George Leslie Mackay

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A statue of Mackay in Tamsui.

The Revd Dr George Leslie Mackay DD (偕叡理 or 馬偕; Pe̍h-oē-jī: Kai Sūi-lí or Má-kai, March 21, 1844 ~ June 2, 1901), is the first modern missionary to northern Taiwan. Unlike the 17th-century Catholic missionaries of Spain (which briefly colonized northern Taiwan), Mackay is nowadays among the best known Westerners to have lived in Taiwan.

Mackay was born in Zorra Township, Oxford County, Canada West (now Ontario), Canada. He received his theological training at Knox College in Toronto, Princeton Seminary in the United States, and New College, Edinburgh in Scotland, all Presbyterian institutions.

In 1871, he became the first missionary to be commissioned by the Canada Presbyterian Church (predecessor of both the Presbyterian Church in Canada and the United Church of Canada), arriving in Taiwan on New Year's Eve, 31 December 1871.

After consulting with Dr. James Laidlaw Maxwell, Sr., a medical doctor serving as a Presbyterian Church of England missionary to southern Formosa (1865), Mackay arrived at Tamsui, northern Formosa in 1872, which remained his home until his death in 1901. Starting with an itinerant dentistry practice amongst the lowland aborigines, he later established churches, schools and a hospital practicing Western biomedicine. He married Tiuⁿ Chhang-miâ (張聰明; known as "Minnie" in the West), a Taiwanese aborigine, and learned to speak the vernacular Taiwanese fluently. Even today, some families in Taiwan, particularly of lowland-aboriginal Kavalan ancestry, trace their surname '偕' ('Kai' or 'Kay') to their family's conversion to Christianity by Mackay. The churches he planted later becoming the Northern Synod of the present Presbyterian Church in Taiwan. In 1896, after the establishment of Japanese colonial rule of Taiwan, Mackay met with the Japanese Governor-General of Formosa, Maresuke Nogi.

In Canada, he was honoured during his two furloughs home by the Canadian Church. In 1880, Queen's College in Kingston, Ontario awarded him an honorary Doctor of Divinity, presented by Principal George Monro Grant and Chancellor Sandford Fleming. Before departing in 1881, he returned to Oxford County, where monies were raised to start Oxford College in Taiwan; a number of young people in the county were inspired to follow Mackay example and entered into missionary service with a number of Christian denominations.

The former Oxford University College founded by Mackay is now part of Aletheia University, Tamsui.

In June 1894, at the General Assembly meeting in St. John, New Brunswick, Mackay was elected Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, the highest elected position in the church. He spent the following Moderatoral year travelling across Canada, as well as writing From Far Formosa: the island, its people and missions, a missionary ethnography and memoir of his missionary experiences (published 1895).

Like many of the Western anthropologists and missionaries of his time, Mackay is considered by some to have had an ethnocentric view of the world. For example, Mackay appears to have enjoyed the burning of his Aboriginal converts' non-Christian objects of worship. In his 1896 book From Far Formosa, Mackay wrote about his rough apartment in a recently converted Aboriginal village: "To that place the cast-off machinery of idolatry was brought, and more than once I dried my clothes before fires made of idolatrous paper, idols, and ancestral tablets. Three men were employed to carry other paraphernalia of idol-worship to the museum in Tamsui [Tanshui]" (Mackay, 1896:219). Despite his ethnocentrism, Mackay's From Far Formosa is considered an important early missionary ethnography of Taiwan and an important contribution to the anthropological understanding of the culture and customs of the people of Taiwan during that period. In addition, Mackay's collection of various artifacts and specimens of local flora and fauna have become part of the ethnology department of the Royal Ontario Museum (Ontario, Canada) and the Aletheia University Museum (Tamsui, Taiwan).

The grave of Mackay in Tamsui.

Although Mackay had suffered from meningitis and malaria, Mackay eventually died of throat cancer on June 2, 1901. He was buried near Oxford College (牛津學堂; now Aletheia University) in Tamsui, Taiwan. The major private Christian hospital Mackay founded in downtown Taipei was named Mackay Memorial Hospital in honor of a sea captain surnamed Mackay, who was no relation of the missionary. In recent years, Mackay has been promoted and celebrated as part of the rise of Taiwanese nativism and the associated state and civil projects of emphasizing a Taiwanese identity and Taiwan-centred histories.

On June 30, 2004, a large bust statue of George Leslie Mackay was dedicated outside the Oxford County offices in Woodstock, Ontario. There was a large delegation from Taiwan (including representatives from Aletheia University and the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan), the Presbyterian Church in Canada, the United Church of Canada, local, regional, and national dignitaries, and a number of his descendants from across North America.