Jackson, Charles Blake, 1884-1979 : Charles Blake Jackson was born in Petrolia, Ontario, in 1884. He attended the University of Toronto, specializing in building construction and architecture, graduating from the Faculty of Applied Sciences. He met Ethel Berney at University and spent time with her at her family home in Chicago. In 1907, they married and Jackson located in the Chicago area where he worked with several companies, including the C. Everett Clarke Company as Chief Engineer. It was in this position that he oversaw the construction of several skyscraper projects for the company.
While in Chicago, Jackson and Frank Lewis, a university colleague, decided that a construction boom would soon occur in the Toronto. They subsequently established one of the first general contracting companies there. Their partnership, the Jackson-Lewis Company Ltd., and was inaugurated in 1913.
Jackson eventually bought out his partner and ran the company himself. He held numerous positions in the building community including the Chairmanship of the Toronto Builders' Exchange and the Presidency of the Canadian Construction Association. In 1941, C.D. Howe appointed him Controller of Construction in the Department of Munitions and Supply during the Second World War.
C.B. Jackson's engineering company was enormously successful and responsible for the design of numerous major Canadian construction projects after the war years. These included several large auto plants in southern Ontario, portions of the trans-Canada highway, Plantages Theatre, the Gardner Expressway, Maple Leaf Gardens and the C.N. Tower. Over many decades, it underwent new partnership arrangements and corporate mergers, resulting in several name changes. Charles Blake Jackson died in his 94th year in Toronto, in 1979. See biographical notes on accession file 2001-R9342.
Forbes, Kenneth Keith, 1892-1980 : Kenneth Keith Forbes (R.C.A.) was born in Toronto, Ontario. He was educated at the Westmount Academy and at the Newlyn Art School in Cornwall, England. Forbes entered the army in 1914, as a private in the Stock Exchange Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers. Before he was transferred to the Canadian War Memorials section as a war artist, he had reached the rank of Captain and was second-in-command of the Thirty-Second Machine Gun Corps. Forbes was the official war artist for the Canadian War Records Office in 1918.
