Mary Margaret Watson was born in Exeter, Devonshire, in England. Homer Ransford Watson and Roxanna "Roxa" Betchtel adopted her in December of 1907. She was their only living child. Mary Watson died on July 14, 1982, in Cambridge, Ontario.

Homer Watson was born at Doon, Ontario in 1855 where he lived for 81 years. Early in his teens he was exhibiting his drawings at the annual fall fairs, held in surrounding communities. One of his earliest efforts, "The Pioneer Mill", appeared at the first exhibition of the Royal Canadian Academy and was purchased by the Marquis of Lorne for Queen Victoria. He took a prize in Montreal for his painting; was awarded a gold medal at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904; was elected as associate of the Royal Canadian Academy on the organization of that body in 1880; became full academician in 1882; elected president of the Canadian Art Club in 1907 and 1911; was president of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1918. He died in May 1936.

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.

Margaret Cameron Washburn (nee Gillespie) was born ca. 1867. She married Clark Grant Washburn on October 27, 1890 and resided afterwards in Berlin (now Kitchener), Ontario. She died in 1963.

Adam Warnock was married to Stephanie Hespeler, who was the aunt of Stephanie Urbs. He was a merchant in Galt. He was born in Scotland on July 20, 1828. He died on August 29, 1902.

Alice Wanless was born Alice Philp in 1861. She married George A. Wanless on January 5, 1887 and resided in Kitchener, Ontario for a short time. She died November 27, 1955 in Edmonton, Alberta.

John Walter, Jr. was a Canadian politician and businessman. The eldest of four children, he was born April 10, 1892 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to John and Caroline (nee Drier). He attended elementary school in Milwaukee and Detroit, Michigan before attending high school at the Crane Technical High School in Chicago, Illinois. He immigrated to Canada with his family in 1912 and worked alongside his father and brother as a manufacturer with the family company, John Walter & Sons. He married Olga Klehn, of Kitchener, on August 9, 1922. They lived for a time at 32 Fairview Avenue in Kitchener, Ontario.

In the 1930s Walter served first as Vice-President and later President of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (C.C.F) party's Kitchener branch. He ran against and lost in the 1935 federal election to William Daum Euler. In addition to his affiliation with the C.C.F., Walter served as a Kitchener public school board trustee for nine years during the 1920s and 30s.

Walter died on April 17, 1978.

"The Walter Bean Grand River Community Trails Foundation is a non-profit organization led by a volunteer board of area citizens dedicated to the success of the project. The catalyst for the development of the Trail was the Kitchener-Waterloo Community Foundation whose directors voted in 1996 to provide $25,000.00 in seed money to initiate the project. Walter Bean was a business and community leader who believed in contributing to the welfare of area residents. He championed the vision of a public hiking trail along the Grand River. As Honourary Chair of The Kitchener and Waterloo Community Foundation, Walter challenged the Foundation to increase public accessibility to the river by building a trail along its length in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo.

Following Walter's death, his many friends took up his challenge and in 1998 formed The Walter Bean Grand River Community Trails Foundation. To make his vision a reality, this non-profit fundraising corporation has partnered with the cities of Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo and the Township of Woolwich to build and maintain a recreational trail. It would please Walter to see the co-operative spirit of community in building this legacy. When complete, the Walter Bean Grand River Trail will extend along 78 km of the 290-km Grand River. It will reach from the north end of Woolwich Township to the southern trailhead in Cambridge. Along its way, it will connect with many local municipal trails and the Trans Canada Trail."

Claire Wallace was a Canadian radio broadcaster and journalist, and one of the first women to broadcast nationally over the CBC. Born in Orangeville, Ont., she attended Branksome Hall and initially worked for The Toronto Star writing a column titled "Over the Teacups" which parlayed into, as radio show on station CFRB Toronto in 1935, called "Teatime topics." She joined CBC in 1936 and by 1942 she was hosting the thrice weekly show "They Tell Me." She married James C. Stutt in the same year. In 1946 she won the Beaver Award from Broadcaster Magazine as Canada's top woman commentator. Beginning in the 1940's she also became an advocate for women's rights, and could lay to claim to many "first woman to..." titles. In 1952 Claire returned to broadcasting on CFRB where should would continue for many years while writing books such as "Mind Your Manners", an etiquette guide, which was published in 1953. For several years, beginning in 1955, she ran the Claire Wallace Travel Bureau in Toronto taking tourists to such locations as China and Russia. Claire was also a member of many organizations including the Canadian Women's Press Club and the Heliconian Club for artists and worked actively to raise money for several charities. Claire died in 1968 in Toronto.

Philip Walker spent 32 years at The Record, documenting the region of Waterloo. He was a photojournalist who created great photos of the region, capturing moments readers will remember. He took his last photos for the Record in 2014, when the physical demands of the job became too much.

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.

Rev. Louis Henry Wagner was born April 11, 1857 in New York to Jacob Wagner and Margaret Hailer. After his father's death his mother re-married Daniel Biehn (Bean) and he was educated in primary school. At the age of 13 he was invited to move to Kitchener by his grandfather Jacob Hailer and his uncle Louis Breithaupt. Here he attended Berlin Central School, high school, and then apprenticed as a tanner under his uncle Louis. He later attended Northwestern College in Naperville, Illinois. In 1878 he returned to Kitchener and worked again for his uncle as a bookkeeper and salesman. In 1882 he began working as an itinerant preacher for the Evangelical Association. He married Mary Staebler (1859-1887) on May 20, 1884 and she died two weeks after giving birth to their only child, Louis. He re-married in 1889 to Sarah Lodema Moyer (1861-1941). Louis Henry would continue to preach in Ontario, Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan until his death. He died in Kitchener on January 8, 1945 at the age of 87 and was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery.

Born in Siefersheim, German, Jacob emigrated to Lyons, New York, with his parents in 1840. He originally worked as a farmer and a cooper before beginning to preach at age 18 under the tutelage of Rev. Joseph Harlacher. Jacob married Margaret Hailer (1831-1918) and they had two living children, Rev. Louis Henry (1857-1945) and Catherine (b.1852).

Born in German, Henry Wagner emigrated to Lyons, New York with his wife Anna Maria Eckhard (1796-1850) and son Jacob Wagner in 1840 where he established a farm.

Gordon Wagner is the great grandson of Jacob Hailer and grandson of Louis Henry Wagner, who was a first cousin of Louis Jacob Breithaupt.

The Wagners and Hailers were prominent early settler families in Waterloo County, Ontario, as were the Staebler, Biehn/Bean and Breithaupt families.

Susanne von Harpe (nee Baroness von Stackelberg) was born in what is now Tartu, Estonia in 1914. After school she worked in farming and housekeeping and In 1935 she married Ulrich von Harpe. In 1940 the family fled to Germany after Russian troops had occupied Estonia, settling in Schroda. On January 20, 1945 Susanne, Ulrich and their children fled West ultimately to Dotzum. On December 7, 1951 the family sailed to Canada arriving on December 23, and taking the train to their farm in Linwood, Ontario. Susanne spent many years traveling with her husband who was a sailor, and enjoyed painting and writing. Susanne died July 29th, 2008.

Wilhelmine "Minnie" Ahrens was born April 26, 1855 in Kitchener, Ontario to parents Charles Andrew Ahrens and Henrietta Charlotte Roth. She married Ferdinand Von Ende November 12, 1891 and the couple lived in Preston, Ontario. Minnie died May 17, 1933 and is buried in Preston with her husband. who died October 27, 1935.

Leonora Laura Thusnelda Hagedorn was born January 26, 1874 to Ernst Adolph Philip and Maria Magdalena "Mary" (nee Kappler) Hagedorn. She married John Edward Thomas Vogt on September 30, 1896 in Berlin, Ontario (now Kitchener) and together they had three children: Charles Henry, Ernest William, and George Theodore. Vogt died May 11, 1911 from septic poisoning and was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery.

Bernt Vik was born in Stavanger, Norway, and died in 1999 at the age of 84. He was trained as a textile engineer-designer in Sweden. During the Second World war he was active in the Norwegian anti-Nazi resistance. He came to Canada in 1955 and was employed in a number of textile-related enterprises until retirement in the mid-1980's.

Victoria University is a federated college with the University of Toronto that provides secular studies in the liberal arts and sciences. It was founded in 1836 and named after Queen Victoria.

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.

1867: Charles Théodore Viau sets up a bakery on rue Sainte-Marie (now Notre Dame) in Montreal, Quebec. The business makes bread and biscuits, including Village biscuits, which exist to this day in the Dare Traditions line.

1900-1901: Théophile Viau, son of the founder, created the first chocolate-coated mallow cookie, "Empire," the precursor of the Whippet, a top-selling Dare brand today.

1906: The planned construction of a new Canadian Pacific rail line forces the expropriation of the Viau factory in downtown Montreal, Quebec.

1907: Opening of a new factory constructed on 1st Ave., now Viau St., just north of Ontario St., in a new suburban area which became known as "Viauville."

1926: Viau listed on the Montreal Stock Exchange, being only the second French-Canadian institution to be admitted, after la Banque Canadienne Nationale.

1927: Whippet launched (named after a popular new Willys-Overland car called Whippet).

1952: $2 million project to almost double the factory, convert the heating plant to oil and add a new administrative building on Ontario St. opposite the plant.

1969: Viau is acquired by Grissol Food Limited (Yves Hudon).

1972: Grissol, including Viau, is acquired by Imasco Foods Limited, the food arm of Imperial Tobacco company.

1983: Imasco Foods, including Viau, is acquired by Culinar.

1999: Montreal cheese company Saputo Inc. buys Culinar, made up of the Vachon snack cakes business and CFS (Cookies, Fine Breads and Soups).

2001: Dare Foods Limited buys Culinar CFS (Cookies, Fine Breads and Soups) from Saputo Inc. Culinar is dissolved.

2003: St. Lambert (formerly Culinar's Lido) cookie plant expanded to accommodate production transferred from former Viau plant in Montreal, Quebec.

2004: Former Viau cookie plant at Viau and Ontario Streets in east-end Montreal closed and sold to a developer for re-purposing as "La Biscuiterie" residential condos.

2004: Dare sells the Loney's soups business to Produits Alimentaires Berthelet of Montreal.

Verkade was founded in 1886 by Ericus Verkade as a bakery making mostly bread and rusks. The company expanded overtime to produce cookies, sweets, and chocolates. In November 2014, the company was acquired by Pladis, a global biscuit, chocolate and confectionery company owned by Yıldız Holding.

Scott Alexander Vanstone was a professor of mathematics at St. Jerome's University and Waterloo Department of Combinatorics and Optimization, and was known for his work in combinatorial design theory, finite geometry and finite fields. Born in 1947, he completed his studies in math at Waterloo (BMath '70, MMath '71, PhD '74). Upon his retirement in 2009, he was appointed Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Vanstone died in Campbellville, Ontario on March 2, 2014.