and civil society and public history.

While in Waterloo, Walker co-founded and was a long-time board member of the Global Community Centre of Kitchener-Waterloo and has served on the boards of several NGOs with an international focus (including CUSO, the WUSC local committee, and the board of the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute). Between 2003 and 2004, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council appointed Walker the Bora Laskin National Fellow in Human Rights Research. In 2013, Walker was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. And in 2016, he was invested as a Member of the Order of Canada.

In 2020, Walker retired from his professor role and remained as Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the University of Waterloo.

During his professional years, James Walker published numerous articles, book chapters, and books, including, among others:

• The Black Loyalists : The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, Longman and Dalhousie University Press, 1976 (1992, 2017).
• Racial discrimination in Canada: the Black experience, Canadian Historical Association, 1985.
• "Race," Rights and the Law in the Supreme Court of Canada: Historical Case Studies, The Osgoode Society and Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997.
• Critical Mass: The Emergence of Global Civil Society, Centre for International Governance Innovation and Wilfrid Laurier University Press, co-authored with Andrew Thompson, 2008.
• “A Black Day in Court: ‘Race’ and Judging in R v RDS” in The African-Canadian Legal Odyssey, edited by Barrington Walker, Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History and University of Toronto Press, 2012.
• Burnley "Rocky" Jones : revolutionary : an autobiography, Fernwood Publishing, 2016.

Elizabeth "Lizzie" Doten (April 1, 1827 – January 15, 1913) was a prominent American lecturer, poet and trance medium. Lizzie was well known for her supposed ability to channel poetry from Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Burns and William Shakespeare. Born in Plymouth, Massachusetts both of her parents were Mayflower descendants. Two of her brothers would go on to lead the first two Union companies to deploy from Plymouth during the Civil War. Active on the lecture circuit from 1864-1880 she would speak in trances as well as lecture on topics including religious freedom, women's rights (including suffrage and equal pay), and abolition. Doten retired from lecturing in 1880 and in 1902 married her long time companion Zabdiel Adams Willard (1826–1918). They lived in Brookline, Massachusetts until her death in 1913.

Professor Anita Layton is the Canada 150 Chair in Mathematical Biology and Medicine, and Professor of Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Pharmacy and Biology at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Layton also serves as the Associate Dean, Research and International in the Faculty of Mathematics as well as leads the Layton group: a diverse and interdisciplinary team of researchers using computational modeling tools to better understand aspects of health and disease.

In 2022, Camille Huo was a fourth year student at the University of Waterloo's School of Pharmacy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Camille held a co-op work placement in a Toronto hospital pharmacy that was one of the first to provide the COVID-19 vaccine. During this time, Camille created a handout about pain management for children and was responsible for the pharmacy's COVID-19 clinic scheduling and inventory. Camille's achievements earned her the 2021 Co-op Student of the Year Award.

Judi Jewinski is a retired Administrative Dean at Renison University College. Jewinski established the regional affiliate of Teachers of English as a Second Language Association of Ontario (TESL), a professional federation of English as a Second Language teachers of all levels in 1979. Jewinski was the Director of the University of Waterloo’s English Language Institute at Renison and she is the author of books that focus on writing and grammar.

Bharti Vibhakar is an Indian-Canadian business owner, chef and teacher. Born and raised in South Yemen, she moved to Mumbai (then called Bombay) at 22 years of age, where she married and had two children. She immigrated to Canada in 1980, after divorcing her husband. Vibhakar and her daughters initially settled in Guelph, Ontario and moved in 1984 to Kitchener, Ontario. In 1986 she opened Spice of India, on King Street East, where she sold spices for use in cooking and remedies for common ailments, and taught cooking classes with a focus on vegetarian Indian cuisine. She also operated a stall at the Kitchener market, which first opened in 1990, where she sold more than 400 samosas on a typical Saturday. In 1992 Vibhakar released a cookbook titled Spice of India. The publication was edited and introduced by Record columnist Luisa D'Amato. In 2009, at the age of 70, Vibhakar retired, closing both her store and her market stall.

Watfor is a character and cartoon strip created for The Chevron by Don Kerr in 1966. The character appeared in The Chevron until approximately April 1968.

Watfor was inspired by the Fortran computer program called WATFOR which was developed by a group of University of Waterloo undergraduates in 1965. Watfor lived in the campus pond in front of the Health Services Building. It is unclear exactly what type of character Watfor is. The character refers to itself as a tad, fish, troll, and pond denizen. It may be part computer, part fish. In the comic strips, Watfor commented on campus happenings. The character was also printed on some ephemeral items such as ribbons distributed to the Orientation Committee on campus in the late 1960s.

Don Kerr was a graduate student at the University of Waterloo in the department of design when he created Watfor. He had recently graduated from the University of Manitoba as an architect and came to Waterloo to further his studies, specifically around experimental colours and architectural illumination.

Cartooning was a hobby for Don Kerr. He created the FDU cartoon strip which ran in the University of Manitoba's newspaper, the Manitoban, as well as the Winnipeg Tribune. He also created Lapinette, a cartoon ad for the Bank of Montreal that ran in the majority of campus newspapers across Canada.

Don Kerr married Mary Robinson, a fellow graduate student in design, in the Conrad Grebel chapel on May 20, 1967. The wedding was featured in an article in The Chevron titled, "This doesn't very often happen: Watfor sees his father married." The article includes a photograph of Don Kerr and Mary Robinson at the wedding ceremony.

Dr. Murchison Callender is a Professor Emeritus with the School of Optometry and Vision Science at the University of Waterloo known for research in the microbiology and physiology of the eye in contact lens wear and the clinical applications of contact lenses, and the investigation of the the anatomical and biochemical mechanisms associated with the refractive changes in the developing eye. In addition to an active research agenda, Callender is known for a long-standing clinical teaching practice and vision care programmes in the Caribbean.

Callender was born in the village of Sainte Madeleine in Trinidad and Tobago to George Elton Callender (1908-2008) and Dorothy Orgato Wilson Callender. His father worked as an accountant for the Usine Ste Madeleine Sugar Estate and later for the Trinidad and Tobago government, and his mother taught at a business school in San Fernando before opening her own business school. Callender attended primary school and high school in San Fernando and excelled in science. After completing high school, he worked for the Trinidad Texaco Oil Company as a Research Assistant.

Immigrating to Canada on September 5, 1958, to attend Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in Montreal, Quebec, as an undergraduate student, where he received his B.Sc. (Biology). Callender completed postgraduate work at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal and developed an interest in the optometry, going on to join the College of Optometry in Toronto. In 1967, the College of Optometry moved to the University of Waterloo and Callender was part of the first graduating class from the School of Optometry at the University of Waterloo in 1968. In addition to optometry training, he also holds a M.Phil (Vision Sciences) from the University of Aston in Birmingham, England.

After graduating from Waterloo, Callendar worked as Assistant Optometrist at the School where he was involved with teaching and clinical aspects of optometry. His appointment as a full-time faculty member is believed to have been the first such appointment of a Black faculty member in optometry in Canada, and perhaps North America. Prior to retiring from the Waterloo, Callendar served in various administrative roles, including the Director of the Contact Lens Clinic and Admissions Officer, and spent several decades managing vision care programmes for people of the Caribbean in both Waterloo and on location, including in Jamaica.

Naila Keleta-Mae is an artist, poet and Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo. The principal investigator of the Black and Free research-creation project, Keleta-Mae is a National Research Council of Canada Dorothy Killam Fellow, and the Tier 2 SSHRC Canada Research Chair in Race, Gender and Performance. Known for her work in Black expressive culture and Black feminisms, her scholarly contributions focus on the cultural production of Black women including music, videos, performances, plays, and poetry, and has authored two books Beyoncé And Beyond: 2013-2016 (2023) and Performing Female Blackness (2023).

Keleta-Mae was born in Toronto, Ontario and was heavily influenced by her parents, who immigrated to Canada from Jamaica in the 1960s, and were active in community building, including as members of the Afro-Caribbean Association of Manitoba during the 1970s. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and Spanish from Concordia University. Keleta-Mae completed a Masters of Arts in 2005 and a Doctorate of Philosophy, Theater Studies in 2012, both at York University. She worked as a faculty advisor at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont for two years, before joining the University of Waterloo as a lecturer in 2011, where she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2020.

In addition to scholarly contributions, research and theatrical performances, since joining Waterloo, Keleta-Mae has regularly written and commentates for major media outlets, and gained international attention in 2015 for centering Beyoncé as a topic of focus in an undergraduate Gender and Performance course. Founded in 2017, her Black and Free research-creation project, which examines Black expression in the 21st century, consists of multi-year research partnerships and includes a research team of more than 30 people. In 2022, Keleta-Mae received the UWaterloo Arts Award for Excellence in Research.

Alan Kenneth Adlington was an economist and university administrator born January 30, 1925. He emigrated to Canada from England in 1930 and served in World War II as part of the Royal Canadian Navy. After the war, he pursued undergraduate studies at from Western University. Adlington served the University of Waterloo from its beginnings in 1957 until 1970. He was the first Business Manager of Waterloo College and Associate Faculties and Secretary to the Board of Governors. He became Vice-President, Administration November 18, 1965 and served in the role until October 12, 1966, when he was named Vice-President, Operations. Adlington's tenure at Waterloo ended June 30, 1970 with a move to the University of Western Ontario to serve as Vice-President, Administration & Finance and later as president (1984-1985) until being named Ontario Deputy Minister of Colleges and Universities. Adlington died in London, Ontario on September 30, 2017.

James (Jim) Keron is an alumnus of the University of Waterloo. Keron graduated with a Bachelor of Mathematics (BMath) in 1970 and a Bachelor of Arts (BA), Anthropology in 1986. Keron also received a Master of Arts (MA), Archeology in 2003 and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Bioarcheology in 2015 from Western University.

During his time as a student at the University of Waterloo, Keron was actively involved in various clubs and committees, including the Folk Music Club and the Federation of Students (now known as the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association, WUSA).

Keron served on the Orientation Committee in 1967, where he played a key role in coordinating events and activities for incoming students. He also served on the Homecoming Committee in 1967 and helped organize the celebration.

In 1968, Keron took on the role of Chairman for Summer Weekend 68, a multi-day event featuring activities and musical performances for the university community, which was organized by the Federation of Students. Additionally, he served as the Chairman of the Board of Student Activities during Fall 1968.

In 1969, Keron served as Chairman of the Orientation Committee and worked as the Treasurer of the Federation of Students between 1969 and 1970.

As a student, Keron also worked with the concert technology group providing sound and lighting for concerts on campus and for performances held at Wilfrid Laurier University, McMaster University, and other venues.

Dennis Huber was a university administrator who upon retiring in 2022 was the University of Waterloo's longest-serving vice-president.