John Meisel was born in Vienna, Austria in October 1923 to Jewish Czech parents.
[1] As the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia became imminent, Baťa sent its Jewish employees out of Czechoslovakia to Bata centres abroad,[2][3] and the Meisel family moved to Casablanca and then Haiti before settling in Bata's Canadian company town of Batawa, Ontario in 1942.
Meisel worked on the 1965 Canadian National Election Study,[4] and was a member of the ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research) Council from 1966 to 1968.
In addition to his contributions to Canadian university research and public communications, Dr Meisel is known for his philanthropy in Kingston, Ontario.
This was donated to the Rideau Valley Conservation Foundation in 2000 as a sanctuary of peace and quiet for the residents of Eastern Ontario.