R. G. MacBeth

Roderick George MacBeth (1858–1934) was born at Kildonan in the Red River settlement, descended from the Sutherland Highlanders whom Lord Selkirk had planted in Manitoba in 1815. He took his degrees at Manitoba College, was called to the Manitoba bar in 1886, then left law for the church and was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1891, serving congregations in Winnipeg, Vancouver and Paris, Ontario. Before that, in 1885, he had gone on active service with the Winnipeg Light Infantry during the North-West Rebellion, in a brigade that included Mounted Police. He also became one of the best known popular historians of the Canadian West, writing The Selkirk Settlers in Real Life (1897), The Making of the Canadian West (1898), The Romance of Western Canada (1918) and The Romance of the Canadian Pacific Railway (1924), and the University of Manitoba gave him an honorary LLD in 1929.