McKenzie was born on May 26, 1867, in the township of Ramsay (now part of the Town of
Mississippi Mills), in Ontario's Lanark County. A childhood friend was
James Naismith, the inventor of
basketball, with whom he attended
McGill University. As a child, McKenzie did not regard himself as an athlete, saying, "Looking back with an eye of memory I see a rather delicate child, sensitive at being called pale-faced, a roamer of the woods and fields with a mind filled with romance that
Sir Walter Scott and
Fenimore Cooper alone could instill, going unwillingly to school, distracted by thoughts of the Deerslayer..." In preparation for
McGill he attended Ottawa Collegiate Institute (currently known as
Lisgar Collegiate Institute) in 1883 at nearby Ottawa, Ontario.
McGill University This attitude changed after he enrolled at
McGill University in 1885. A pre-med major, he developed a great appreciation for and attraction to athletics and physical training. In 1889, he won the Wickstead gold medal, which made him an acknowledged gymnastic champion. McKenzie found his athletic abilities focused on sports that did not solely require strength or stamina, but rather skill, coordination, and practice. During his senior year at McGill, McKenzie was an intern at the University Hospital. He graduated from
McGill University in 1892
Medicinæ Doctorem et Chirurgiæ Magistrum, and then got an internship at
Montreal General Hospital. After graduating, McKenzie gained experience as a physician and surgeon, developed his own medical practice and became an anatomy instructor at McGill. He became convinced of the need for preventive medicine. Training and conditioning of the body, he believed, would prevent disease, physical breakdown and accidents, so he developed a program of physical exercise. He spent 15 months in the Governor General's household, where he mingled with various political figures. During the 1890s, McKenzie asked McGill to develop a department and school of physical education, but the university declined, citing lack of money. As a compromise, in 1898, McGill appointed him as Medical Director of Physical Training, the first such appointee at a Canadian university. and the school allowed him to start physical examinations for incoming students. His interest in sculpting was a result of his extensive knowledge of human anatomy, his desire to portraying athletics artistically, and the limitations of portraying musculature in two-dimensional art forms. McKenzie's first untrained sculptural effort was a series of masks known as
Violent Effort, Breathlessness, Fatigue and Exhaustion. His research led to an article, "The Facial Expression of Violent Effort, Breathlessness and Fatigue," published around 1900 in the
Journal of Anatomy and Physiology in London.
University of Pennsylvania In 1904, McKenzie took a position at the
University of Pennsylvania in
Philadelphia, (1919),
Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania While in Philadelphia, he also worked closely with
Lord Robert Baden-Powell, founder of
Scouting. As a longtime supporter and spectator at the
Olympic Games, McKenzie often exhibited works at the
competition of fine arts. To commemorate the Olympic Games scheduled for
1912 Stockholm in, the
American Olympic Committee commissioned him to create a sports
medallion. The result was one of his most famous works, the
Joy of Effort medallion. Within years, the
YMCA started to use the motif in Asia. Later, at the
1932 Summer Olympics, McKenzie would win a medal for a sculpture. In 1915, with the outbreak of the
First World War, McKenzie made his way to England to enlist with the
Canadian Forces. Eager to volunteer his services as a physician and surgeon, McKenzie chose instead to enlist with the
Royal Army Medical Corps after encountering some red tape and delays in his paperwork. Given the commission of
Lieutenant (and later becoming
Major), they quickly assigned him to the physical training program for new soldiers. He also spent a large portion of his time helping plastic surgeon Dr. William L. Clark rehabilitate those whose faces had been disfigured by war.
Almonte In McKenzie's final years, he was an internationally recognized figure and comparatively well off, so that he had the ability to retire anywhere. In 1931, he received an invitation from the Mayor of
Almonte to return to his hometown to participate in the celebration of Almonte's 50th
Anniversary of Incorporation. During the celebrations, the mayor offered McKenzie "The Freedom of Almonte" - a local award of recognition. After Ethel O'Neil McKenzie's death in 1954, the Mill of Kintail, as McKenzie and his wife Ethel renamed the property, passed eventually into management by the local natural resource management office, the
Mississippi Valley Conservation Authority, who open the museum to the public from May to October. During his retirement, McKenzie took advantage of the peaceful surroundings of
Almonte. Being a man who could never sit still for very long, a typical summer's day would find him working in his studio, walking in the woods, swimming, canoeing, going into town or giving presentations to local groups. His spirit refused to allow him to slow down, despite warnings from his physician about his deteriorating heart, and consequently, McKenzie collapsed suddenly and died on April 28, 1938. ==Legacy==