Donald Hugh Mackay (March 22, 1914 – January 26, 1979) was the 26th

Mayor of Calgary This is a list of mayors of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. List of Mayors of Calgary See also *List of Calgary municipal elections *Calgary City Council Notes References SourcesBiographies of Calgary's mayors from the City of Calgary web pa ...

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, Canada.

Early life

He spent his youth in Calgary and

Drumheller Drumheller is a town on the Red Deer River in the badlands of east-central Alberta, Canada. It is northeast of Calgary and south of Stettler. The Drumheller portion of the Red Deer River valley, often referred to as Dinosaur Valley, has a ...

, receiving most of his public school education in

. In the early 1930s, Mackay settled with his family in Calgary. He was employed first by the ''

Calgary Albertan The ''Calgary Sun'' is a daily newspaper published in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It is owned by Postmedia. First published in 1980, the tabloid-format daily replaced the long-running tabloid-size newspaper ''The Albertan'' soon after it was ...

'' and later for the radio station CJCJ. By 1943, at the age of twenty-nine, he was Manager of Station CJCJ. In his early adulthood MacKay joined

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian Christian church that considers itself to be the restoration of the original church founded by Jesus Christ. The ch ...

. He remained a participating member of the Church the rest of his life.

Political career

In 1945, he ran for

Calgary City Council The Calgary City Council is the legislative governing body that represents the citizens of Calgary. The council consists of 15 members: the chief elected official, titled the mayor, and 14 councillors. Jyoti Gondek was elected mayor in October 202 ...

and was elected, topping the polls for that year. Three years later, as Alderman, Mackay led the Calgary contingent on its high-spirited and much publicized visit to the

36th Grey Cup The 36th Grey Cup was played on November 27, 1948, before 20,013 fans at Varsity Stadium at Toronto. The Calgary Stampeders defeated Ottawa Rough Riders 12–7. The game is remembered fondly for being the year in which Calgary fans brought pag ...

held in

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, an occasion generally credited with starting the tradition of Grey Cup reverie, where he rode a horse into The Royal York Hotel, a tradition that has continued each time Calgary is in the Grey Cup. In 1949, he was elected Mayor, serving in that capacity for ten years, a period in which the City witnessed tremendous growth. A self-proclaimed civic-booster, Mackay traveled, widely promoting Calgary. Mackay is credited with initiating the practice of the White Hatting Ceremony where visiting dignitaries are given a Smithbilt White Hat. City Council

aldermen An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council member chosen by the elected members the ...

increasingly grew uncomfortable with the practice, which they viewed as a show: Alderman P.N.R. Morrison protested that "The white hats undermine efforts to establish Calgary as an oil and industrial centre", and Alderman

Grant MacEwan John Walter Grant MacEwan (August 12, 1902 – June 15, 2000) was a Canadian farmer, professor at the University of Saskatchewan, Dean of Agriculture at the University of Manitoba, the 28th Mayor of Calgary and both a Member of the Legislat ...

said, "The presentations have been carried to a foolish extreme". In 1958, the City Council voted to limit the number of mayoral hat-giving ceremonies to 15 per year. Mackay responded by launching a White Hat Fund with the help of local businessmen; the white hatting ceremony was eventually taken over by Tourism Calgary. Mackay was an enthusiastic supporter of Operation Livesaver, a 1955 mass civil defense evacuation which intended to move 40,000 Calgarians into neighbouring towns in a single day. Of a total of 25,000 possible evacuees, approximately 5,000 Calgarians participated in the drill. MacKay was the center of the "cement scandal" which was broken by reporter Roy Farran in 1958. Calgary City Council requested the provincial government hold an inquiry following the revelation MacKay borrowed 35 bags of city cement for personal projects at his home and failed to return the bags by fall of 1958, and in October 1958, Premier and Attorney General

Ernest Manning Ernest Charles Manning, (September 20, 1908 – February 19, 1996), a Canadian politician, was the eighth Premier of Alberta between 1943 and 1968 for the Social Credit Party of Alberta. He served longer than any other premier in Alberta's histor ...

ordered Judge L. Sherman Turcotte to hold an inquiry. The resulting report (Turcotte Inquiry) published in July 1959 outlined a number of improper gifts and benefits received during MacKay's time as Mayor of Calgary from individuals seeking public contracts or approvals from the City. The benefits included a dishwasher, $1,200 in furniture, free flights to Mexico and Hawaii, two $2,000 loans which were both written off, and an addition to his home at no cost. Turcotte would note that MacKay "derived a direct improper advantage through his position as mayor". MacKay would run for re-election as mayor following the scandal in the October 14, 1959 election, losing a close contest against

Harry Hays Harry William Hays, (December 25, 1909 – May 4, 1982) was a Canadian politician, 27th Mayor of Calgary, Cabinet minister in the government of Lester Pearson, and Senator from Alberta. Personal life Born in Carstairs, Alberta, Hays ha ...

. Mackay made two unsuccessful bids in Federal politics as a member of the

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, first in the 1949 Canadian federal election in

Calgary East Calgary East was a federal electoral district in Alberta, Canada, that was represented in the House of Commons of Canada from 1917 to 1953, 1979 to 1988, from 1997 to 2015. It was a lower income urban riding in Calgary, with a sizable visible min ...

losing to

Douglas Harkness Douglas Scott Harkness, (March 29, 1903 – May 2, 1999) was a Canadian politician. Early life and military service He was born in Toronto, Ontario, and moved to Calgary, Alberta in 1929. He graduated from the University of Alberta, then farm ...

, and again in the

1957 1957 ( MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1957th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' (AD) designations, the 957th year of the 2nd millennium, the 57th year of the 20th century, and the 8th year ...

in Calgary South losing to Arthur Ryan Smith.

Later life

In 1962, he joined the Downtown Development Corporation in Phoenix, Arizona and later, worked for the Calgary Convention Centre and the realty firm of Cowley and Keith. Mackay died after a stroke on January 26, 1979.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mackay, Donald 1914 births 1979 deaths Mayors of Calgary Calgary city councillors Converts to Mormonism Canadian Latter Day Saints Candidates in the 1949 Canadian federal election Candidates in the 1957 Canadian federal election Liberal Party of Canada candidates for the Canadian House of Commons Canadian expatriates in the United States 20th-century Canadian politicians