Robert McKay 1897 – 1975

Robert McKay was a son of George McKay from Lockers farm (croft) near Newmill in Keith. In 1926 he emigrated to Canada with his wife Mary and daughter Gladys. There seems to have been a delaying issue for Mary and Gladys at the immigration point of entry to Canada which may have meant a brief but no doubt worrying separation from Robert. The emigration passenger list for the Canadian Pacific Steamship Line ship named “Metagama” (see below) sailing between Glasgow (actually probably Greenock further down the Clyde river for deep-water docks) and Quebec shows the entries for Mary and Gladys, struck-out for whatever reason.

Once cleared for entry to Canada, the Trans-Canadian Pacific Railway would then have delivered the family onward to Saskatchewan. The journey from the croft at Lockers to Glasgow /Greenock would most likely have been fairly lengthy in those days and taken in stages – several miles walk or horse-drawn transport from Lockers to Keith, steam train Keith to Aberdeen then change for onward journey to Glasgow. On foot across Glasgow from Queen Street to Central station (if going by rail from Glasgow to Greenock) or to Broomielaw Quay in Glasgow, less than a mile walk in either case.

The SS Metagama was a transatlantic ocean liner owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, it was built in Glasgow in 1914 and eventually scrapped by 1934 following the Great Depression. The ship could accommodate 1,654 passengers and achieve speeds of up to 16 knots. It was used during the First World War and, luckily, managed to avoid the fate that befell her sister ship, the SS Missanabie, torpedoed by a German submarine in 1918 towards the end of World War One. After the war, the SS Metagama became known as an immigrant ship and famously accommodated the mass emigration of Scottish youths to Canada in 1923.

So begins a great story which only Robert’s descendants in Canada will know the full history of, but if you look at how the family tree blossomed from that beginning it looks like a largely happy one despite its own bumps in the road they will have seen, for sure, something we all experience.

Robert and Mary lived initially in Riverhurst, Saskatchewan, in a small house near a family named Pratt who showed them the ways of Canadian life. No doubt that included how to survive freezing cold winters and scorching hot summers on the prairies to the extremes we don’t get in Scotland.

Special thanks to Robin Maria McKay Ganshorn, granddaughter to Robert, who has supplied the Canadian family details, and to Graeme MacKenzie our cousin from Elgin who enabled the connection. There is a clear bond amongst the Canadian family members – Robin was able to supply a wealth of information in a short period of time on virtually everyone descending from Robert. It is humbling to see the family connections in Canada maintained so well, parallel connections of which on this side of the Atlantic have possibly been more fractured as family growth and spread inevitably separates us. Robin lives with her husband Derrick Ganshorn and two boys Colton and Jaxon to the South of the small town Grand Coulee, near to the city of Regina in Saskatchewan.

Robert and Mary lived out there lives in Saskatchewan, only Robert returned briefly (by sea on the Queen Mary if memory serves well) for a short visit in the 1960’s. As a child aged maybe 12, the author Bill remembers Robert, or ‘Uncle Rob’ as he was known to Bill’s father Norris (a.k.a. Rodger), spending a night or two with us at that time. Bill’s oldest brother Robert, home on leave from the army at the time, drove uncle Rob to visit his brother Alfred (Alfie) on his farm at Upper Borlum, Knockando. It is not known if Rob also visited his other surviving siblings at the time, sisters Isabella (Ella) and Mary in Aberdeen and brother Willie in Carluke near Glasgow, but it is fairly certain he would have visited any remaining family and/or friends he had contact with and places of interest in and around Newmill and Keith.

Robert and Mary’s Direct Heritage

Click HERE to see an up to date spider chart of Robert and Mary’s full heritage.

Links below are to Robert and Mary’s children and grandchildren sub-pages (click as required where these exist):-

Gladys (McKay) Eyres – b. Keith (1924), d. Parksville B.C., Canada (2006)
Robert Norman McKay – born and died in Keith 1925. Buried with ancestors in the Old Keith cemetery.
Myrtle Agnes-Jean (McKay) Metcalf – b. Canada (1927) d. Thunder Bay Ontario (2015)
James Cowie McKay – b. 1929 – d. Central Butte, Saskatchewan (1996)
Hilda Roberta Hazel (McKay) Wishart – b. 1931 d. Edmonton, Alberta (2021)
Sheila (McKay) Berger – b. 1934 – lives in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan
Robert George Alexander McKay – b. 1936 d. Central Butte, Saskatchewan (2019)
Alfred John McKay – b. 1937 d. 1938
Gordon William McKay – b. 1942 – lives in Regina (?)
David Bruce McKay – b. 1949 – d. Regina (?) 1959

Mary Bella Cowie Ancestry

Relevant Geography – Points of Interest

Howiemoor – birthplace of Mary Bella Cowie in 1901.
Lockers Croft – McKays ‘ancestral home’ farmed Initially by William in the 1840s from Glenlivet, then George, Robert and finally Alfred up to roughly the 1940s.
Followsters Farm – Mary Granger Newlands worked as domestic servant here prior to marrying George from Lockers croft
Hill Street – where George bought a house and some of the growing family lived in. Following George’s death in 1915 their son Robert eventually succeeded George and Mary until 1926 when Robert’s brother Alfred took on the croft. When Robert and Mary Cowie wed in 1923 Mary McKay moved from Lockers to Hill Street until her death in 1944.
Montgrew farm was farmed by George’s brother John up until the late 1950s.
North Bogbain was farmed by Norris McKay (Rodger, Bill’s dad) until the early 1950s.