Allan Gregg (born January 14, 1952) is a Canadian pollster, political advisor, and pundit.

Gregg was born in Edmonton, Alberta. He was the eldest child in his family which consisted of four boys and one girl. Gregg graduated from Harry Ainley High School at the second top of his class with honors. Gregg then went on to study political science at the University of Alberta and Carleton University in Ottawa. He briefly served as a professor while working on his PhD, but abandoned his studies due to the birth of his first child in 1975.

Gregg has long been involved in Canadian politics, but decided to travel south of the border to work with master Republican Party pollster Richard Wirthlin and learned much from him. He then returned to Canada in the late 1970s. He first came to national attention as the national campaign secretary of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada successful effort in the 1979 federal election.

Soon after that campaign, Gregg founded Decima Research, a joint polling/public relations firm. The company became the Conservative party's polling firm, and Gregg played an important role in the 1984 election when the PC Party was led by Brian Mulroney. With the Conservative victory, Decima Research and Gregg entered the halls of power, and he was frequently at Prime Minister Mulroney's side. Decima and Gregg worked for the federal Tories, operated in many provincial elections, and expanded worldwide, participating in over forty-five elections on three continents.

Joseph Heath (born 1967) is a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto. He also teaches at the School of Public Policy and Governance. He received his BA from McGill University, where his teachers included Charles Taylor, and his MA and PhD degrees are from Northwestern University, where he studied under Thomas A. McCarthy and Jürgen Habermas. He has published both academic and popular writings, including the bestselling The Rebel Sell. His philosophical work includes papers and books in political philosophy, business ethics, rational choice theory, action theory, and critical theory.

The central claim of Rebel Sell is that counter-cultural movements have failed, and that they all share a common fatal error in the way they understand society; thus counter-culture is not a threat to "the system". For example, it is suggested of Adbusters' Blackspot campaign that the shoe's existence proves that "no rational person could possibly believe that there is any tension between 'mainstream' and 'alternative' culture."

John Ralston Saul, CC (born June 19, 1947) is a Canadian author, essayist, and President of PEN International.

As an essayist, Saul is particularly known for his commentaries on the nature of individualism, citizenship and the public good; the failures of manager-, or more precisely technocrat-, led societies; the confusion between leadership and managerialism; military strategy, in particular irregular warfare; the role of freedom of speech and culture; and his critique of contemporary economic arguments.

Born in Ottawa, Saul studied at McGill University in Montreal, Canada and at King's College London where he wrote his thesis on the modernization of France under Charles de Gaulle, and earned his Ph.D in 1972. After helping to set up the national oil company Petro-Canada in 1976, as Assistant to its first Chair, Maurice F. Strong, he published his first novel The Birds of Prey in 1977. Through the late 1970s and 1980s, he travelled regularly with guerrilla armies, spending a great deal of time in North Africa and South East Asia. Out of this time came his novels, The Field Trilogy. It was during those extended periods in Northwest Africa and Southeast Asia that he witnessed fellow writers there suffering government suppression of freedom of expression, which caused him to become interested in the work of PEN International[1]. In 2009 he was elected president of PEN International, only the second North American to hold the position since its creation in 1921, the other being Arthur Miller.

Robert George "Bobby" Seale (born October 22, 1936), is an activist. He is known for co-founding the Black Panther Party with Huey Newton.

Seale was one of the three children born to his mother, a homemaker, and his father, a carpenter, in Dallas, Texas. After moving around in Texas, his family relocated to Oakland, California during World War II. Seale attended Berkeley High School, and joined the U.S. Air Force in 1955. He spent three years in the Air Force before he received a bad conduct discharge for fighting with a commanding officer. Upon his arrival back in Oakland, Seale began working at different aerospace plants as a sheet metal mechanic, and attending night school to earn his high school diploma.

In 1962, at the age of 25, Seale began attending Merritt College, a community college located on what was then Grove Street, now Martin Luther King Jr Way, near the Berkeley city-limits. There he would join the Afro-American Association, (AAA) and met Huey Newton, with whom he later co-founded the Black Panther Party. Seale and co-founder Newton became increasingly skeptical about the direction of the AAA, particularly the AAA's tendency to analyze rather than act on the problems facing black Americans.

Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer, CC (born December 13, 1929) is a Canadian theatre, film and television actor. He made his film debut in 1958's Stage Struck, and notable early film performances include The Night of the Generals, The Return of the Pink Panther, and The Man Who Would Be King.

In a career that spans seven decades and includes substantial roles in each of the dramatic arts, Plummer is probably best known to audiences as the autocratic widower Captain Georg Ludwig von Trapp in the hit 1965 musical film The Sound of Music alongside Julie Andrews. Plummer has also ventured into various television projects, including the legendary miniseries The Thorn Birds.

His most recent film roles include the The Insider as Mike Wallace, the Disney-Pixar 2009 film Up as Charles Muntz, the Shane Acker production 9 as 1, The Last Station as Leo Tolstoy, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus as Doctor Parnassus, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as Henrik Vanger, and Beginners as Hal.

Plummer has won numerous awards and accolades for his work, including an Academy Award, two Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a SAG Award, and a BAFTA Award. With his win at the age of 82 in 2012 for Beginners, Plummer is the oldest actor ever to win an Academy Award.