The Song Fishermen were a group of Atlantic Canadian Poets led by Andrew Merkel. During its short existence, they published a broadsheet called "The Nova Scotia Catches, and a newsletter called "The Song Fishermen's Song Sheets", and organized events. It disbanded in 1930.
Ethel H. Butler was the author of Little Thunders Wooing, published by Abenaki Press in 1950.
John Leblanc was a journalist with the Canadian Press. Born in Cape Breton in 1911, he began working for the Sydney Post in 1929. Sometime before 1943, he accepted a post with the Canadian Press, which took him to Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa. In 1967, he was transferred to CP's London Bureau, and returned to Toronto in 1972. He retired in 1976, returning to Sydney and writing editorials and columns in the Cape Breton Post. He passed away in 1986 in Cape Breton.
Born in Pictou, Nova Scotia in 1892, Kenneth Leslie was an author, journalist, poet, and political activist. He attended Dalhousie University for his B.A., and the University of Nebraska for his M.A. He also studied at Harvard. He was a political activist in the 1930s and 40s, establishing an anti-Fascist journal called the Protestant Digest (later called The Protestant). He also circulated a comic book, called The Challenger, that challenged Fascism. From 1934 onward, he published poetry collections such as Windward Rock, Lowland's Low, Such a Din!, and By Stubborn Stars and Other Poems, for which he received the Governor-General's Award in 1938. The Protestant was discontinued in 1953, but Leslie continued to publish periodicals, such as One, New Christian, Man, and New Man.
Leslie's first wife was Elizabeth Moir, with whom he had four children. He and his family travelled to Paris before settling in New York City in the late 1920s. After he and Moir divorced, he married Marjorie Finley Hewitt in 1934. Leslie and Hewitt were married for twelve years, when Hewitt filed for divorce c. 1946. Leslie then married his secretary, Cathy, who eventually left him for his nephew, a man closer to her own age. In 1960, Leslie suffered a stroke. Despite this, he drove to California to comfort the widow of an old friend, Nora Steenerson Totten. He and Totten married soon after, and lived the rest of their lives together. Leslie passed away in 1974.
John David Logan was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, on May 2, 1869. He gained a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts from Dalhousie University in 1893 and 1894 respectively, then a Master of Arts and PhD from Harvard University. In 1914, he enlisted as a Sergeant in the Nova Scotia Highland Brigade, and participated in pivotal battles in World War I. He passed away on January 24th, 1929 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
James Stuart Martell was born in 1911,and attended the University of King's College from 1928 to 1932, graduating with high honours in Political Science. He joined the staff of the Nova Scotia Provincial Archives in 1935, and was appointed Assistant Provincial Archivist in 1943. He passed away in 1946.
Andrew Ross was from Edmondstone, New Brunswick, and worked for the Canadian Press prior to 1943, when he joined the Canadian army, serving with the Pictou Islanders, then as an Officer with the Directorate of Military intelligence in Ottawa, and later as a Press Censor in London and Paris. After the war, her worked for CP in Ottawa briefly, but joined the Department of External Affairs in 1947. He worked in government, in increasingly responsible positions, for the rest of his career, including as First Secretary and Consul of the Canadian Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela; Ambassador to Chile; and other posts.