Norman Archibald MacRae MacKenzie

MacKenzie, Norman Archibald MacRae

Norman Archibald MacRae MacKenzie"Larry," international lawyer, university president (b at Pugwash, NS 5 Jan 1894; d at Vancouver 26 Jan 1986). His education at Pictou Academy was all his family could afford; he went west in 1909 to work for his 2 brothers homesteading near Qu'Appelle, Sask. He attended Dalhousie in 1913, but in 1915 he joined the Canadian Army and spent the next 4 years in the trenches, escaping death by miracles and earning the Military Cross and Bar.

Returning to Dalhousie, he graduated in law and went on to Harvard and Cambridge, specializing in international law. He went to the International Labour Office in Geneva in 1925 and in 1926 became professor of international law at U of T, where he remained until 1940. He then became president of U of New Brunswick, where he was a great success.

In 1944 he went to UBC as its president; it was his spiritus movens that helped to make UBC into a great university. He resigned in 1962. He remained a vigorous elder statesman, working on countless boards and commissions. His most famous was the Massey Commission, 1949-51; he was instrumental in persuading Massey to accept the necessity for federal grants to universities.