Researching Donald Mackay

He was a member of the faculty of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry at the University of Toronto and the founding director of the Canadian Environmental Modelling Centre at Trent University. He has developed several multimedia fugacity models. Mackay has stressed that principles of good practice also need to be adopted for chemical assessments, especially in a regulatory context.

In 2004, he was invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada for having "greatly contributed to the quality and our stewardship of the global environment". In 2004, he was also invested into the Order of Ontario for "his outstanding contributions to environmental science".

Mackay started in the fur trade out of Montreal in 1779 as a clerk with an independent trader. When the North West Company was formed at Grand Portage, he became a clerk with that organization. He had a varied and grueling start in the business and he and his partner ended up in 1780 trading on the Assiniboine River, near Fort La Reine. That year he led an expedition to the upper Missouri River and the Hidatsa villages.

MacKay was born in Ben Mohr Estate, Snizort, Isle of Skye, Inverness-shire in 1847, a son of Samuel Nicholson Mackay and Janette Mackay (née McKinnon) (died 23 June 1891), who emigrated with their family to South Australia in 1855, settling in Naracoorte. MacKay left for Western Australia in 1869, and went to the Pilbara, where he developed a pastoral lease on the Maitland River. With his brother, Roderick MacKay, he later developed Mundabullangana Station on the Yule River. In 1892, after a drought, MacKay sold his property in the North-West and moved to Fremantle. He was elected to the Legislative Council for the North Province at the 1896 elections, replacing Edward Robinson, and served a single six-year term before retiring. MacKay died in Fremantle in January 1904.