Allen Mills was born in 1945. His academic achievements include graduating with Honours from Trinity College at Dublin University in 1967; receiving an MA from York University in Toronto in 1968; and earning a PhD from University of Western Ontario in 1976. Mills has written articles focusing on Canadian Socialism, the Canadian Forum, early Winnipeg Radicalism, J.S. Woodsworth, Frank Scott, Ernest Gellner, and media in post-Communist Czechoslovakia. He was a visiting fellow at Edinburgh University in 1992 and that same year was a visiting lecturer at Charles University of Prague.

From 1971 until his retirement in 2018, Mills taught Political Science at the University of Winnipeg, where he was head of the department from 2000-2005 and from 2014-2016. For his long and distinguished career, Mills was awarded the title of Senior Scholar. An accomplished academic author, his publications include Fool For Christ: The Political Thought of J.S. Woodsworth in 1991 by the University of Toronto Press, and Citizen Trudeau: An Intellectual Biography 1944-1965 in 2016 by Oxford University Press. He was also the editor of the government and politics entries for the Encyclopedia of Manitoba from 2004 to 2007, which was published in November 2007. His research interests include Canadian politics, Canadian socialism and liberalism, eastern Europe and the thought of Trudeau, Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka.

The Chair in German-Canadian Studies was established in 1989 with a grant from the Secretary of State's Program for Canadian Ethnic Studies and with a grant from a group of private philanthropists within the German-Canadian community of Winnipeg. It is affiliated with the History Department at the University of Winnipeg.

Founded in 1969, the Institute of Urban Studies (IUS) was established with the mandate of assessing government housing practices and suggesting innovations for Winnipeg’s inner-city housing. In later years the mandate was expanded into consulting services and academic publications and conferences. The IUS is an independently operating branch of the University of Winnipeg and received it’s funding from the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation (now the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation). The Institute has had a continuing focus over the years on Indigenous inner-city programs.

The athletics program at the University of Winnipeg traces its roots to the intercollegiate sports leagues formed among Winnipeg’s schools starting in 1889. Both of the University’s forerunners Manitoba and Wesley College participated in these leagues, which included football, track, basketball, and hockey. Manitoba College included a gymnasium in the expansions to its building in 1894. Wesley College, in turn, had a small gym in the basement of its original 1896 building as well as the advantage of Wesley Park – the land stretching from behind the building to Ellice Avenue – for a field in the summer and a rink in the winter. Further gym facilities were included in the basement of Sparling Hall, opened in 1913. The Intercollegiate leagues engendered friendly competition and school spirit among Winnipeg’s early colleges, and the colleges included sport facilities for their students from the beginning.

In 1962, United College appointed its first professional Athletics Director, Blue Bomber player Raymond Jauch, in anticipation of its new Riddell Hall gymnasium that opened the following year. These changes allowed United College to take its athletics program more seriously. In 1966, as the reality of becoming an independent University began to take shape, the United College Student Council held a public competition and vote to name its sports team. The winning entry was Wesmen, a “pluralized” combination of Wesley and Manitoba. The new University of Winnipeg, with an Athletics Director, a good gym, and a brand for its sports team, was set to participate in the national University sports scene.

Shortly after the University of Winnipeg’s incorporation, the Wesmen began to compete with other University teams across Canada as a member of two sports governing bodies: the Western Intercollegiate Athletic Association (later Great Plains Athletic Conference, and Canada West Universities Athletic Association) and the Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union (later Canadian Interuniversity Sport, and U Sports). The main competitive sports of the Wesmen were basketball, volleyball, and hockey, although the latter discontinued after 1984. The University had both men’s and women’s teams in basketball and volleyball – the women’s teams are known as the Wesmenettes or the Lady Wesmen. In addition to the seasonal games of sports governing bodies, the Wesmen hosted invitational tournaments – most notably the Wesmen Classic (previously the Golden Boy Classic, 1967-1976) and others; and was invited to play in similar tournaments hosted by other institutions.

Having long since outgrown the Riddell Hall gym, the University opened its much-needed Athletics Centre in 1984. The facility gave the Wesmen the resources and space they needed to remain nationally competitive. That building has remained the cornerstone of Wesmen sports to the present day; in 1992, it was renamed to the Duckworth Centre in honour of the University’s past President Henry Duckworth, a proponent of athletics. 2008 saw an expansion to the building, the Bill Wedlake Fitness Centre, named after long-time basketball coach and retiring Athletics Director. Finally, in 2014, the building was complemented by the Axworthy Health and RecPlex, an adjoining fieldhouse for soccer and sports education.

The Athletic Directors at United College and the University of Winnipeg, to date, include: Raymond Jauch (1962-1964); Edward Vidruk (1964-1966); David Anderson (1966-1984, covered by Glen Conly during a leave of absence in 1973); Aubrey Ferris (1984-2000); Bill Wedlake (2000-2008); Doran Reid (2009-2015); and Dave Crook (2015-present).

The University of Winnipeg Alumni Association traces its roots to the Wesley Graduates Association, which was organized at a meeting of nearly 150 alumni on February 15th, 1935. Other alumni organizations already existed within Wesley and Manitoba Colleges: such as the Wesley Club, the Wesley Alumnae Association, and the Manitoba College Alma Mater Society. The Alumnae Association joined them at their second meeting on March 14th. The Wesley Graduates Association had an elected President and Executive and served to keep updated information on alumni and distribute College literature to its members i.e. Vox Wesleyana. It also raised funds for scholarships and bursaries. In June 1938, when Manitoba and Wesley joined as United College, the Wesley Graduates Association became the United College Graduates Association and also took over the Alma Mater Society of Manitoba College. United College became the University of Winnipeg in July 1967, and during the academic year of 1967-1968 the United College Graduates Association voted to changed its name to the University of Winnipeg Alumni Association.

The University of Winnipeg Alumni Association increased its membership and involvement with the University after 1967 with several initiatives, such as publishing the Alumni Bulletin starting in 1970 to communicate news and stay in touch with alumni, and campaigning for the Entrance Scholarship Program starting in 1973. In addition to other awards and scholarships offered or funded by the Association, starting in 1990 the Distinguished Alumni Award was established.

The J.H. Ashdown Hardware Company began on 11th September 1869 when the recent immigrant to Winnipeg, James Henry Ashdown, purchased George Moser’s tinsmith shop at Portage and Main. Soon after in 1871, the original shop inadequate for his growing business, Ashdown erected a structure at the corner of Bannatyne and Main. Winnipeg’s 1873 incorporation as a city and the arrival of the railway in 1878 brought waves of immigration, and between 1875-1885, Ashdown expanded his building several times to accommodate its success and patronage.

Ashdown saw the trend of western expansion and launched Ashdown Hardware stores across Canada – including Portage la Prairie and Emerson (1881), Calgary (1889), Saskatoon (1912), Edmonton (1923), and Regina (1929). Back in Winnipeg in 1896, he started construction on his warehouse close to the docks in order to better receive shipments via river traffic and to launch distribution for more stores. Business was booming – in 1900, he launched the “Ashdown Special,” a promotional spectacle consisting of an entire train of goods shipped west with specially marked cars.

In 1902 the business was officially incorporated as the J.H. Ashdown Hardware Company Limited with the Province of Manitoba, and they released their “Diamond A Brand” – the company’s mark of quality – in 1904. The same year, his Main Street store burnt and was rebuilt within a few months; that building still stands at the corner of Main and Bannatyne to the present day.

The founder J.H. Ashdown passed away in 1924, and was succeeded as owner of the business by his son, Harry C. Ashdown. When Harry Ashdown passed away in 1970, the company was sold to the local liquidation outlet Big 4 Sales.

Dr. Wilson Bertram Brown was an American economist, professor, and poet who taught at the University of Winnipeg from 1983 until his retirement in 2004.

Born April 12, 1938 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, and raised in nearby Livingston, Brown –known to his family as “Bill”-- started writing poetry at age 18, encouraged by his mother, Alberta Doris Brown (nee Ham) and grandmother Rose Ham (nee Wiedmann). He was the first member of his family to attend university, where he wrote “The West Land,” a satire about Brown University’s student residences (1961). Appearing in Brown University’s student newspaper, it was his only published poem until the posthumous release of his collected works, An Economist Writes Poetry, in 2022.

At Brown University (1957-1961), he majored in international relations, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts. During that time, he met fellow student Jennifer S.H. Brown and they married in 1963. That same year, he won a Fulbright fellowship to study the Peruvian economy in Lima, Peru. Brown proceeded to earn a Master of Arts from Cambridge University (Boston, Massachusetts, 1964) and a PhD in international affairs from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University (1966).

Brown began his academic career as Assistant Professor of Economics at Colby College in Waterville, Maine (1965-1968), later moving to Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois to take on the position of Associate Professor of Marketing. Brown won another Fulbright grant to study at Chiang Mai University, Thailand in 1977-1978. In 1983, Brown and his family moved to Winnipeg, where he served as Professor of Economics at the University of Winnipeg for the remainder of his career. For a time, he was a visiting scholar at University of Reading in England.

Brown’s professional writings include The New International Economics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co, 1979), Markets, Organizations and Information (e-book) (Elsevier Science, 2017), and International Economics in the Age of Globalization (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), which he co-authored with Jan S. Hogendorn. Brown continued to write after retirement. In 2013, two years after moving to Denver, Colorado, he and his wife co-authored Col. William Marsh: Vermont Patriot & Loyalist (Denver: Tiger Rock Press, 2013), a well-received biography of his wife’s ancestor, a United Empire Loyalist.

Family, friends, events, and personal interests play prominent roles in his poetry. These include the death of his infant daughter, Susanna, from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS); the friendship with his college roommate, Richard Kostelanetz; his love of music, nature, and genealogy; and the many summers spent at his wife’s family cottage in Georgian Bay, Ontario.

Brown died in Denver on May 15, 2017, leaving his wife Jennifer, a son, Matthew Harcourt Brown, and granddaughters Katherine Brown and Sophia Brown.

Dave Crook was born in Winnipeg, MB. He graduated from Elmwood High School, and then the University of Winnipeg in 1982. In addition to coaching at Elmwood and West Kildonan high schools, he was the assistant coach of the Wesmen men's basketball team under Bruce Enns from 1982-1984. He was hired in 1984 as the head coach for the men's basketball team at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick. He was laid off when funding for the athletics program there was cut in 1989, and moved to the University of Lethbridge, as head coach and instructor, from 1989-2000. University of Lethbridge publications describe him as their “winningest coach.” Due to his performance in that role, he was awarded the Men’s Basketball Coach of the Year by CIS. In 2001 he returned to the University of Winnipeg as head coach of the Wesmen men’s basketball team and instructor until 2010. He resigned as coach (but continued to teach) that year; in 2015, he was made the University’s Athletic Director, in which role he continues today.

The University of Winnipeg’s official fundraising began in 1990 with the formation of the Fundraising Office and the “Strengthening the Links” campaign, a part of University Relations or its variants. In 2001, the University conducted a Feasibility Study to determine the possibility of a separately incorporated fundraising body. Using insight gathered through this study, the University of Winnipeg Board of Regents approved the idea of an incorporated private fundraising body in 2002. The University of Winnipeg Foundation was incorporated with charitable tax status 2 August 2002, and publicly announced 1 April 2003. The Foundation was guided by a Board of Directors, to whom a CEO reported along with a contingent of financial, administrative, and donor relations staff. The Foundation took custody of assets, investments, and scholarship and bursary funds from the University, and was given offices in Wesley Hall. Shortly after, the Foundation undertook its University of Winnipeg Campaign, a fundraising and investment effort that would continue until 2011. The campaign was launched publicly in November 2007 as the “A World of Opportunity” Capital Campaign with an initial goal of $70 million, exceeded by the time the campaign came to a close in September 2011 by over $7 million.

The Foundation’s financial support and fundraising has played a major enabling role in the University’s campus expansions and program development since its incorporation. Some notable examples include the restorations to Wesley Hall; the Aboriginal Student Centre; the Canwest Centre for Theatre and Film; and the Richardson College for the Environment and Science Complex. In addition to campus and curriculum, the Foundation also provided over $1 million per year as scholarships and bursaries.

Patricia Hehner is the daughter of Eric and Gertrude (nee Parsons) Hehner. She resides in Ottawa, ON with her husband, Stephen McKenna.