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Walter McRaye, as he called himself, lecturer and entertainer, was born in Merrickville, Ontario on 31 December 1876. He was the great grandson of Major Thomas Smyth, founder of Smiths Falls. He acquired through his lectures and informal talks the sobriquet "The Apostle of Canadianism". McRaye toured with E. Pauline Johnson in Canada, Britain and the United States from 1901 to 1909. He often recited the Habitant poetry of Dr. W. H. Drummond. He wrote his memoirs, Town Hall Tonight, in 1929. Pauline Johnson and Her Friends was published posthumously in 1947. He died in 1946.

Cpt. Bernard J. “Ben” McDaniel (1884-1947) was born in Margaree, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. In 1916, having moved to Saskatchewan, he joined the 209th Infantry Battalion of the CEF as a lieutenant. McDaniel then went on to practice law in Regina, rising to the status of King's Counsel. A Liberal, he entered politics by winning a provincial by-election for the riding of Regina City in 1938 but lost his seat in the general election of 1944. He was also a member of the local council of the Knights of Columbus and of a Saskatchewan Maritime association. Bernard J. McDaniel died in 1947. While in England during the First World War, he married Beatrice “Beattie” Minshull (b. 1895). She was the daughter of Frank Minshull (1863-1941) and his wife Anne, who by 1940 lived at Fordcombe in Kent. Beatrice had four sisters, Gertrude (Mrs. Bertschinger of Guildford, Surrey), Hilda, and Olive (also in England) and Jessie (Mrs. William Higginson of Windsor, Ontario) in Canada. Beatrice was active in several organizations in Regina, often connected with Liberal politics, and was an accomplished pianist.

Bernard J. McDaniel and Beatrice Minshull had five children. During the Second World War, the two elder sons joined the RCAF. Bernard M. “Bain” McDaniel studied at No. 1 Technical Training School in St. Thomas, Ontario in 1940 as an aircraft maintenance crewman. After a brief time at No. 4 Service Flying Training School in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1941, he departed for England at the end of the year. He was assigned to No. 408 (Goose) squadron, working on a variety of bomber aircraft. For a time he was attached to No. 9408 Echelon. He met Gwen Murray of Stonehouse, Scotland while stationed at Leeming, Yorkshire, and they were married in June 1944, leaving for Canada early in 1945. Francis Joseph “Wit” McDaniel (1921-2005?), his younger brother, also studied at No. 1 TTS in St. Thomas, and thereafter spent time at No. 5 Bombing and Gunnery School in Dafoe, Manitoba. He embarked for England in May 1942. There he served as ground crew with No. 409 (Nighthawk) squadron. He was briefly attached to 3063 Echelon. In May 1944 he transferred to No. 408 squadron, his brother’s unit. He returned to Canada in the middle of 1945. Their friends from Saskatchewan in military service included P/O Bernard Heintz and O/S Charles “Baz” Bazinet. The other McDaniel children remained in Regina during the war: Muriel “Babe” McDaniel (b. 1924); Mildred “Millie” McDaniel; and Maurice Roy “Maury” McDaniel (1931-2002).

David McFadden, poet and travel writer, was born on 11 October 1940 in Hamilton, Ont. He worked as a proofreader at The Hamilton Spectator from 1962-1970 and then as a reporter from 1970 to 1976. He published his first book of poetry, The Poem Poem in 1967.

In 1978 he left Ontario for British Columbia, serving first as writer-in-residence at Simon Fraser University and then, from 1979-1982, as instructor, Fred Wah School of Writing, David Thompson University Centre, Nelson, B.C. He returned to Ontario as writer-in-residence at the University of Western Ontario, 1983-1984. His Gypsy Guitar (1987) was nominated for a Governor General's Award. In 2013, he won the Griffin Poetry Prize for his 2012 anthology What's the Score?

McFadden passed away on June 6th, 2018 at the age of 77.

The son of the prolific writer Leslie McFarlane, Brian McFarlane was born in New Liskeard, Ontario on 10 August 1931, and raised in various towns and cities such as Haileybury, Whitby and Ottawa. He accepted a hockey scholarship to St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y. and graduated in 1955. McFarlane is perhaps best known as a commentator on Hockey Night in Canada for 25 years. He made similar broadcasts on NHL games for the major American networks CBS and NBC. His contribution to hockey also includes the creation of the character Peter Puck.

McFarlane is an expert on hockey history and has written more than 50 books on the sport, many for young readers, with such publishers as McClelland and Stewart, Methuen, and Scholastic. In 1995, after a lengthy career in broadcasting and journalism, McFarlane was inducted into the media section of the Hockey Hall of Fame. McFarlane has also been admitted into the St. Lawrence University Hall of Fame, the Ontario Sports Legends Hall of Fame, the Ottawa Sports Legends Hall of Fame and the Whitby Sports Hall of Fame and. His memoirs, published by Stoddart, Toronto in 2000, are entitled Brian McFarlane's World of Hockey.

More recently, he has turned to writing the Mitchell Brothers books, a series of young adult fiction, the first volume of which was issued in 2003. McFarlane currently resides in the Toronto area. He is married to Joan Pellet, also a St. Lawrence graduate, and the couple have three children: Lauren, Brenda and Michael.

John Henry McFarlane was born in Lanark, Ontario on 31 July 1870. He received his teaching certificate in 1895 after attending Ottawa Normal School. He taught elementary school for 45 years, serving as a principal for much of this time. Most of his career was spent in Haileybury, Ont. He married Rebecca Barnett and the couple had four sons. One of those sons was the author Leslie McFarlane, best known for his Hardy Boys series written under the pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon. J.H. McFarlane is also the grandfather of Brian McFarlane, author and broadcaster. J.H. McFarlane retired in 1932; he was awarded the Silver Jubilee Medal in 1935. He died suddenly in Haileybury, Ontario on 3 January 1939.

Leslie McFarlane, journalist, author, playwright, screen writer, and film director, was born Charles Leslie McFarlane in Carleton Place, Ontario on 25 September 1902. His parents were John Henry McFarlane and Rebecca Barnett. Leslie worked as a journalist for the Sudbury Star and other newspapers in Northern Ontario before briefly moving to the United States in the mid-1920s. There he came in contact with the Stratemeyer Syndicate.

Returning to Canada, McFarlane began to write for the Syndicate's Dave Fearless series in 1926, writing seven books under the name of Roy Rockwood. Later the same year, he wrote the first book of the Hardy Boys series, again for the Syndicate, under the pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon. McFarlane wrote over twenty books for the series during the next twenty years. He also wrote the first three books of the Dana Girls series for the Syndicate, written under the name Carolyn Keene, in 1933. While writing these juvenile books, he wrote two novels and scores of short stories and novelettes for pulp and other magazines, including Maclean's, for whom McFarlane became an editor in the 1930s. He then wrote plays for CBC Radio's Canadian Theatre of the Air between 1938 and 1943.

In 1943, he joined the National Film Board of Canada as a documentary film writer and director. He also wrote speeches for the Minister of Munitions and Supply during the Second World War. In the 1950s, he wrote television plays for the CBC, becoming head of the television drama script department in 1958. He later returned to writing children's books, including the successful McGonigle Scores!, in 1966. His autobiography, Ghost of the Hardy Boys, was published in 1976. McFarlane and his first wife Amy Arnold had three children: Patricia, Brian, and Norah. Amy died in 1955, and he later married Bea Kenney. Leslie McFarlane died on 6 September 1977 in Whitby, Ontario.

Thomas D'Arcy McGee, journalist, politician, and poet, was born on 13 April 1825 in Carlingford, County Louth, Ireland. He left for New England for the first time in 1842. It was not until 1857, after a return to Ireland and a further sojourn in the United States, that he moved to Montreal. In December 1857 he was elected to represent Montreal in the Legislative Assembly. By 1867 the Irish Republican Brotherhood, more popularly known as the Fenians, were on the rise. McGee opposed them because of their support of republicans and their plans to invade British North America. McGee lost his support in the Irish community and was on the verge of withdrawing from politics when he was assassinated in Ottawa on 7 April 1868. An Irish immigrant, Patrick James Whelan, was convicted of the crime and executed on 11 February 1869. In addition to his journalism and speeches, McGee wrote A Popular History of Ireland (1863), which is considered to be his best work, and poetry which was collected and published after his death.

Pte. Arthur McGinnis was born in 1895 and was recruited at Kingston to fight in the First World War in 1918.

Major Douglas Urquhart McGregor of Waterdown, Ont. was in the Royal Air Force during World War I. He was awarded the Military Cross. He later became a medical doctor and both of his sons became doctors. He died in 1953.

Born on Rondeau Point, in New Scotland, Ontario, he was the son of John and Janey (McIntyre) McKishnie and the brother of the Canadian poet, Jean Blewett.

His first novel, Gaff Linkum, set in Kent County, Ontario, was published in 1907. In 1910, McKishnie relocated to Toronto and became the dramatic editor of the Toronto Sunday World. He was the director of the short story writing program at Shaw school in Toronto. His short stories regularly appeared in Maclean’s Magazine. Many of his stories featured a Black constable named Lennox Ballister. The first Lennox Ballister story was printed in Maclean’s in July 1918.
McKishnie’s books can be described as historical fiction, romance, nature stories, humor, adventure, and juvenile stories. He was the author of the following books:

• Gaff Linkum. A Tale of Talbotville. Toronto: Briggs. 1907. 255 p.
• Love of the Wild. Toronto: McLeod & Allen, 1910. 327 p.
• Willow, the Wisp. Toronto: Allen, 1918. 308 p.
• A Son of Courage. Toronto: Allen, 1920, 284 p.
• Big John Wallace. A Romance of the Early Canadian Pioneers. Toronto: Massey-Harris Press, 1922. 47 p.
• Openway. Toronto: Musson, 1922. 233 p.
• Mates of the Tangle. Toronto: Musson, 1924. 247 p.
• Brains, Limited. Toronto: Allen, 1925. 287 p.
• Dwellers of the Marsh Realm. Chicago: Donohue, 1937. 79 p.

Stuart McLean was a Canadian radio broadcaster and author, best known as the host of the CBC Radio program The Vinyl Café where he began in 1994. He was born in Montreal in 1948. He attended Lower Canada College in Montreal, and graduated from Sir George Williams University with a B.A. degree in 1971. McLean began his broadcasting career making radio documentaries for CBC Radio's Sunday Morning from 1978-1982. In 1979 he won an ACTRA award for Best Radio Documentary for his contribution to the program's coverage of the Jonestown massacre. From 1982-1994, McLean appeared on Monday mornings with Peter Gzowski on Morningside. McLean was a co-writer of a feature film titled, Looking for Miracles (Sullivan Films for Disney Studios, 1989). In 1994 he created the show The Vinyl Café. McLean retired as Professor Emeritus in 2004 from Ryerson University in Toronto where he was director of the broadcast division of the School of Journalism. Stuart McLean died in 2017.

McLean published in fiction and non-fiction. His first book, The Morningside World of Stuart McLean was published in 1989. He also wrote Welcome Home: Travels in Small Town Canada, and edited the collection When We Were Young. Welcome Home was chosen by the Canadian Authors’ Association as the best non-fiction book of 1993. He published a series of Vinyl Café books, the first of which is Stories from Vinyl Café in 1995. Since 1998 McLean has toured with the Vinyl Café to theatres across Canada and the United States. His awards include a B’Nai Brith Award for Human Rights in Broadcast Journalism. He is a three-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. In 2011 McLean was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. He has been awarded Honourary Doctorates from several universities, including one from McMaster in 2014. McLean passed away on the 15th of February, 2017, at the age of 68.

C. F. McLoughlin was a member of the United Arts Club in Dublin and an acquaintance of Jack Butler Yeats and other Irish writers. McLoughlin published two volumes of poetry. He used the pseudonym Conn Mecando for Imaginative Meaning: A Prismatic Medium. He also used the pseudonym Maelseachlainn for the annotations he added to letters and manuscripts in his fonds. Finally, he was nicknamed the Gunman. According to Patricia Boylan in All Cultivated People: A History of the United Arts Club, Dublin, "he was a peaceful man who spent most of his time behind a newspaper in the Dante Room [of the Arts Club], scowling at intruders, and was seldom seen in the bar. He got his nickname from his habit of wearing his hat well down over his eyes and his trench coat tightly belted in the manner of a Chicago gangster.

McMaster University was founded in 1887 in Toronto, Ont. and named after Senator William McMaster who had bequeathed sufficient funding to endow an Christian institution of higher learning. It opened in Toronto in 1890. Inadequate facilities and the gift of land in Hamilton prompted the institution to relocate in 1930. Until 1957 the Governors of the University were elected by the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec. In that year, the University became a non-denominational institution.

The head of McMaster University was given the title of Chancellor until 1950 when George P. Gilmour was given the title of President and Vice-Chancellor and a new Chancellor, E. Carey Fox was chosen. Gilmour had been Chancellor of McMaster University since 1941. Since 1950 seven presidents have headed McMaster University: George P. Gilmour, 1950-1961; Henry G. Thode, 1961-1972; Arthur N. Bourns, 1972-1980; Alvin A. Lee, 1980-1990; Geraldine A. Kenney-Wallace, 1990-1995; Peter J. George, 1995-2010; Patrick Deane, 2010-present.

The head of McMaster University was given the title of Chancellor until 1950 when George P. Gilmour was given the title of President and Vice-Chancellor and a new Chancellor, E. Carey Fox was chosen. Gilmour had been Chancellor of McMaster University since 1941.

Since 1950 seven presidents have headed McMaster University: George P. Gilmour, 1950-1961; Henry G. Thode, 1961-1972; Arthur N. Bourns, 1972-1980; Alvin A. Lee, 1980-1990; Geraldine A. Kenney-Wallace, 1990-1995; Peter J. George, 1995-2010; Patrick Deane, 2010-present.

Ruthven Colquhoun McNairn served in the Second World War with the Algonquin Regiment. Born in Toronto on 24 August 1914, to William Harvey McNairn, a professor at McMaster University and Hester (Wilson) McNairn. He was the third of four brothers, with Robert and Norman proceeding him, and Ian following. The family relocated to Hamilton in 1930 when the University did.

In February 1933, after finishing high school, McNairn hitchhiked to travel to California and travelling around before being jailed on a charge of vagrancy. His father bailed him out and McNairn made his way home by June.

He began his studies at McMaster University, beginning in Mathematics and Physics, and then transferring to General Arts. He enjoyed being part of the Dramatic Society and appeared in a number of plays. He also was part of the literary society. He graduated in 1938, and did some more travelling before returning to Hamilton.

On 1 November 1940, he began military training with McMaster’s COTC and part time militia with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. He completed his training in 1941 and hoped to join the Navy, which his younger brother also hoped to join. With no offers forthcoming, he formally enlisted 11 May 1942, and was sent for training at Gordon Head, BC. He would join the Algonquin Regiment in 1943 and shipped to Europe in early summer.

He was part of the operation to attempt to closed the ‘Falaise Gap’ and would then carry on towards Belgium, the Netherlands, and finally into Germany. Throughout this time he kept his own diary, as well as helping to write the regiment’s war diary when the official diarists were busy. He would carry on this work and though he died before the official history was published, he is credited with doing much of the work on Warpath.

Returning home, McNairn had aspirations of writing, either as a journalist or in longer form. Unfortunately, in June 1946, he was diagnosed with an especially virulent form of TB, tuberculous empyema. Likely contracted while still in Europe, he was transferred to Hamilton’s Mountain Sanatorium for care, but would never recover. McNairn died 5 September 1946 and was buried in Grove Cemetery, in Dundas.

William Harvey McNairn graduated from the University of Toronto in 1899 and obtained his M.A. in 1900 and his doctorate in 1916. He was a Professor of Geology at McMaster University from 1909 to 1941 and published many articles in scholarly journals devoted to geology and related subjects.

Eugene McNamara was born in 1930 in Oak Park, Illinois. He received a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts from DePaul University in 1953 and 1955, respectively. He completed a Ph.D. in English Literature at Northwestern University in 1964. He began teaching in the Department of English at the University of Windsor in 1959. He was one of the first two instructors in the Creative Writing Program in the Department of English.

He has published in the genres of poetry, short stories and novels. Four of his short stories were selected for inclusion in the annual Best Canadian Stories. One of these stories appeared in Best American Short Stories in 1975. He founded the University of Windsor Review, now known as The Windsor Review in 1965 and was editor until 1987. His publications include Passages and Other Poems (1972), Screens (1977), The Moving Light (1986), Keeping In Touch: New & Selected Poems (1998), Waterfalls (2000), Grace Notes: Poems New & Selected (2004) and a novel, The Orphans Waltz (2008). Eugene McNamara is Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at the University of Windsor. He has been active in the arts community.

Sir John William McNee, professor of medicine, was born on 17 December 1887 at Murieston, Mount Vernon, Glasgow, Scotalnd. He was educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne and then Glasgow University. He specialized in pathology and in 1914, after studies at Freiburg, Germany received an MD degree with gold medal. During World War I he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps, rising to the rank of major. He wrote several articles on gas poisoning, gas gangrene, and trench fever. He received the DSO in 1918 and was mentioned in war dispatches. After the war he was appointed to the teaching staff of University College Hospital, London, and went on to a distinguished career in medicine, receiving many awards and honorary degrees. After working for a time in the United States he returned to Britain to become regius professor of medicine at Glasgow University in 1935. He died at his home in Winchester on 26 January 1984.

John D.C. McTavish served with the Canadian Intelligence Corps holding the rank of captain. The Corps was founded on 29 October 1942. He served in the military before that although it is not known what unit he was with. McTavish served with the Corps in Singapore, leaving England in December 1946, stopping in Cairo and New Delhi en route. He returned to England and from there sailed for Canada arriving in October 1946. He was married to Estelle Mary McTavish and they had at least one son. They lived in Victoria, BC, and at one point he describes the Thames in relation to the Cowichan River. Although he was married, McTavish became involved with two women while in England. Both of them wrote to him when he left England for the Far East. He had returned to Victoria, BC, by 1949, when he was working for Empire Life Insurance.

Information regarding McTavish's birth and death dates are unknown, however the following obituary appeared in The Times Colonist, 5 July 2002, and given the area, name, and the logical dates, it is presumed to be him:
MCTAVISH John D.C. 1913-2002, passed away peacefully on Saturday, June 29, 2002. He will be missed by all his family and friends and will remain in our hearts and minds forever. An afternoon tea party at his home will be held in his honour at 2:00 p.m. Tuesday, July 9, at at 2837 Gorge View Drive.