William Donald MacKay

 Journalist, broadcaster, historian, (William) Donald MacKay (86) died of metastasized colon cancer in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. He is survived by his beloved family: his wife Barbara Elizabeth (nee Fletcher),   daughters   Marina (Spencer Lewis) in Spain and Karen (Richard Jenner) in London, England, and grandchildren Sian and Matthew Lewis.  His first wife Margaret (nee Anderson) predeceased him.
      The only child of the late Dorothy (MacRae) MacKay and William Glenthorne MacKay, Donald MacKay   lived his early years in Windsor, N.S. and in Halifax,   where he began a career as a journalist for The Canadian Press.  During World War II MacKay served on an armed Norwegian oil tanker on the Atlantic convoys to Britain. After the war he became a reporter in Halifax and Montreal and served as western regional manager in Winnipeg with the Canadian Branch of British United Press.   In 1951 he moved to London, England for United Press (later United Press International) and subsequently ran the UPI bureau in Lisbon, Portugal.  He was news director at Radio Europe in Munich 1956-59  broadcasting to Eastern Europe before returning  to London  from which base  he  broadcast daily to  radio stations across the United States, and occasionally to the BBC and  CBC  for  ten years. With roving assignments   in  a score of countries,  he reported  on  the birth of NATO,  the Cold War,  the   Hungarian Revolution,  the building of the Berlin Wall, royal weddings,  the May 1968 Paris insurrection, the death of Sir Winston Churchill.  He traveled to Africa and India to report on the collapse of empires and he was one of the first western journalists to be allowed into China during the early days of the Cultural Revolution.    In 1970 he returned to Montreal  as  Managing Director of United Press International  (Canada) and in  1975  left journalism to become  an  author , living in Montreal, New York City and  southern  Ireland.  Donald MacKay's eleven  books include  the prize-winning  Flight from  Famine, the Coming of the Irish to Canada;   Scotland  Farewell , The People of the Hector; and  The Lumberjacks, both finalists for the Governor General's  award ; Empire of   Wood.; The People's Railway, and in 2010  a  memoir,  Safe Passage, Travels through the 20th Century.

Interment at Lower Horton Cemetery, Grand Pré, N.S.

Memorial service Saturday September 24, 2011 at 2 p.m. in the Covenanter Church Grand Pré. On-line inquiries may be directed to www.whitefamilyfuneralhome.com.