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Winsom (1946 - ) is a prominent Canadian-Jamaican Maroon multi-media artist, activist, arts educator and mentor to young people. She was born in Jamaica and studied at the Jamaica School of Art (1965-1968) in Kingston (now the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts), where she majored in mural painting. She moved to Canada in 1969 and was based predominantly in Hamilton, Kingston, and Toronto. From 2004 to 2022 Winsom was based in both Canada and Belize, and since 2022 has been based in the GTA.

Winsom’s work is known for spiritual symbolism, particularly reflecting Yoruba and Arawak traditions, and for the use of multiple media including painting, textiles, sculpture and video. Her practice, especially her work with textiles, is influenced by her travels and studies across Ghana and West Africa, where she worked with master dryers and Adrinka printers. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and internationally, including the United States and the Caribbean. In 1989 she participated in Black Wimmin: When and Where We Enter, the first Canadian exhibition to feature only the work of Black women artists and to be curated solely by Black women curators. Some of her solo exhibitions include Jumping the Big Boa at the Image Factory Gallery in Belize, The Masks We Wear at the Agnes Etherington Art Gallery at Queen’s University in Kingston, and Winsom: I Rise at the AGO. She has also been involved with several theatre and dance productions as a designer and artist, predominantly with the Nightwood Theatre in Toronto.

In addition to her work as an artist, Winsom has made significant contributions to the arts community as a dedicated and longtime teacher, mentor, and activist. She has taught in schools, workshops, festivals, and other settings to students of all ages. In 1992, Winsom was a founding member and instructor with the Fresh Arts collective, which established programs for Black youth in Toronto to receive mentorship in the arts, including dance, music, and visual arts. She was also a founding member of the Draw It Black Artist’s Collective (DIBAC), a not-for-profit group launched in 2000 that was dedicated to promoting the work of African Canadian artists. Winsom is the Founder and Director of the Winsom Foundation, a Belize-based non-profit organization established in 2007. Through this foundation she supports arts education for young people in the Cristo Rey Village area, through programs such as an after-school arts club. Winsom has worked with many education and community-oriented organizations as an educator and artist, including the YMCA and the Jamaica National Commission for UNESCO. She has frequently shared her knowledge and expertise through presentations, panel talks, and other speaking engagements.

Winsom has been recognized with several awards, including an Honorary Doctorate from the Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCAD) in 2015, the Marilyn Lastman Award from the City of Toronto Arts Foundation in 2002, and a Canada Council Visual Arts “A” Grant in 2003. Her long career as an artist and activist has had tremendous impact on subsequent generations of artists.

Roy Zhi Zheng is a journalist, cinematographer and video editor based in Toronto.

Ruth Jean Blodgett (American-Canadian, 1945-2020) was a curator known for her work on Inuit art and associated with a number of Canadian museums including the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Blodgett was born in Moscow, Idaho and grew up in Prosser, Washington. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Colorado before pursuing a Master’s degree at the University of British Columbia (1974). Blodgett’s MA thesis on multiple human images in Inuit sculpture proved foundational to her career. As a curator at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (ca. 1976-1979) she produced exhibitions on Jessie Oonark, Inuit shamanism and the artists of Povungnituk, among other topics. Through the 1980s, Blodgett worked as a freelance curator, producing significant exhibitions for the Art Gallery of Ontario (Grasp tight the old ways : selections from the Klamer family collection of Inuit art, 1983, and North Baffin drawings: drawings collected by Terry Ryan on North Baffin Island in 1964, 1986), the London Regional Art Gallery (Etidlooie Etidlooie, 1984), and the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Selections from the John and Mary Robertson collection of Inuit sculpture, 1986). By 1984 she had moved to Ottawa where she taught courses at Carleton University. Blodgett was Chief Curator of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection from 1988 to 2000, where she co-led the borrowing of the Kinngait archive of drawings and produced exhibitions and publications on Inuit graphic arts. Her major book on Kenojuak Ashevak was published in 1981 and went through 6 editions. Blodgett moved to Fairbanks, Alaska in 2004, where she was a visiting professor in Arctic Art at the University of Alaska and participated as an expert team member in travel expeditions for Adventure Canada. During this time she continued to do freelance research projects such as In the Shadow of the Midnight Sun for the Art Gallery of Hamilton (2007). Jean Blodgett died in Fairbanks in 2020.

Janice Duff is the grand-niece of George Agnew Reid.

Paul Bennett (1928-2014), curator and arts administrator, was the first Field Director / Adviser of the Art Institute of Ontario (1959-1964). He then became Director, serving until 1968.

Ann Davis (1946-) is a Canadian art historian, curator, museum professional and writer. She published Somewhere Waiting: The Life and Art of Christiane Pflug in 1991 (Toronto: Oxford University Press). Davis is a past director of the Nickle Arts Museum at the University of Calgary.

James Stanley McLean (1876-1954), Toronto business executive and art collector, was president of Canada Packers and founder of the J.S. McLean Collection of Canadian art. He was born in Clarke Township, Durham County, Ontario. Having graduated from the University of Toronto in 1896, McLean became an employee of the Harris Abattoir Company in Toronto in 1901, rising to become president in the 1920s. He achieved a merger of his firm with three others in 1927, forming Canada Packers Limited — of which he was president until his death. J.S. McLean was a founder-member of the Art Gallery of Toronto and a member of its executive from 1934 until his death. He was a patron of Canadian art himself and started collecting in 1934. In 1939 he began to buy Canadian artworks of art to hang in the offices and other areas of Canada Packers’ plants across the country. The result was a significant collection amassed at a time when such art was not widely sought after. Among the creators of modern art in Canada, he focused especially on the work of A.Y. Jackson, Carl Schaefer, Paraskeva Clark and David Milne. In 1952 the collection was the subject of an exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, Paintings and Drawings from the Collection of J.S. McLean. Many of the works lent for this exhibition were subsequently donated to the Art Gallery of Ontario. J.S. McLean died in Toronto in 1954.

William Grant Munro was a Toronto-based visual artist, community builder, event organizer and entrepreneur. Munro spent his childhood and teenage years in Mississauga. He graduated in 2000 from the Ontario College of Art and Design, where he studied sculpture and installation. In 1999, he founded Vazaleen, a now legendary series of dance parties. In 2006, he and Lynn MacNeil purchased the Beaver Café, a hub of artistic, musical and social activity at Queen Street West and Gladstone Avenue in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood. Munro worked as a DJ for events in the visual art community. He served on the Board of Directors of Art Metropole and York University. His artwork has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at numerous venues including Art in General, New York; and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Mercer Union, Art Gallery of York University, and Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto. His work is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art.

Alfred Harold Howard (1854–1916) was a British Canadian graphic artist, calligrapher and decorative designer in Toronto in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Liverpool, England, he apprenticed as a lithographer with the Liverpool branch of the firm Maclure, Macdonald and Macgregor. In 1876 he immigrated to Canada and eventually opened an office of graphic design in the Temple Building in downtown Toronto. He received the Marquess of Lorne’s Medal for Design in 1881 and was made an academician of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1883.
Howard’s commercial design work took the form of illuminated addresses of welcome, certificates and diplomas and addresses of condolence. In 1891 he produced the City of Toronto address of condolence presented to Lady Macdonald on the death of the Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. Howard exhibited with the Ontario Society of Artists at their Applied Art Exhibition in 1900 and with the Canadian Society of Applied Art in 1905. He was a member of the Toronto Art Students’ League and the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto. When he died in Toronto in 1916 (26 February), the Art Museum of Toronto held a memorial exhibition of his work.
Howard’s artworks are in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the Toronto Reference Library, the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

Florence Vale, Canadian artist, was born on April 18, 1909 in llford, Essex, England and died on July 23, 2003 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Her family immigrated to Toronto two years after her birth, where she grew up with an interest in music. She married artist Albert Franck on June 8, 1929, and together they bought a house on Hazelton Avenue in Toronto which became a centre for artists, writers, musicians, and critics. Florence Vale was the mother of two children, Trudy (who died as an infant) and Anneke.
Florence Vale began to paint with her husband’s paints and brushes in the late 1940’s with no previous artistic training-only what she had learned under the influence of her husband and the artists who visited her home. Her art was influenced by Surrealism, Cubism, Expressionism, and the works of Paul Klee. After her husband’s death in 1973, Florence Vale continued to express her artistic ability with oil paints, collages, and ink, also including her own poetry in some of her works. Many of her works, most prominently after the death of her husband, were erotic, while still viewed by critics as keeping a whimsical, innocent tone. Her art appeared in exhibitions throughout Ontario, with exhibitions also in Quebec and New York, U.S.A. She was associated with the Gadatsy Gallery, Toronto.