Donald MacKay

Donald MacKay lived his early years in Windsor, Nova Scotia and in Halifax, where he began a career as a journalist for The Canadian Press. rnrnDuring World War II MacKay served on an armed Norwegian oil tanker on the Atlantic convoys to Britain. After the war he became a reporter in Halifax and Montreal and served as western regional manager in Winnipeg with the Canadian Branch of British United Press. In 1951 he moved to London, England for United Press (later United Press International) and subsequently ran the UPI bureau in Lisbon, Portugal. He was news director at Radio Europe in Munich 1956-59 broadcasting to Eastern Europe before returning to London from which base he broadcast daily to radio stations across the United States, and occasionally to the BBC and CBC for ten years. With roving assignments in a score of countries, he reported on the birth of NATO, the Cold War, the Hungarian Revolution, the building of the Berlin Wall, royal weddings, the May 1968 Paris insurrection, the death of Sir Winston Churchill. He traveled to Africa and India to report on the collapse of empires and he was one of the first western journalists to be allowed into China during the early days of the Cultural Revolution. In 1970 he returned to Montreal as Managing Director of United Press International (Canada) and in 1975 left journalism to become an author, living in Montreal, New York City and southern Ireland. rnrnDonald MacKay’s eleven books include the prize-winning Flight from Famine, the Coming of the Irish to Canada; Scotland Farewell, The People of the Hector; and The Lumberjacks, both finalists for the Governor General’s award; Empire of Wood; The People’s Railway, and in 2010 a memoir, Safe Passage, Travels through the 20th Century.