John Kenneth Macalister

John Kenneth Macalister was born in Guelph, Ontario and studied law at University College, where he won the prestigious Rhodes scholarship that took him to Oxford University in England. He joined the British Army after the Second World War broke out and was recruited into its intelligence corps in 1942. His first and only mission took him to France in 1943, where he was captured, imprisoned and tortured by German operatives. Refusing to divulge information the Nazis wanted, he was hanged at Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944. His great promise and courage are commemorated in a park named in his honour in Guelph, a garden at Soldier’s Tower at U of T and the John Kenneth Macalister Scholarship at his former high school.