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Dr. Robert Tait McKenzie or MacKenzie was born on May 26, 1867, in Ramsay, Ontario.

He was a physician, sculptor, educator, athlete, soldier, and Scouter. He attended McGill University in Montreal as an undergraduate and medical student. He won the All-round Gymnastic Championship, was the Canadian Intercollegiate Champion in the high jump, a good hurdler, a first-rate boxer, and a member of the varsity football team. In 1892, he graduated from McGill and got an internship at Montreal General Hospital. A year later he became an instructor in anatomy and specialist in orthopedic surgery at McGill and also developed an active medical practice in Montreal where he was appointed house physician to the Governor-General of Canada, the Marquis of Aberdeen. During the 1890s, McKenzie asked McGill to develop a department and school of physical education, but the university declined, citing lack of money. In 1904, he moved to the United States to teach at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He also became its director of physical education.

He pioneered physical fitness programs in Canada. During World War I, his methods and inventions for restoring and rehabilitating wounded soldiers laid a foundation for modern physiotherapy practices. He attained fame in the medical world by his original ideas on the treatment of scoliosis and by his conviction of the need for preventive medicine.

His interest in sculpting was a result of his extensive knowledge of human anatomy. He sculptured memorials and statues of athletes.

He died on April 28, 1938, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

James McKenzie was born around 1777 near Inverness, Scotland, and died in 1849 in Quebec. His parents were Alexander Mackenzie of Achnaclerach and Catherine Mackenzie, and he was the brother of Roderick Mackenzie. In 1795, McKenzie began a seven-year apprenticeship with the North West Company under his brother Roderick in the Athabasca department. He had two sons with an unknown Indigenous woman near Terrebonne, Quebec, and in 1825, married Ellen Fitzsimmons, the under-aged daughter of Captain Thomas Fitzsimmons. They had seven children. McKenzie kept journals in Fort Chipewyan (Alberta) dated from 1799 and 1800, which illuminated the harshness of life in the fur trade and his contempt for Canadians, Indigenous peoples, and the North West Company. McKenzie physically abused members of the New North West Company (also known as the XY Company), sold Indigenous women to engagés, provided Indigenous peoples with bad tobacco and watered-down rum, and rewarded rather than punished a hunter responsible for the death of an engagé. Promoted partner in 1802, McKenzie was reassigned to the Athabasca country, where he constructed a “watch house” near the Hudson’s Bay Company’s post and ordered the destruction of the company’s property. Along with this, he debauched Indigenous peoples, plundered furs, and harassed workers of the Hudson’s Bay Company. McKenzie’s actions provoked some Chipewyan people into killing six North West Company workers that harassed them. Following the amalgamation of the two North West companies in 1804, McKenzie’s harassment intensified, causing the withdrawal of the Hudson’s Bay Company from the area in 1806. In 1807, McKenzie joined the Beaver Club in Montreal and soon after was appointed to the king’s post in Mingan, Quebec. McKenzie ventured up the Labrador coast to Musquaro, where he met the Naskapi peoples. In 1811, he bought a house near Terrebonne, Quebec, which facilitated visits to his brothers Roderick and Henry, and to his two sons with the unknown Indigenous woman. In 1815, he assisted John McDonald of Garth in dispossessing around four-hundred voyageurs of the Hudson’s Bay Company of their local tavern. McKenzie left the North West Company in 1818 to become an independent merchant at Tadoussac and Quebec. He was commissioned as a justice of the peace in 1821 and was believed to have settled in Quebec City.

Henry Mackenzie was born in 1781 in Achnaclerach, Contin, Ross and Cromarty, Scotland.

He was a seigneurial agent, fur trader, merchant, Justice of the Peace, and militia officer. Henry McKenzie, a lesser-known figure, was the brother of Roderick, Donald, and James, and a cousin of Sir Alexander Mackenzie. He moved to Lower Canada shortly before 1800 and was hired as a clerk at Grand Portage, Minnesota. In 1803, he settled close to Montreal in the seigneury of Terrebonne, which belonged to Simon McTavish. He helped him manage it and as a seigneurial agent, he established contacts with grain dealers and exporters. In 1806, he obtained a commission as Justice of the Peace for the district of Montreal. At the beginning of the War of 1812, he joined the Terrebonne battalion of the militia as a major and later was promoted to lieutenant-colonel. In 1814, he purchased 2 of the 19 shares of McTavish, McGillivrays and Co. and became one of the partners of the Michilimackinac Company. In 1815, McGillivray put him in charge of public relations for the North West Company. The same year he joined the Beaver Club. He was a member of the Scotch Presbyterian congregation in Montreal, serving as its vice-chairman in 1819 and 1822, and chairman in 1823 and 1825.

In 1815, he married Ann Bethune, daughter of John Bethune and sister of Angus Bethune. He died on June 28, 1832, in Montreal, Quebec.