Ruth May Pawson was born on 8 December 1908 in Stratford, Ontario. Moving west in 1912 her family settled in Regina which remained home until her death on 14 April 1994. Ruth attended the Regina Normal School in 1926-1927 beginning a teaching career that would last for the next four decades. In the 1930s and 40s Pawson took a series of art classes, receiving an Associate of Fine Arts Degree from Regina College (1940). She studied under Augustus Kenderdine at the Murray Point Summer School of Art at Emma Lake (1941, 1942 and 1946) and A.Y. Jackson at the Banff School of Fine Arts (1944, 1945 and 1947). Working primarily in oil and directly from nature, Pawson's favourite subject was the prairie landscape. From the 1940s to 1990s Pawson exhibited her work in a series of group and individual exhibitions. The naming of the Ruth Pawson School in Regina and receiving the Saskatchewan Order of Merit were among the many honours accorded her during her lifetime.

Thomas Karp Pavlychenko was born in the Ukraine in 1892, and studied at the Pedagogical Institute, the College of Agriculture Kamentz-Podilskiy, and the University of Prague, Czechoslovakia, prior to coming to Canada in 1927. In 1932 he received his MA. in Agriculture from the University of Saskatchewan. He continued his post-graduate education at the University of Nebraska, receiving his Ph.D. in 1940. From 1930-1937 he worked as a weed experimentalist for the National Research Council. In 1938 he established the first Department of Plant Ecology in Canada at the University of Saskatchewan, and served as head that department for 10 years. He was also the first professor of Ukrainian descent in Canada, and the courses in Ukrainian which he gave resulted in the establishment of the Department of Slavic Studies. Dr. Pavlychenko left the University in 1948 to accept a research position with the American Chemical Paint Company. He died on 6 August 1958 at the age of 66.