Dan MacKay

Ancestors

Descendants

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Biography

Occupation

Occupation:

Place: Semi-Retired Dentist

Graduation

Graduation:

Date: ABT SEP 1940 TO ABT JUN 1948

Place: Pine Street, Port Artur,On

Graduation:

Date: ABT SEP 1948 TO ABT JUN 1952

Place: Port Arthur Collegiate

Residence

Residence:

Place: Dundas, ON, Canada

Note

From a transcript of a recorded conversation from August 2005, between brother and sister, Anne Hardy, and Danford MacKay.

GRAEME M – How old would Marion and Doug and Pat be, they were younger than you, Auntie Anne, so…they were in their teens I guess [the day my dad Danford was born].

ANNE H – They were 17…

DANFORD M – Well Doug was 16, Pat would be probably 15…

ANNE H – I was 19, I’d be 20 in November.

DANFORD M – Doug was turning 16, I guess, and Marion was 14. But because I was told years ago that Doug didn’t know, I think it was you that told me, he came home from work that day, when he was 16, and wanted to know where mom was.

ANNE H – I was working.

DANFORD M – Well one of you said, she had the baby, and he said what baby?

ANNE H – Oh, he didn’t know she was pregnant.

DANFORD M – He was living in the house with his mother and he didn’t know she was pregnant. And she wasn’t that big a woman.

ANNE H – I didn’t know that.

DANFORD M – Well it must have been Pat who told me

* * * * *

DANFORD M – [The war years in the 40’s] were happy years for me because my dad was at Minaki Lodge. So we would go to Minaki every year around April. I’d get out of school early, ‘cause I’d be a little…

ANNE H – You were bigger at the end, after Jon was born.

DANFORD M – I used to do well in school in those days. Anyway, we would go earlier from school and those were the happiest years of my childhood.

ANNE H – Certainly lots of nice things to do up there.

DANFORD M – And I went with Anne a couple of times, when Jon was with them.

ANNE H – Mother would take Jon in April and Dan would come and stay with me until school was out in June. And then we would go up after two went up.

DANFORD M – I can still remember going to Sioux Lookout

ANNE H – And we stayed over night.

DANFORD M – We’d go to Sioux Lookout and we’d have to get up in the middle of the night.

ANNE H – Everybody said, well, my dad said, now you get a hotel when you get to Sioux lookout, you don’t wait in the station.

GRAEME M – Why?

DANFORD M – Well we were going to be there for about four or five hours.

GRAEME M – It’s not a place to hang out?

ANNE H – I guess not.

DANFORD M – And I was just a little kid, and she would put me down, and then get me up, I don’t know an hour before the train left. How far were we away a couple hours?

ANNE H – Not very far.

GRAEME M – Was that the only way up there?

DANFORD M – I don’t know why we didn’t go through Winnipeg. Do you?

ANNE H – Because dad worked for the CN, and it was the CN that, or was it CP?

DANFORD M – There’s a puzzle from our past. I only went to Sioux Lookout with Anne. I know when went with them we got on the boat train, is what they called it because they’d get the boats, the passenger ships after they landed in Thunder Bay – Port Arthur, and there was a train that ran from Port Arthur to Winnipeg every day.

GRAEME M – Was that the only way you could get to Winnipeg, by train?

ANNE H – It was the way to get to Minaki.

GRAEME M – There was no road to Winnipeg?

DANFORD M – No road. The rich guests, some of them would come in by boat plane.

ANNE H – A lot of Americans. It was a beautiful place.

DANFORD M – It burned to the ground.

ANNE H – Yeah it burned a couple of times.

DANFORD M – That was a sad day for me.

ANNE H – Yeah, your mother and dad went up there.

DANFORD M – We had so much history there. All my brothers – no not all the brothers, the two brothers in the forces went up there, their wives, and little babies, Anne and Pat and Marion. They all went, and my father was an officer of the lodge because he was the chief engineer, so we were treated royally.

ANNE H – We ate in the main dining room. They were good years. We had the life.

DANFORD M – We did. Now you had a tough life with the depression before I was around.

ANNE H – You just went with it. Everybody was in the same boat, and in our teens we made our own fun. We went on hikes and had bonfires.

* * * * *

GRAEME M – Did he [Dan] ever get in trouble?

ANNE H – No, he was a sweet guy.

GRAEME M – You don’t have any stories to share.

ANNE H – No not one, just he went with two other boys, Jim Purvis and John Whitely, and we always called them the three musketeers. Always together, but they were all good friends.

DANFORD M – The peripheral ones were Neil Ornstein and Michael Williams, Jack Armstrong, you used to like Jack Armstrong.

ANNE H – Oh you had others but the three of you were inseparable.

DANFORD M – Except Jim had a girlfriend.

ANNE H – Yeah, and that spoiled everything.

GRAEME M – This was when you were in…

DANFORD M – High School. Well, Jim Purvis and John Whitely were from grade two and on.

ANNE H – Jon had friends like that.

DANFORD M – John Whitely was my best friend in high school, I haven’t seen for 50 years. I can’t believe that.

ANNE H – And then he’s going to go on his trip to Italy at the same time as the High School reunion. Too bad.

GRAEME M – Oh well.

Marriages

September 28, 1962 - Marriage of Danford Royce to Sandra MacKay, Toronto, ON, Canada, Age 29

July 15, 2000 - Marriage of Danford Royce and Bernadette Roung, Hamilton, ON, Canada, Age 66

Newspaper Clippings

Danford McKay, beginners class/Cornwall, published on December 18, 1939 (with photo), pg. 11, Port Arthur Daily News and Port Arthur News-Chronicle^[1]

Dan McKay accident, published on February 10, 1948, pg. 1, Port Arthur News-Chronicle^[2]

External Links

YouTube Clip - Wedding reception of Sandra Ashenhurst and Danford MacKay, Toronto, Ontario, Sept 28, 1962. With appearances by June and Howard Boland, Lois and Jim Piper, Jon Thrower, Don MacKay, Doug MacKay, Miriam McKay and Lois Ashenhurst.

Sources

• WikiTree profile MacKay-266 created through the import of Danford MacKay Family(2).ged on Feb 3, 2012 by Graeme MacKay. See the Changes page for the details of edits by Graeme and others.

1. ↑ Index of News, Photos and Social Notices as published in The Port Arthur Daily News and Port Arthur News-Chronicle 1915 - 1942
2. ↑ Index of News, Photos and Social Notices as published in The Port Arthur News-Chronicle 1943 - 1951