- CA QUA12331
- Persona
- 1928-2020
Betty (MacRae) Harrison was born in Ottawa, February 2, 1928. A graduate of Queen's University, Arts '50, Harrison taught high school English and Phys-Ed. She died in Toronto on January 29, 2020.
Betty (MacRae) Harrison was born in Ottawa, February 2, 1928. A graduate of Queen's University, Arts '50, Harrison taught high school English and Phys-Ed. She died in Toronto on January 29, 2020.
Edgar Horwood was an architect in Ottawa, Ont. who maintained a private practise, and who served as Chief Architect for the Government of Canada. He worked in the following offices: E.L. Horwood, Ottawa, 1895 to 1906, Horwood & Taylor, Ottawa, 1907-1910 (with L. Fennings Taylor), Horwood, Taylor & Horwood, Ottawa, 1911-1914 (with L. Fennings Taylor, and his brother Allan W. Horwood), E.L. Horwood, Chief Architect, Dept. of Public Works, 1915-1919, E.L. Horwood, Ottawa, 1920-1928, Horwood & Horwood, Ottawa, 1929-1930 (with his brother Allan W. Horwood), E.L. Horwood, Ottawa, 1931-1940.
The Luxfer Prism Company started life in October 1896 as the Radiating Light Company, founded by James Gray Pennycuick to commercialize his patent No. 312,290 for "an improvement in window-glass" (filed 1882, granted 1885). His improvement was the addition of horizontal prisms to the back side of square glass tiles, which redirected sunlight from windows where it was plentiful, back deep into rooms where light was scarce, reducing the need for artificial lighting and light wells. The Company's first president was John Meiggs Ewen; secretary, Henry M. Bacon; Thomas W. Horn and Pennycuick, founders. After two months, the company's name was changed to Semi-prism Glass Company, and finally In April 1897 to Luxfer Prism Company, "Luxfer" from the Latin words lux (light) and ferre (to carry). They hired "prominent physics professor and spectroscopist", Henry Crew (Northwestern University), and his assistant Olin H. Basquin to develop scientific basis for company products. Luxfer is the best known name in prism glass, now particularly for their association with Frank Lloyd Wright, who designed some of their "Iridian" prism tiles. Of his 41 patented designs, only the well-known "flower" pattern was produced. Luxfer was eventually bought by American 3-Way Prism Company, their main competitor, forming the American 3-Way Luxfer Prism Company.
George Martin was an architect in Smith's Falls, Ont. and in surrounding counties of Lanark, Leeds and Grenville for nearly twenty-five years. Born in Surrey, England he came to Canada in 1870 and settled in Toronto where he worked as a carpenter and builder. In 1879 or 1880 he moved to eastern Ontario where much of his work involved the construction of passenger stations and bridges for the Canadian Pacific Railway, but his achievements in this field fall outside the scope of this work. In early 1889 he moved to Smith's Falls and opened an architectural office (Rideau Record [Smith's Falls], 2 May 1889, 4). Martin's local fame rests largely on his ability to design distinctive and robust institutional and ecclesiastical works. He invariably adopted a brusque Romanesque Revival style for his large scale projects, taking advantage of the abundance of building stone found in the Hughes quarry near Perth. He also possessed a vision for the 'grand plan', setting out a scheme to connect all the summer resorts on the Rideau River with an electric railway system (C.R., x, 16 Aug. 1899, 3). In 1907 he was the patentee of a method to improve the construction of railway coaches (C.A.B., xx, June 1907, x). Few works can be attributed to him after 1910. Martin died in Smith's Falls on 4 March 1925
Henry Smith, a politician, lawyer, and land speculator, was born 23 April 1812 in London, England. He immigrated to Canada with his parents before 1818. The family settled in Montreal, where Henry attended Benjamin Workman's private school, and, after they moved to Kingston in the early 1820s, he completed his education at the Midland District Grammar School. He studied law under Christopher Hagerman and Thomas Kirkpatrick, and was admitted to the bar in 1834. He was appointed QC in 1846, and became a lawyer for the Grand Trunk Railway in Kingston in 1853.
In 1841, Smith was elected to the Legislative Assembly for Frontenac and held the seat until 1861, when he decided to leave the Conservative party. After two subsequent failed runs, he regained his seat in 1867, but fell ill shortly thereafter. He died in Kingston, Ontario on 18 September 1868.
Nancy E. Simpson, a well-respected geneticist, started her scientific career by obtaining an undergraduate degree in Physical and Health Education from the University of Toronto, followed by a Master of Science in Physical Education at Columbia. Simpson taught for several years but decided to change her focus to human genetics and pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Toronto under Dr. Norma Ford Walker. Simpson researched juvenile diabetes mellitus and was able to demonstrate that Type I diabetes was genetically distinct from adult onset diabetes and had multifactorial causes. After a post-doctoral year at Nuffield Hospital in Oxford, England, Simpson became a Research Associate at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and obtained a Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship in population genetics for the Medical Research Council of Canada. Additionally, Simpson spent five years in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Toronto investigating the genetics of cholinesterases with Dr. Werner Kalow.
In 1965, Simpson moved to Queen’s University and continued her research on juvenile diabetes and serum cholinesterase. Her cross-appointments to the Departments of Pediatrics and Biology brought the first medical geneticist to the Faculty. Around this time, Simpson completed an extensive analysis of factors influencing serum cholinesterase in a Brazilian population and started studying serum cholinesterase in Canadian families when one member had a prolonged apnea after succinylcholine. This began an effort to collect a reasonable number of families with extremely rare cholinesterase variants for formal genetic studies, which was commonly found in Inuit and Indigenous communities.
In the early 1970s, Simpson was part of a group of genetic pioneers in Canada who became interested in perinatal diagnosis and collaborated in a five-year national study to assess the extent and effectiveness of these new initiatives. She was particularly interested in circumpolar genetics and studies of genetics disease in polar natives and participated in international meetings to disseminate this knowledge. As part of her research, Simpson spent time in Igloolik studying its population and collecting samples and family histories. Later in the decade, she became interested in linkage and mapping studies and moved into molecular genetics in the 1980s.
Towards the end of her career, Simpson turned her energies to the mapping of the locus for multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2a (MEN-2), a form of hereditary thyroid cancer identified by surgeons at Hotel Dieu Hospital in a Prince Edward County family. Simpson even helped organize the First International MEN-2 Conference in Kingston at Queen’s in 1984. A breakthrough occurred in 1988, when she found the marker gene on chromosome 10 in collaboration with Dr. Kenneth Kidd and his group at Yale University. Her application of recombinant DNA technology and the mapping of the MEN-2 gene won her national and international acclaim, including the Queen’s University award for Excellence in Research in 1989.
Simpson was a founding member of the Canadian College of Medical Geneticists and served on the board as treasurer and later, president. In 1994, She was awarded their Founder’s Award, an annual award to one member of the College who has made an outstanding contribution to Canadian medical genetics. Simpson also served as the Director of the Division of Medical Genetics in the Department of Pediatrics from 1980-1986.
At Queen’s University, Simpson made many contributions to teaching and various committees in Biology, Pediatrics and Graduate Studies. In 2004, Queen’s University established the Nancy Simpson Scholarship in Genetics in her honor to recognize the best Masters or Ph.D. student at Queen’s in a field of genetics.