Vancouver Law Courts

The Vancouver Law Courts hold traces of a famous Scottish couple. Peter Mackay was an Ontario-born stenographer for the British Supreme Court. He got his start after Business College working for Oxford County as official court reporter in 1899. In 1908 he moved with his wife and two children to Vancouver, where he served as the deputy court reporter for seven years, later becoming the official stenographer of the province. Mackay would have been there when the courts outgrew their old residence (what is now the Vancouver art gallery and your next stop), and moved offices down the street.

While Mackay’s job was important, his legacy is certainly undercut by that of his wife, Isabel Ecclestone Macpherson. She was also born in the same small Ontario town as Peter, and made her living as a writer of poetry, short stories, and novels. Macpherson would publish many works in her lifetime, from children’s poems to novels on “urban malice and sexuality,” to women’s columns in the weekly Chronicle. In her lifetime she was a founding member of the Canadian Women’s Press Club in 1910, and the president of the Canadian Authors Association in 1926.

Bibliography

Godard, Barbara. “Macpherson, Isabel Ecclestone (Mackay).” Dictoinary of Canadian Biogrpahy, vol.15. University of Toronto. 2005. bibliographi.ca Web. June 2017

“Mackay, Peter John (1870-1953)” Retrived from: https://westendvancouver.wordpress.com/biographies-a-m/biographies-m/mackay-peter-john-1870-1953-2/