The Man With the Gray Hair

The best friend Canada's Eskimos have ever had announced last week that he was stepping down to give a younger man a chance. On his 66th birthday (July 1) David Livingston McKeand will retire to "give a returned soldier a chance at my job."

King of the Arctic. As superintendent of the Eastern Arctic, David McKeand is virtual potentate of a 700,000-sq. mi. area --one-fifth of Canada's land mass--in which live only an estimated 6,150 people (6,000 of them Eskimos). Bank manager, veteran of the Boer War and World War I, holder of the Military Cross, McKeand became a civil servant in 1917.

Since he became boss of the Eastern Arctic (1931), he has dispensed law, performed marriages and composed the authoritative reports which, to a large extent, guide the Dominion's policy toward its Eskimo population. In the Hudson's Bay Company's sturdy little Nascopie, he has traveled 168,000 miles of icy Arctic waters in the past 14 years, learned to know many of the cheerful, grinning Eskimos by name. The Eskimos call McKeand "The Man With the White Hair." Sometimes they call him Umeealik (boss man). Boss McKeand carefully protects his Eskimos against the white man, prohibits whites from entering the territory without a permit. Result: not one case of venereal disease reported. He has no fears about the Eskimo's clinical future.

Said he last week "The Eskimo deserves the highest praise for his ingenuity, resourcefulness and intelligence. He has seen the 'crazy white man' take all his whales, all his musk oxen, most of his seals, and many of his birds. Yet he has not only survived but improved himself."

When he retires, McKeand will move to warm, lush West Coast Victoria, where he plans to devote the rest of his life to growing roses. Because his shoes will be hard to fill, the Government may ask him to postpone his retirement until the end of the war.

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