Rector’s eNews 24: 13 August 2025

Service is one of the cornerstones underpinning the foundation of Michaelhouse boys, and our encouragement to live a life of service was exemplified by the life of Dr Maurice McGregor. Dr Maurice McGregor was, until last month, the oldest living Old Boy of our school (at 105) and his contribution to the world in the field of medicine led to the Order of Canada being conferred on him in 2010 for a “lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to community and service to the nation.” His impact on the practice of medicine and, in particular, the field of cardiology as a cardiovascular surgeon and later in health technology assessment marked Dr Maurice McGregor as a person of extraordinary capability and empathy with his fellows.

Born in 1920, Maurice was educated at Michaelhouse before proceeding to the University of the Witwatersrand where he graduated as a doctor. Later, he supported the Allied Eighth Army and the United States Fifth Army in Italy in the medical field from 1943 to 1946 before moving to Britain and then to Canada where he held many positions including that of Physician-in-Chief at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal and Vice-Principal of the prestigious McGill University.

It was mainly under the aegis of McGill University that he was the author of as many as 157 peer-reviewed articles for a variety of medical journals. Maurice returned to South Africa as Dean of Medicine at Wits for three years from 1984 to 1987 and, during that time, an increasing number of black medical students were enrolled at the university. He empathised strongly with the plight of black people at that extremely challenging time in the history of this country, but a variety of factors took him back to Canada where he assumed, in 2000, as an 80-year-old, the Chair of Technology Assessment at the University of McGill Health Centre.

Dr Maurice McGregor married Dr Margaret Beckdale, a respirologist who later became an epidemiologist, and who, for decades, engaged in developing ways in which to fight lung diseases.

Here is an example of a Michaelhouse boy who, in essence, gave his life in the service of others in the field of his expertise. The world, and especially people in South Africa and Canada, are the richer for that service.

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