Biographies
← The People · 40 people remembered at length
The members the Society wrote about at length — in its Artisan of Yester Year series, in the profiles printed when a member was made a Fellow or a Life Member, in tributes, and in the memoirs written as the Society closed. The full structured record of every member is on the People of the Society page.
Edith Melchior-Hawkins
1922–1995. Tillsonburg Branch; Associate 1956, Fellow 1958 — one of the first generation of Fellows raised after the founding eight of 1953.
Read →Ruth Haig
1928–2011. Hamilton Branch; Associate 1966, Fellow 1985, Life Member 1991 — a decorated Weston Trophy and gallery competitor.
Read →Carol McLean
Fellow and Woodstock Branch teacher for some fifteen years; the first CSCL member to make and teach leather masks — in her own words.
Read →Paul Kitchener
Mississauga Branch. Teacher, bootmaker, and co-founder of the Mississauga society; Fellow and Ontario Volunteer Service Award recipient, 2007.
Read →Della Chynoweth
Norland Branch. The Society’s longest-standing member, joined 1978; its Treasurer from the autumn of 2004; Honourary Life Member 2024.
Read →Don MacLeod
1925–2007. Mississauga Branch president and Bulletin co-editor; namesake of the Don MacLeod Belt Buckle Award.
Read →Deane H. Russell
President 1950 and first Editor of Canadian Leathercraft, 1951; organizer of Canada’s two largest leathercraft exhibitions.
Read →Sherle Bottrill
Died 1993. Associate 1962, President of the Barrie Branch, Corresponding Secretary, and Honourary Life Member from the 1985 Annual.
Read →Clarice Packham
Died 1991. Fellow and Life Member; co-founder of the Weston Leathercraft Guild, glovemaker, and top judge at the CNE.
Read →Helen Wheaton
Mrs. Helen Wheaton - London. Helen was born and received her education in London, she attended business college and worked as a secretary in…
Read →Hazel Quinn
Mrs. Hazel Quinn, our most westerly member, resides in Edmonton and is a very active worker in promoting Leathercraft.
Read →May Corbett
May Corbett, 1st. Vice President of C.S.C.L. resides in Barrie, Ontario. May was born and educated in Toronto and moved to Barrie with her husband…
Read →Edith Melchior-Hawkins
Edith started leathercraft in 1951. She attended Tillsonburg District High School courses for two years, receiving instruction from Stan Savage and…
Read →Jessie Little
Jessie Little grew up in the Brampton area of Southern Ontario. As a girl, her interests included horseback riding, baseball, canoeing and other…
Read →Bea Austin
Bea Austin of Hamilton Branch is our newest Fellow, receiving her certificate at the 1980 Annual Meeting in Belleville.
Read →Muriel McKnight
Mrs. Jack McKnight is a grandmother with four sons and four grandchildren. As an excellent supporter of the Hamilton Branch she has held office ever…
Read →Carol McLean
Carol McLean started taking leathercraft in night school in 1964,
Read →Janis Zalitis
Born in Latvia, he adapted its folk designs to leather — and gave the sterling silver pin still awarded to the year's best new Associate.
Read →Gertrude B. Hilder
Self-taught from books and from watching demonstrations, she reached Associate standing from the Maritimes — “she has overcome isolation and distance to reach her goal.”
Read →Lillian Beech
A founding member of the Hamilton Guild and one of the six makers who won it the Weston Trophy in 1960.
Read →Robert Muma
The man who chaired the Society into existence, wrote its first history, and gave up leather for the binding of books — and, at sixty-nine, for the mosses of Ontario.
Read →Stefan Kontski
Trained in Krakow, Italy and France, he brought the centuries-old Spanish art of Cordovan leatherwork to Canada — and was, in the autumn of 1952, at work on what the Society believed the largest such project the country had seen.
Read →Beula Reynolds
Leatherworking since 1952 and charter president of the Woodstock Branch, she took the Society's own presidency in 1978 — introduced by two Fellows, Carol McLean and Helen Wheaton, in the Society's own words.
Read →Dora de Pedery Hunt
A Budapest-trained sculptor's design critique for the Society's Associates and Fellows — and the three pieces, out of a room full, that met her approval.
Read →Sadie Roebuck
A member from the Society's first year in 1951, given a Life Membership in 1983 for a career on the Executive Council alongside her husband and Treasurer, Cecil Roebuck.
Read →Lillian Kay
A full-time leather artist who gave up her job at the Workman's Compensation Board to work leather from her own studio, and, as the Society's own Corresponding Secretary, wanted leatherwork taught in schools again.
Read →Irva Ford
Charter president of the Hamilton Leathercraft Guild and President of the Society, 1969–1972 — twenty years a leatherworker and teacher, remembered today in the Society's own Irva Ford Award.
Read →F. O. Baird
The Western U.S. master carver Canadian leathercraftsmen admired even before the Society’s founding — apprenticed in a saddle factory, author of a leather-arts textbook, and named the Society’s first Honorary Life Member in 1951.
Read →Lauren McPherson
Secretary/Treasurer of the Woodstock Leather Guild 2007–2010, whose hinged teardrop box helped Woodstock win the Weston Trophy at the 59th Annual; her own biography and artist statements, written for the Society’s sixtieth-anniversary exhibition in 2010.
Read →David McPherson
A retired mathematics teacher who joined in 1980, was made a Fellow in 2005 and chaired the Council of Fellows; maker of some four hundred hinge-lid leather boxes, described in his own biography and five artist statements of March 2010.
Read →Dorothy McPherson
Director of the Society, editor of Canadian Leathercraft, founder of two arts guilds and a gallery, and the Society’s biographer for fifty-one volunteer-award citations; her own biography and the artist statements for four pieces shown at Leather 2010.
Read →Madeleine Mitchell
Introduced to leather at a 1974 night-school class taught by Carol McLean and a member since 1975; her own account of nearly forty years with the material, and the statements for three pieces — a Florentine-leather box, a mission-grain picture frame and a moulded bowl.
Read →Ken Boroski
Ken Boroski’s artist statement and biography, and his notes on the pieces he showed at the Society’s 2013 exhibition.
Read →Nancy Durham
Nancy Durham’s biography and artist statement for the Society’s 2013 exhibition, and her notes on the belt and wall hangings she showed.
Read →Peter Grove
Peter Grove’s biography, written by Lauchlan Harrison for the Society’s 2013 exhibition, and his own account of the Santa Belt he showed there.
Read →Lauchlan Harrison
Lauchlan Harrison’s artist statement and biography, and his notes on the pieces he showed at the Society’s 2013 exhibition.
Read →Rob Regan
Rob Regan’s artist statement and biography, and his notes on the pieces he showed at the Society’s 2013 exhibition.
Read →Jim Wilkes
Jim Wilkes’s artist statement and biography, and his notes on the pieces he showed at the Society’s 2013 exhibition.
Read →Lester Pinter
A Calgary-area saddlemaker born in Budapest and trained in dental technology, whose suitcase of Western-themed leatherwork — saddle, longhorns, vest, chaps and more — earned a Fellowship judging score of 94.5%.
Read →Ralph K. Larmour
President of the Society, 1954–1955, and an internationally known cereal chemist — his 1970 obituary from the Toronto Daily Star, and the Society’s own Larmour Memorial Library, named in his memory.
Read →Bill Whittingham
An award-winning leathercraft artist of Northern Lights Leathercraft, profiled in 1994 — winner of the Society’s Craftsman, Salon and Zalitis awards, from soft baby shoes to a Tolkien-inspired chess set.
Read →Drawn from Canadian Leathercraft, the Society’s citations, and the memoirs in the Document Archive.