This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Sinclair, MacKay, Young, Mitchell, Hunt Classification: Obituary Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/WOC.2ACE/3096 Message Board Post: The New Glasgow Evening News, Tuesday, April 7, 1987 - NEW GLASGOW - A link with Pictou County's past was severed in Bradenton, Florida, by the death in hospital Monday, after a brief illness of Lieutenant Colonal John MacKay Sinclair CD, a career soldier and native of New Glasgow. Since retirement from Canada's Regular Army he had lived in the summer at Melmerby Beach, in the spring and fall in Halifax, and in winter in Florida. Born in 1918, he was the oldest of the children of Col. D. C. Sinclair QC, for many years New Glasgow's magistrate, and wife Norma MacKay, a granddaughter of Squire John MacKay, a pioneer and magistrate in the East River settlement that grew into the town of New Glasgow. On Col. Sinclair's paternal side he was a great-grandson of the shipbuilder and the first of the county's MPs, the Hon. Senator James W. Carmichael and grandson of Guysborough MP John H. Sinclair. John Sinclair's education was in New Glasgow's schools, followed by the Royal Mili! tary College, graduating in 1939. His military career began as a boy piper in the pipe band of the Cumberland Highlanders under the late Pipe-Major Fraser Holmes. The young piper formed the New Glasgow High School Cadet Corps pipe band and was appointed its first pipe-major; his first instructor Pipe-Major Holmes was on the record as saying of him that he "took easily to the pipes, it was born in him". His mother's family tradition held that he was a descendant of the storied Blind Piper MacKay, a legendary figure in piping lore a century before the Ship Hector carried the first Highlander immigrants into Pictou. For all of his life John Sinclair played the pipes. In the RMC at graduation he was the winner of the Artillery Prize and the Prize for Military Subjects. He was commissioned in the Permanent Force and posted to "C" Battery of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery. Overseas he covered off numerous wartime appointments, among them chief instructor of gunnery at t! he Canadian Artillery School of Artillery at Seaford, and later the officer commanding the 8th Battery of the Second Field Regiment RCA in Italy. Following the war he was in turn on the directing staff of the Canadian Army Staff College, second in command of the 1-2 Field Regiment RCA and chief gunnery instructor at the Artillery School at Camp Shilo. After staff college training in Canada and England he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1950, and thereafter until retirement served in staff appointments in Ottawa, Halifax, England and New Brunswick. When in England during the war he married Barbara Young, a native of Ireland, who survives him, with three children: a daughter, Susan (Mrs. David Mitchell) in Kelowna, B.C. and two sons, Dr. Michael, a scientist, and Donald, an insurance broker, both of Halifax. Surviving also are five grandchildren, a sister, Mrs. Janet Hunt in Toronto, and a brother Norman C. Sinclair CA, in Saint John, N.B. A memorial service will be! held in Bradenton, Fla. At a date to be announced there will be a memorial service in the Little Harbour Presbyterian Church followed by interment of the cremated remains in the Little Harbour cemetery. Donations may be made to the Salvation Army or the charity of one's choice. Posted for information only.