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George Agnew Reid (1860-1947) was a Canadian artist, architect, educator and administrator influential in the early 20th century and instrumental in the formation of a number of important Canadian art institutions. Born in Wingham Ontario to a Scottish farm family, he studied architecture and book-keeping at his father’s insistence. In 1878 he moved to Toronto to study art. He was able to extend his art education under Thomas Eakins in Philadelphia, where he met the painter Mary Heister. In 1888 the couple travelled to Europe and studied at the Julian and Colorossi Academies, returning to Toronto in 1889. The house he designed and built in Wychwood Park was his home until the end of his life. In 1890, George Reid began reaching at the Central Ontario School of Art and Design. He eventually became principal and researched new theories of art education in the United States and Europe. Under his direction, the art school became independent of the Board of Education and moved into its own building, which he designed, in 1921. He also served as its first Principal. In 1892, George and Mary Reid built two cottages from his design at the artist colony in Onteora, New York. This led to the design of other summer homes and a small church in the Catskills community. They spent summers at this location until 1917 when the war made travel to the United States difficult. In 1921 Mary Heister Reid died, and in 1923 George Reid married Mary Wrinch, a former student and close friend of his first wife. His later life was filled with accomplishments, including the painting of murals for public spaces in Toronto City Hall, Jarvis Collegiate, the Royal Ontario Museum and elsewhere. He was instrumental in obtaining permanent funding and staff for the National Gallery in Ottawa, and was a force behind the establishment of the Art Gallery of Toronto. He was a member of the RCA, serving as President 1906-1907. He influenced a generation of students, among them C.W. Jefferys, through his teaching and created a number of works that exemplify his generation, including Forbidden Fruit, Mortgaging the Homestead, and The Foreclosure of the Mortgage.

Frances Norma Loring, sculptor, was born in Wardner, Idaho October 14, 1887. She studied sculpture in Geneva, Munich and Paris 1901-1905. In 1905 at the Art Institute of Chicago, she met Florence Wyle with whom she subsequently shared studios in New York (1909-1912) and Toronto (1912-1966). A member in 1920 of the Ontario Society of Artists, she was a founding member (1928) of the Sculptors' Society of Canada and a chief organizer of the Federation of Canadian Artists and the National Arts Council. Among her best-known public monuments are the lion of the Queen Elizabeth Monument in Toronto (originally near the entrance to the Queen Elizabeth Way) and war memorials at St Stephen, New Brunswick and Cambridge (formerly Galt), Ontario. Frances Loring died in Newmarket, Ontario February 3, 1968. Florence Wyle, sculptor, was born in Trenton, Illinois November 24, 1881. While studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905, she met Frances Loring, with whom she later moved to New York. Loring moved to Canada in 1912, where Wyle joined her the following year. They each produced a considerable body of work in their studio, a converted church, in Toronto. A member of the Ontario Society of Artists (1920), Wyle was the first woman sculptor to become a full member of the Royal Canadian Academy. She was also a published writer (Poems, 1958). Among her public sculptures is the relief of Edith Cavell on the grounds of the Toronto General Hospital. Florence Wyle died in Newmarket, Ontario January 13, 1968. Loring & Wyle’s works are in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada and the Canadian War Museum and in several public and private buildings in Ontario.

Robert Frederick Hagan, painter, printmaker and educator, was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1918. He was educated at Central Technical School (Toronto) and the Ontario College of Art. From 1941-1946, Hagan was employed as Resident Artist and Master at Pickering College in Newmarket, Ontario. In the spring of 1946, Hagan journeyed to New York for further studies. Later the same year, he began teaching at the Ontario College of Art. In 1955 he became Head of Printmaking, a position which he held until his retirement in 1983. Frederick Hagan has held memberships in the Canadian Society of Graphic Art (of which he was made an Honourary Member in 1965), the Canadian Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers, the Ontario Society of Artists, and the Print and Drawing Council of Canada. His work is in the collections of numerous Canadian galleries.

Carl Fellman Schaefer (1903-1995) was a Canadian artist and educator known for his depictions of rural Ontario. John(Jack) Martin (1904-1965) was a British-born Canadian artist, designer and educator. The two, who were friends and colleagues, exchanged letters in illustrated envelopes from circa 1954 until Martin’s death.

Elizabeth Chitty (1953-) is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on performance, installation, video, sound, photography, and dance. She was born in St. Catharines, Ontario and completed an Honours B.A. in Fine Art, Modern Dance Major at York University in 1975. During her early career in the late 70s and early 80s, she quickly became a central figure in the Toronto and Vancouver performance art and New Dance scenes and was associated with artist-run centres 15 Dance Lab, A Space, and Art Metropole. Works created during this period, such as Mover (1975), Drop (1976), and Lap (1977) expanded the vocabulary of dance to explore force and linear movement, often to the point of emotional risk and violence. Using the movement of digital images, sound, and the body, Chitty addressed themes of information technology, media deconstruction, the grammar and syntax of performance, and feminism's relationship with sexual agency. She also experimented with video, producing single-channel video artworks (Telling Tales [1979]) as well as incorporating the use of both closed circuit and pre-recorded video in her performance works (History, Colour TV & You [1981]). In the late 80s she shifted her focus from staged, interdisciplinary solo performances to the creation of large-scale multimedia spectacles such as Moral/Passion (1985) and landscape-based installations such as Lake (1990). Inspired by her own Buddhist practice, many of her works have explored the relationship between the body and consciousness to question how we perceive the world, our thoughts, and emotions (Nature of the Body [1996]). In 1988, Chitty moved back to the Niagara Peninsula, where she has resided ever since. At this time, she began her long-standing involvement with Indigenous communities in the region and assisted with the development of the local community justice program, Winds of Change Women’s Drum Group. The community-based strategies and walking projects that have appeared in Chitty's artistic works since the 90s (Progress of the Body [1997], Earth's Flesh [2003], Daylighting [2016], Confluence Field Trips [2016], The Grass is Still Green [2017]) are a reflection of her reconciliatory work, as she considers water and its management, concepts of governance and ownership of public space, traditional territory, embodied knowledge, displacement, and historical and contemporary marginalized space and narratives.

In addition to her artistic practice, Chitty has also held roles as an arts administrator, educator, editor, and producer. From 1976-1978, she was the editor for Spill, a magazine published by 15 Dance Lab about the New Dance movement. She was the Chair of Trinity Square Video (1982), Managing Director of the Association of National Non-profit Artist-run Centres (1982-1984), Executive Director of St. Catharines and Area Arts Council (2004-2008), and Executive Director of the Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists, Ontario Chapter (2008-2011). From 1991-2007, Chitty taught Creative Process at the School of the Toronto Dance Theatre. She was a video/media curator for Western Front (1980-1981) and went on to found Cultural Desire Projects (1985-1990) which produced major works by Chitty, Randy & Berenicci, Tanya Mars, and Vera Frenkel.

Chitty has performed and exhibited her work widely across Canada and also internationally in the United Kingdom, the United States, and France. Her video artworks Demo Model (1978), Telling Tales (1979), Desire Control (1981) and Dogmachine (1981), and T.V.Love (1982) are in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. In 2017, her exhibition The Grass is Still Green was awarded "Exhibit of the Year" at the Ontario Association of Art Galleries' annual awards gala.

Charles William Jefferys (1869-1951) was a prolific Canadian artist, illustrator and author. He was a talented landscape painter whose work was widely exhibited and collected, but is best known for his illustrations of Canada’s past. He was born in Rochester, Kent. In 1875 the Jefferys family emigrated to Philadelphia, then in 1878 they moved to Hamilton before settling in Toronto around 1880. Jefferys began formal training as an artist in 1884 when he started attending evening classes at the Ontario School of Art. The following year, Jefferys began a five-year apprenticeship at the Toronto Lithographic Company, where he was also hired out to work occasionally as an illustrator for The Globe. He worked as an artist for The Globe, as well as for a number of other Canadian newspapers until the fall of 1892 when he was taken on as an artist-reporter for The New York Herald. Jefferys lived in New York and New Jersey until 1899, returning to Canada permanently in 1901, eventually settling in York Mills. Jefferys illustrated a large number of books and articles providing illustrations for The Makers of Canada (1903-1911), Chronicles of Canada (1914-1916), was co-founder of the satirical periodical The Moon (1902-1904), and wrote and illustrated Canada’s Past in Pictures (1934) and The Picture Gallery of Canadian History (1942, 1945, 1950). He also gave frequent lectures and published numerous articles on art, architecture, and Canadian history. From 1912 to 1939 Jefferys was instructor of freehand drawing at the Department of Architecture at the University of Toronto. He also was a lecturer and part-time instructor at the Ontario College of Art. Jefferys worked for Canadian War Records in 1918, recording the activities Polish Army in Exile at Niagara and Toronto and the Siberian Army in Exile in at Camp Petawawa, Ontario. Jefferys was active in many organizations, including the Ontario Society of Artists, Royal Canadian Academy, Art Students’ League, and the Arts and Letters Club. He exhibited his art widely throughout his life, in Canada and abroad, and his work appears in major institutions across Canada.