Manitoba Lawyer

Canadian Government auditors were making an examination last week of the books of the University of Manitoba at Winnipeg. Suddenly their eyes began to pop. The University endowment trust fund had dwindled from $1,600,000 to less than $100,000. Some of the losses seemed due to bad investments; but the $500,000 Rockefeller endowment was gone, other funds completely wiped out. For this there could be only one explanation: misappropriation. The auditors' eyes turned slowly upon the University's bursar and chairman of the board of governors. John Alexander Machray, K. C., 67, Cambridge man, prominent lawyer, rich son-in-law of a retired brewer, one-time president of the Manitoba Red Cross and of the League of Nations Society. Bursar Machray had been reported in need of money to cover his brokers' loans. Last week he was arrested, charged with having stolen $47,451 of the University funds. Other charges were to be drawn later. Pleading illness, he remained absent from court under $50,000 bail. Meantime the University's governors announced that next year's tuition would be approximately doubled, salaries reduced by 13%. All scholarship loans, even though the principal is missing, would be paid.

Because Lawyer Machray is chancellor of the Church of England diocese of Rupert's Land, church officials took a look at their books too last week. Their eyes also popped. Of the $1,500,000 Anglican endowment fund, raised over many years by Canadian church members for such purposes as pensions, only $250,000 was left intact.

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