R. Tait McKenzie

A Canadian by birth, an American by much association, R. Tait McKenzie united in his life two careers commonly regarded as diverse and contradictory. He was graduated from McGill University as a Doctor of Medicine in 1892. Thereafter he lectured on anatomy and was medical director of physical training at McGill. In 1904 he became director of the Department of Physical Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Throughout the World War he served his country as major in the Royal Army medical corps and inspector of physical training for Lord Kitchener’s armies.

While still at McGill he began to discover his talent as a sculptor. Searching for a statuette of a runner crouching for the start of a race he was unable to find one correct in detail. He modeled one himself and it was so good that the Academy of Art accepted it. Since then, and especially since the War, he modeled hundreds of statues and memorials, most of them inspired by athletes or World War figures. His sculpture occupies sites of honor in the Stockholm Stadium, Sweden, in Edinburgh and Cambridge, in Ottawa, Boston, and Philadelphia. His knowledge of the human frame gave his statues an extraordinary verisimilitude which his fellow sculptors gladly acknowledged.

Geoffrey Parsons
1938 Century Memorials