Murray Gordon Ballantyne (b.1909)

He was born in Montreal and after graduating (1932) with a Masters in History from McGill University he joined Canadian Industries Ltd. By 1936, he had converted to Catholicism and in the same year he left a career in business to become Editor and President of Montreal's English-Catholic newspaper, The Beacon, and a confidential lay adviser to the Archbishop of Montreal. Having failed his medical exams for military service in WWII, he became the Honorary Secretary of the Queen's Canadian Fund, founded by J.G. McConnell, which raised over $1.7-million for bombed British civilians. After the war, he co-founded and was President of the International Rescue Committee in Canada, helping to place over a 100-refugee artists and intellectuals.

Using his background in Canadian history, he undertook a deep study into relations between French and English-speaking Canadians with the result that René Lévesque named him as the English-Canadian who best understood French Canada. Premier Daniel Johnson added, "if only all our English-Canadians were like Murray Ballantyne there would be no problems." In 1968, he (unsuccessfully) contested for a seat in Parliament as a Westmount Progressive Conservative, acknowledging that separatism was, "an understandable reaction to stupidities and errors," but he upheld that: "Canada cannot exist without Quebec. Look at the map. Quebec controls the St. Lawrence River and the Seaway. Quebec lies between the Maritimes and the rest of Canada. If Quebec separated, the rest of us would soon slide southward. Separatism means the death of Canada. I am not ready to commit suicide. Canada is worth fighting for, and I am ready to fight."

He was Chairman for Quebec of the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews, working to improve relations between the two communities. He was a director of the Civil Liberties Union, Charter Member of the Combined Health Appeal, director and honorary secretary of the Vanier Institute of the Family, and helped organise the Canadian Conference on The Family. He was a director of the St. Mary's Hospital and the Montreal Convalescent Hospital; and, Governor of St. Francis Xavier University and Loyola College. He was a member of the Arts Council of the Province of Quebec, patron of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and he donated his valuable collection of written Canadiana to McGill University which along with Lawrence Lande's gift made possible McGill's Department of French-Canadian Studies. He wrote on and lectured in Canadian History at Loyola College, McGill University, the Thomas More Institute and the St. Joseph Teacher's College.

He had a consultancy business with an office on St. James Street that was described in 1952 by Lubomir Gleiman during what he called a 'strange and futile encounter': "I was called into a huge office, furnished in grand style with family portraits hanging all over and with a bag of golf clubs near the door... In front of him on his desk was a folded copy of The Wall Street Journal." Ballantyne converted to Catholicism in the early 1930s to marry his Catholic wife, Frances Elizabeth Stephens, granddaughter of George Washington Stephens M.P., of Montreal, and Sir Edward Kemp, of Castle Frank, Toronto, Canadian Minister for Defence & Militia during WWI. They lived at 33 Forden Avenue in Westmount, Montreal, and were the parents of seven children: three sons (Hugh, John, and Edmund) and daughters Ann Oakley, Elizabeth Ballantyne, Lady Felicity Fairbairn, and Margaret Ballantyne-Power. By the 1980s, he was placed in a psychiatric institution, Pierrefonds Manor, Quebec, while his wife lived out her days in Oakville, Ontario.