John Keiller MacKay

Lieutenant-Colonel John Keiller MacKay, OC, DSO, KStJ, VD, QC (July 11, 1888 – June 12, 1970) was a Canadian soldier, lawyer and jurist. MacKay served as the 19th Lieutenant Governor of Ontario from 1957 to 1963.

John Keiller MacKay was born in 1888 in the village of Plainfield, Nova Scotia in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, the son of John Duncan and Bessie (Murray) MacKay. He was educated at the Pictou Academy, the Royal Military College (1909), Saint Francis Xavier University (BA 1912) and Dalhousie University (LL.B. 1922).

During World War I, he served in, and later commanded, 6th Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery (Non-Permanent Active Militia in the Canadian Army). He achieved the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and was mentioned in dispatches three times and wounded twice. MacKay won the Distinguished Service Order in 1916 at the Battle of the Somme and in 1918 was seriously wounded at Arras. He left the military after the war but was involved in the formation of the Royal Canadian Legion in 1925 and was its first National Vice-Chairman. He was a freemason and was initiated in 1925 to Ionic Lodge, #25 G.R.C.

He was called to the Nova Scotia bar in 1922 and the Ontario bar in 1923. He was a senior partner of a law firm, "MacKay, Matheson & Martin" in Toronto, and became a specialist in criminal law. He was appointed a King's Counsel in 1933. He was appointed to the Supreme Court of Ontario in 1935 and to the Ontario Court of Appeal in 1950.

MacKay served as the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario from 1957 to 1963, and he opened the Lieutenant Governor's New Year's Levee to the general public for the first time.

In 1967, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. He was also a Knight of Grace of the Venerable Order of St. John of Jerusalem and was responsible for bringing the Military and Hospitaler Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem to Canada.

He was married to Katherine 'Kay' Jean MacLeod and had three sons. He died in Toronto in 1970 and is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto (section Q-154).

The gravestone of MacKay (section Q-154) in Mount Pleasant Cemetery

• The "Keiller MacKay Park" at North Bay, Ontario, includes 52 homes for senior citizens.
• The "Keiller MacKay Room" in the Bloomfield Centre of Saint Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, which opened in 1973, features a life-size portrait of Keiller MacKay in full Highland dress.
• Major C. I. N. MacLeod, the St. Francis Xavier University's piper, composed a musical tribute for MacKay.
• The Lieutenant Colonel The Honourable J. Keiller MacKay Memorial Trophy, which is awarded for Canadian Armed Forces Regular and Reserve Marching Formations, was named in his honour.

• J. Keiller MacKay Memorial Trophy

"Many new things are useful, but the experience of the ages must not be repudiated. Tradition has its failures but is it not so that tradition is the sum of those enduring values, which have been kept alive through all mutations and help to give us continual stability and direction to life?"

“The state is made for the individual, not the individual for the state.”

"Too much authority is like alcohol in its effects on the brain. There is no excuse for infringing on the rights of the individual on the pretext that you are defending the freedom of the state."