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Benjamin Jones Hales was born at Peterborough, Ontario in November 1868.  
 
He was educated as a lawyer and teacher, and came to Manitoba to teach school at MacGregor and Hartney before moving to Brandon where he was the first principal of the Brandon Normal School one of four Normal schools built in Manitoba devoted to teacher training from 1911 to 1938.  
 
He was a keen naturalist, amassing a substantial collection of Manitoba plants and animals assembled between the late 1880's and 1932, which, in 1913, became the basis for the B. J. Hales Museum of Natural History, now owned by the Brandon School Division, but is not for public exhibition.  
 
On 14th April 1900 at Winnipeg, he married Elizabeth Ida Lewis who was born 10th August 1865 in Ontario. They had one daughter, Marion Margaret Hales Doig (1902-1961), Community activist.  
 
He served as a Brandon city alderman from 1920 to 1923, and was chair of the Brandon Parks Board for 19 years.  
 
He published the book Forests and Trees (1919) on the trees of western Manitoba, and through his personal endeavors, a tree of every species that will grow in Manitoba was planted on the Normal School grounds.   
 
His wife Elizabeth died in Brandon, aged 77 years on 19th January 1943.  
 
He died in Brandon on the 23rd of December 1945.  
 
They are both interned at Brandon cemetery, as is their daughter.  
 
Note: The ‘Normal School’ is today known as the ‘Ag. Center’ and is located at 1129 Queens Avenue, Brandon.  
 
 
Source: http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/people/hales_bj.shtml