Robert Tait McKenzie (1867 - 1952)

Tait McKenzie gained world rank in three professions as a surgeon, physical educator, and sculptor. He was also an artist, athlete, soldier, and a writer.

Born in 1867 in Almonte, Ontario, the son of Scottish pioneers, Tait McKenzie attended the Almonte High School; Lisgar Collegiate in Ottawa; and McGill University (B.A. 1889, M.D. 1892), where he was an all-round gymnastic champion, a good hurdler, first-class boxer, member of the varsity football team, holder of the Intercollegiate High Hump record, a keen swimmer and a fencer.

All-Round Man
On graduation Tait McKenzie became at the same time, the first Medical Director of Physical Education in Canada, a Demonstrator in Anatomy at McGill, and personal physician to the Governor-General of Canada. He also won worldwide acclaim by his original ideas on rehabilitative medicine expressed in private practice in Montreal. He became fluent in French and an expert in the folklore songs and dances of Quebec. He was an active member of the Black Watch (Militia) Royal Highlanders of Canada.

Surgeon, Physical Educator, Sculptor
While teaching anatomy Tait McKenzie sculpted four Masks of Expression on the face of an athlete undergoing Violent Effort, Breathlessness, Fatigue, and Final Exhaustion. Subsequently he added sculpting to his professions of medicine and physical education; he has been considered by some as the greatest sculptor of athletes the world has ever known. He produced hundreds of portrait plagues, medals, monumental works, athletic studies, and war memorials culminating in the Scottish American War Memorial in Edinburgh. The Masks of Expression and the originals of the Edinburgh Memorial in full size are among the many renowned works seen in the Mill of Kintail Museum.

From 1904 Tait McKenzie spent many years at the University of Pennsylvania as full professor in the faculty of medicine and Director of Physical Education. He led successful campaigns to provide playing space for youths and adults in schools and crowded communities. He was a champion of champions and of the ordinary man; a Founder of the Boy Scout Council of Philadelphia, founder and officer of several national and international professional associations in medicine and physical education, and a strong advocate of the Olympic Games.

In the 1914-18 war he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps and instituted a plan for the rehabilitation of the wounded. He took part in the rehabilitation of French manpower. His methods of orthopaedic surgery were adopted in the British Army and in the U.S. Army and Navy, and he was Inspector of Convalescent Hospitals for the Canadian Army. He remained a loyal Canadian citizen and died in Philadelphia in 1938.

Meanwhile, He restored the old Mill on the VIIIth line of Ramsan, Lanark County, Ontario, in the ruins of which he had played as a boy. This he renamed "Mill of Kintail" after the stronghold of the McKenzie Clan in the Highlands of Scotland.

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