 Robert
Tait McKenzie, 1867-1938
R. Tait McKenzie was born in 1867, in Ramsay Township, Lanark
County, Ontario, Canada, where his father, William McKenzie, emigrated
to Canada from Kelso, Scotland, in 1858 and became minister of
the Free Church of Scotland in Almonte. William McKenzie sent
for the betrothed of his student days, Catherine Shiells of Edinburgh.
They had four children of whom the third was Robert Tait McKenzie.
When Tait was nine, his father died, and the family could no longer
live in the church manse. Young Tait's character was profoundly
affected when his late father's congregation, out of affection
for his mother and respect for her late husband, built a house
for the young family. Return to Top
McKenzie went to the Almonte High School, under the great Scottish schoolmaster
P. C. MacGregor, and for a short time attended the Collegiate
Institute, Ottawa. He entered McGill in 1885, and worked his way
through college and the medical school on his own resources. While
an undergraduate at McGill, McKenzie showed his promise when he
won the All-around Gymnastic Championship. He was the Canadian
Intercollegiate Champion in the high jump, a good hurdler, a first-rate
boxer, and a member of the varsity football team. His two athletic
specialties were swimming and fencing. Return
to Top
McKenzie was not long in achieving brilliance in the medical
profession. In his senior year at McGill he was intern at the
University Hospital and a year later became instructor in anatomy
and specialist in orthopedic surgery at McGill. He then developed
an active medical practice in Montreal where he was appointed
house physician to the Governor-General of Canada, the Marquis
of Aberdeen. He attained fame in the medical world at large by
his original ideas on the treatment of scoliosis (lateral curvature
of the spine). In these early years Tait McKenzie took his relaxation
in water color painting. As an aid to his lectures in anatomy
he made four experimental models of the progress of fatigue over
the nerves and muscles of the face of an athlete, showing successively
Effort, Breathlessness, Fatigue, and Exhaustion. He soon took
to sculpture. Return to Top
In his last undergraduate year at McGill, the instructor in
the varsity gymnasium died and was succeeded by one of McKenzie's
school friends from Almonte High School, Dr. James Naismith, originator
of basketball. In the following year, Dr. Naismith left, and the
newly qualified Doctor Tait McKenzie assumed the position, which
he enlarged to include all physical training at the University.
From 1894 to 1904, McKenzie in addition to his work in the
Department of Anatomy at McGill and his many other activities,
was also Medical Director of Physical Training, the first appointment
of its kind in Canada. He then began to create at McGill a special
Department of Physical Education but, though the President, Sir
William Peterson, and other officials were in favor, funding was
not available. Meanwhile, the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia
offered him an opening which he realized would permit the wider
authority he needed to implement his advanced ideas. Philadelphia
had a population more than twice that of Montreal and Toronto
combined.
Dr. McKenzie became Head of the new Department of Physical
Education at Penn in 1904, and as a full professor on the medical
faculty. He persuaded the University to medically examine all
athletes before participation in sports. In 1931, he asked to
be relieved of his duties at the University to devote more time
to his sculpturing. He still lectured at Pennsylvania.
He was one of a group of five who founded the American Academy
of Physical Education and he served continuously as its president
from 1927 until his death in 1938. He was an officer of many other
institutions and societies, including president, the American
Physical Education Association; president, the American Association
for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation; and president,
the Society of Directors of Physical Education in Colleges.
In 1904, when the Olympic Games were held in St. Louis, he
lectured on topics of physical training as a feature of the general
Olympic program. With two medical colleagues, he attempted for
the first time to find out what takes place in the physiology
of a marathon runner.
This career lasted, with the single interruption of McKenzie's
distinguished service in the First World War, until he died in
Philadelphia on Thursday, April 28, 1938. The Saturday following
his death, the Penn Relay Games, that he had established as an
annual classic, were held at the Universities Franklin Field.
In the hour of his funeral the athletic events were stopped and
the flag at Franklin Field was lowered to half-mast during three
minutes silence. Then the games rolled on. Return
to Top
Dr. McKenzie served England, the United States, and Canada
during World War I, as a pioneer in the physical-mental rehabilitation
of the severely wounded. In 1914 he volunteered his services.
He traveled to England in 1915 and attempted to join the Canadian
Army but, by some official mischance there was a delay. He applied
to the Royal Army Medical Corps in which he was granted a commission
first as a lieutenant and later as a major. He applied for attachment
to the Physical Training Headquarters Staff, but he was sent to
take a course in physical education. On his colonel's discovery
that McKenzie had written the textbooks on which the course was
based, things became somewhat different. He was sent instead on
a tour of inspection of training camps and hospitals, where he
made two important observations.
First, as a physical educator he was able to report from the
training camps that many men, though not ill, were not fit for
service or even further training without a course of basic physical
exercises. Second, as a physician and surgeon he reported from
the hospitals that many convalescents were hanging about and who
for their own good and for that of their country should receive
medical or surgical rehabilitation. Major McKenzie was placed
on the staff of Sir Alfred Keogh, Director of Medical Services,
War Office, and given the opportunity to develop his own scheme.
His plan called for the establishment of a depot in each Home
Command for remedial physical training. A disabled colonel was
to be in charge of each depot, each with a staff of disabled officers.
Electrical and hydro-therapeutic equipment was provided with appropriate
medical and physical training staff.
When the United States entered the war, he was encouraged to
return to America to work with the office of the Surgeon-General
of the United States Army. In 1918 he was appointed inspector
of convalescent hospitals in the Canadian Medical service under
the Military Hospitals Commission.
One of his several books written as a result of his experiences
in the war, Reclaiming the Maimed, became the official manual
of the United States Army and Navy. This led to the organization
of the American Academy of Physical Medicine, whose members included
the many leading physicians in England, Canada, and the United
States. They honored McKenzie by selecting him as their president.
He continued to design and install corrective apparatus in military
hospitals in England, Canada, and the United States. This work
attracted the attention of French military leaders who sought
a means of regenerating France after its enormous manpower losses.
McKenzie made frequent visits to France, which of all European
countries, appealed to him most. He spoke French fluently, and
helped put into practice in France a system of physical rehabilitation. Return to Top
R. Tait McKenzie was active in organizing the first Philadelphia
chapter of the Boy Scouts in 1908. McKenzie was a personal friend
of Scouting's founder, Sir Robert Baden-Powell, and shared with
B-P his belief in the program of Scouting for boys. He became
a member of the Philadelphia Council Executive Board in 1911 and
remained until January, 1938. It was quite fitting that he should
be called upon in to create the statue known as The
Boy Scout, because of his own conviction that Scouting was,
through the Oath and Law, a means of developing youth physically,
mentally and morally into more vigorous manhood. This statue of
the Scout on Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia is universally accepted
as the Ideal Boy Scout. Return
to Top
McKenzie used sculpture to illustrate points before his classes
in anatomy. He continued it in the course of his physical education
to teach his students and athletes how, for example, to crouch
for the sprint or plunge, how to hold the discus, or how to take
the hurdles. It became increasingly apparent that his figures
had a beauty as well as utility. For years he was a participant
and exhibitor in the competition of fine arts at the Olympic games.
For the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm he designed his famous plaque
of three hurdlers known as the Joy of Effort of which the original
is set into the wall of the Stockholm stadium and for which he
received the King's Medal from the King of Sweden.
There is a freshness, vitality and spirit in all of his works
that make them come alive. McKenzie was convinced that through
art, one could portray ideals of physical development. His works
were anatomically accurate, comparing favorably with the art of
ancient Greece. He is considered by some to be greater than the
Greeks in that he was able, while keeping the brilliance and beauty
of his figures, to endow them with the essence of motion. His
athletic figures are beautiful and because they are correct in
every detail of construction, appear to be alive.
Before World War I, he was recognized as the greatest sculptor
of athletic youth. After the war, his war memorials brought forth
his most magnificent contributions to mankind. Dr. McKenzie's
work is world-renowned, and examples of is work may be found at
the University of Pennsylvania; Red Cross Building, Washington,
D.C.; Girard College War Memorial, Philadelphia; Woodbury, New
Jersey; Cambridge, England; Edinburgh, Scotland; Ottawa, Canada;
University of Tennessee, Knoxville; and many of them at Almonte,
Ontario. Return to Top
During the summer of 1907, McKenzie met the talented musician
and poet, Ethel O'Neil, of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, while on
a voyage to England. They were married in 1907 in the Chapel Royal
in Dublin, while both were guests of Lord and Lady Aberdeen. Mrs.
McKenzie was a source of encouragement and inspiration to him
through the next thirty years, when he achieved world recognition
in fields of art, medicine, physical education, and rehabilitation.
Mrs. McKenzie outlived her husband by some 14 years and died in
1952. In her later years, she wrote several poems concerning her
husband's work in a book entitled Secret Snow. Return
to Top
His last years were indeed happy ones, for he purchased a historic
mill near Almonte, Ontario, close to his boyhood home. There on
the Eighth Line of Ramsay, the same Concession Line as that on
which lay the church of his father, he bought an old stone grist
mill, Baird's Mill, in which he had played as a boy with his friends.
The mill had been built in 1830 by a pioneer from Glasgow and
in its woodland setting on the banks of a rapid stream, could
be taken for a part of Scotland. With his wife's help, they converted
the mill into a summer home and studio, where they collected and
placed many of his dearest possessions and originals of some of
his most famous works. It was renamed the Mill of Kintail and
now stands as a memorial to that brilliant faceted, world renowned
figure, who never forgot his humble boyhood. Return
to Top
References:
1) Robert Tait McKenzie and The Mill of Kintail, Major
James Farquharson Leys, (1955) Ottawa*
2) R. Tait McKenzie, The Sculptor of Athletes, Kozar, Andrew
J., (1975) Knoxville, TN
3) "The Boy Scout", Story of the McKenzie Statue,
Turner Moon, (1977) Philadelphia, PA*
4) The Joy of Effort, A Biography of R. Tait McKenzie, Jean S. McGill, (1980) Toronto
5) Robert Tait McKenzie (1867 - 1938) Sculpture Of Athletes, Richard Grayburn, (1988) Calgary
6) The Sport Sculpture of R. Tait McKenzie, Andrew J. Kozar,
(1992) Champaign, IL
* courtesy of the Cradle of Liberty Council, Philadelphia,
PA 19103-1085
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