Pierre Anctil is a full professor in the department of history of the University of Ottawa, where he teaches contemporary Canadian history. He has obtained a Ph. D. in Social anthropology from the New School for Social Research in New York. His main fields of interest are the history of immigration in Québec and in Canada, and Jewish culture in Montreal. He has also done work in the history of the French language press in Canada, notably concerning the ideological evolution of «Le Devoir». He has received in 2008-2010 a Killam fellowship and is a member of the Royal Society of Canada. He has received many prestigious awards, notably the Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award (2013) and the J.-I. Segal Literary Award (2012). He has a long list of publications.

Shannon has 15 years of archival management and outreach experience in both public and private sectors. Prior to joining Carleton University as Corporate Archivist, Shannon was the Director of the Jewish Public Library Archives of Montreal for 13 years where she not only updated and standardized all archival functions, but also created a dynamic outreach program that uses the diverse special collections of the library. This was supported, in part, by the implementation of an online network, the Canadian Jewish Heritage Network, which provides access to the holdings and digital objects of seven Canadian Jewish archives and museums across the country.

Shannon holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in History from Bishop’s University and a Master of Library and Information Studies degree from McGill University.

Moishe Dolman has been a Yiddish teacher for the past decade, and translator for two decades. Born and raised in Montreal, he has been active, occasionally at the centre though usually at the periphery, in left-wing and anti-authoritarian causes for close to half a century. For a long time he considered the Jewish Public Library his home-away-from-home, and has contributed to the financial well-being of the library over the years by paying innumerable fines on overdue books.

Dr. Aaron Krishtalka was born in wartime Montreal and grew up in a literary, book and tradition-loving family—emigrants from southeastern Poland and Volynia, who spoke and sang, wrote, argued, and published in, taught, loved, and spread Yiddish. He launched into lifelong schooling in the Morris Winchevsky Shule in Montreal, and then entered stranger, broader lands at Baron Byng High School and McGill University. There, History drove him to an eventual PhD, and to teach European history at Dawson College and McGill University. Yiddish literature and letters, in books, journals, and latterly computer screens, kept him company all along, together with his bicycle and woodworking tools. He had the good fortune to marry Henie Shainblum (whose parents, among their many other talents, also spoke, sang, and taught in Yiddish), and together they have two sons, Gideon and Sholem.

Eddie Paul has overseens collections development, cataloguing, and reference services at the JPL and for over 30 years, and has developed education outreach programming that includes the Michael D. Paul Rare Books Initiative, the “Where Do You Think You Come From” genealogy workshops for youth, and other projects designed to create convergences between the JPL’s Archives and Special Collections and the public through storytelling.

He has worked in various capacities at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library at McGill University, Scott Library (York University), the Toronto Public Library, and Library & Archives Canada, and now continues to collaborate with these institutions and others across North America to host rare book workshops featuring important Judaica works.

In 2014, he curated the JPL’s first rare book exhibit and catalogue entitled “A Roomful of Dwellings”, in addition to having co-curated an exhibition in 2017 with the Jacob Lowy Collection (Library & Archives Canada) entitled “Decanting Memory: 500 Years of Jewish Printing”.

Ester Reiter is an American-Canadian historian and sociologist. She is a professor emerita in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, York University. In 2017, her book A Future Without Hate or Need was shortlisted for the Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature.

Sam Bick is a first year PhD student in the History department at York University. He graduated from City University of New York in 2013 with an MA in Labor studies. Between 2015-2020, Sam hosted and produced the Treyf Podcast at CKUT 90.3 FM in Montreal.