While I work on the next chapter (I know I'm glacier slow on this), I figured I should pop in a few names that either weren't particularly big here or never existed at all that here are rather big ones:
Eric Lindros
NHL hockey player
Born 2/28/1973, London, Ontario
Lindros, known today as 'Super 88' for his performance on the ice, was one of the best hockey players of modern times, playing for the Philadelphia Flyers (1991-99), Toronto Maple Leafs (1999-2007, 2010-2015) and Quebec Nordiques (2007-10) in a 25-season career that resulted in 2,023 games played (an NHL record), ending his career with 1,816 points (643 goals, 1,173 assists) and with a reputation as one of the best players in the locker rooms of his team and one of the most fearsome opponents another team could face.
Drafted first overall by the Quebec Nordiques in the 1991 Entry Draft after leading the Oshawa Generals to the 1990 Memorial Cup, Lindros' pro career began under controversial circumstances as he refused to play for the Nordiques and he was ultimately traded in a blockbuster trade to the Philadelphia Flyers in December 1991, a trade that ended up being to the ultimate benefit of both teams - the Nordiques were 1990s powerhouses, while the Flyers, thanks to Lindros, Mikael Renberg, John LeClair, Rod Brind'Amour, Eric Desjardins, Dale Hawerchuk, Mark Recchi, Jeremy Roenick and Ron Hextall, were Stanley Cup Champions in 1997. Afterward, however, Lindros' relationship with General Manager Bobby Clarke deteriorated, culiminating in a April 1998 incident where team officials forced Lindros onto a plane back from Nashville to Philadelphia after diagnosing him with a rib injury, only to have Lindros' lung collapse on the way home, sending him to the hospital for 18 days and ending his time in Philadelphia. Lindros was part of the "Trade of the Kings" in 1998, with Wayne Gretzky, Doug Gilmour and Scott Niedermayer going to the Flyers while Lindros, Brind'Amour, Hextall and Alexandre Daigle went to Toronto, along with two first-round picks.
In Toronto, however, Lindros found his home.
One of the 'Four Horseman' teams of the late 1990s and early 2000s (along with Ottawa, Detroit and Vancouver), Lindros joined a team captained by Wendel Clark and including Mats Sundin, Scott Stevens, Saku Koivu, Brian Rafalski, Dave Andreychuk, Martin Havlat and Martin Brodeur, along with him and Brind'Amour (and Toronto in the 1998-99 off season brought Renberg to the Leafs as well), he had the ability to play without the intense pressure and problems of Philadelphia. Lindros matured noticeably in the presence of Clark, Stevens and Andreychuk, and the presence of Ray Bourque in 1999-2000 as the legendary Boston defenseman chased a Stanley Cup also helped. When Stevens retired in 2004, the Captains' jerseys were passed to Lindros and Sundin, who wore them ably into 2007, when at the trade deadline, with his agreement, Lindros was traded for a first-round pick to the Nordiques.
That trade caused a sensation in Quebec City, doubly so when Lindros was joined by Jaromir Jagr on the Nordiques. Lindros, who by that point was quite fluent in French and was a noted leader in the Nordiques' locker room, proved to be every bit the player Quebec had drafted sixteen years before, and Quebec powered through the 2007 NHL playoffs, winning the Stanley Cup after two intense seven-game series, first to top the Ottawa Senators for the Eastern Conference title and then the San Jose Sharks in the Cup Final. Lindros proved a popular man in Quebec City, winning the Hart Trophy as the NHL's most valuable player for a third time as a Nordique (he had won it once each in Philadelphia and Toronto) and being named the Captain of the team when Pierre Turgeon retired at the end of 2007. (Toronto, coincidentally, used the pick from the Nordiques well, drafting future franchise defenseman P.K. Subban with the pick.)
After two more seasons in Quebec City, the Nordiques planned a rebuilding, and Lindros left the team amicably, considering retirement - but after scoring 67 points and playing all 82 games for the first time in six years in 2009-10, Toronto's fanbase loudly wanted him back, and he rejoined the Leafs in 2010. Much had changed in Toronto by that point, though - but he joined a team that was competitive from day one. Lindros became the Captain when Mats Sundin was traded to Vancouver in February 2011, and Lindros was part of the team that ran to the Cup Final in 2011 (losing to the Canucks in a downright-mad seven game series) and made up for their Cup Final loss in 2012 by winning it all (this time defeating Los Angeles in six games) and playing two more deep playoff runs before winning the Cup for a sixth time (and fourth time with the Leafs) in 2015, retiring at the end of the season, joining Martin Brodeur in doing so.
By the time of his retirement, Lindros' controversial career beginning was long forgotten, and the big man was a legend in Toronto and Philadelphia, and the Leafs retired the numbers of both him and Brodeur on the day they announced their retirements in July 2015. Lindros by then had earned the respect of most, and after becoming an Order of Canada member in August 2007 and a member of Canada's Walk of Fame in 2011, Lindros' retirement came just before the NHL began its Centennary plans, among these a special exhibit of the history of professional hockey at the Museum of Civilization, which was opened by Lindros along with Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Bobby Orr in September 2016.
Cameron Westland
Automobile Industry Pioneer
Born: 11/15/1898, Roscommon, Ireland
Died: 8/9/1992, Toronto, Ontario
Cameron Westland was one half of the Westland-Reynard company, founded as a result of the bankruptcy of the Durant Motors and the ability of Westland and partner David Reynard to gather investors even in the depths of the Great Depression in 1931 to purchase the assets of the dying automaker, which (in something very typical of Durant's enterprises) had a vast engineering corps and many advancements in design in development that would allow the company to gain strength.
Born to a poor farm family near Roscommon in central Ireland in 1898, Cameron was known to have been more than a little mechanically inclined from an early age, and began working on the railways of Ireland at the age of fifteen. The Irish Civil War saw his family flee to Canada after conflict between the IRA and Royal Ireland Constabulary ended with severe damage to his parents' farm and the deaths of two of his siblings as well as the loss of Cameron's job, arriving in Halifax in March 1921 and moving on settle in Eastern Ontario later that year. Cameron and his father and brother both soon employed by the Grand Truck railroad, which was subsequently integrated into Canadian National Railways. It was here that him and trained automotive engineer David Reynard met, the latter at the time working for Ford of Canada as a research engineer at its facility in Longueuil, Quebec. How they met is not known, but the most likely explanation is that Reynard and Westland met while the latter was a conductor on a CNR passenger train.
Westland acquired his first car in 1924 and is known to have modified it extensively, and was soon known well as a tinkerer and modifier of automobiles. He was eventually hired by Reynard and his bosses at Ford of Canada, which was at the time moving from production of the venerable Model T into much newer and more advanced cars to keep up with the designs coming from General Motors, and Ford of Canada is known to have taken input from both men. Westland and Reynard remained at their jobs into the Great Depression, but after Durant Motors' failure in 1931, both men were approached by financiers Sir Paul George, Michel Robillard and Sir Henry Pellatt (the latter largely arranging the former two's involvement) in the hopes of taking over the remains of Durant Motors. Doing this, the company was set up was Westland-Reynard, with the two names being the names of the cars that they sold. Within weeks of the company's founding, the Trillium Natural Resources Fund offered a vast sum into the company in the hopes of securing the province manufacturing jobs (again, this was more than likely organized by Pellatt, though no one is entirely sure), which was accepted by the company. The money provided by this investment made possible the company's survival, and after new products and developments in the 1930s advanced the cars and the company's profits and World War II provided them with vast sums from the making of trucks, tanks, aircraft engines, boat engines and heavy machinery, the company became a key part of the Canadian auto industry.
As perhaps befitting a man who had come from virtually nothing, Westland was well known during his time running his company for living ostentatiously, most famously building his own quite large estate, known as Roscommon House, in the Rosedale Section of Toronto, and he famously fronted the money to the Kiwanis Club's efforts to save Casa Loma from Demolition in 1937. He was known for lavinsh spending later on his lifestyle and his interests, which included pretty much anything mechanically, as well as being a major civic contributor to both the cities of Toronto and Kingston. He personally saved a sizable collection of North American steam locomotives from being scrapped in the 1950s (most of his collection ended up at the Americas Rail Museum in Jersey City, New Jersey, while much of the Canadian collection went to the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa) and raced his company's cars on a regular basis in the 1940s to early 1960s. Also well known about the man was his quite loud support for Native Canadian interests (so much so that many racists would refer to Westlands as 'Red Man's Cars') and proud support of venture capitalism in the 1940s until his retirement from public life in the 1980s. Westland married twice, marrying Allison Bennett in Kingston in 1926 and staying married until her death in 1953, subsequently remarrying to Iroquois-ancestry former beauty queen Caroline Shenandoah in 1959 and remaining married until his death in 1992. Despite his long marriages, Westland is known to have had a great many affairs and at least two children with mistresses.
Westland and Reynard remained at the heads of their company from its 1931 founding until Reynard retired after a bout with cancer in 1960, while Westland continued to run the firm until he retired in 1973. His dedicated support of venture capitalism made him a popular man in politics, and he steadily accumulated awards and recognitions through his career and life, including becoming one of the first companions of the Order of Canada in 1967.
The company never let go of the advanced engineering ethos, in the 1960s taking on the slogan "Progress through Technology" and continuing to advance the designs of their vehicles, up to some of their rather fanciful ideas of the 1960s and 1970s as gas turbines and Wankel rotary engines and compound turbocharging, but the cars the company produced advanced the science of the automobile considerably starting in the 1950s, with disc brakes, double-wishbone suspensions and turbodiesel engines being introduced on their cars in the 1950s and 1960s, and the company developing ever-better emissions technology in the 1970s. In addition to this, the Westland-Reynard company put vast resources into developing new materials for car construction in the 1980s and 1990s. Westland lived long enough to see not only his two sons and daughter join the family business, but two grandchildren as well, and grandson Joshua Mecalami-Westland, who joined the company in 1963, rose all the way to being its CEO, taking over the position once held by his grandfather in April 1995 and guiding the firm through its takeover of Subaru and its entry into an alliance with Chrysler and PSA Peugeot Citroen in 1997. Grandpa would surely have been very proud indeed....
