Alexander MacKay (fur trader)

Alexander MacKay (c. 1770 – 15 June 1811) (also spelled McKay in some records) was a Canadian fur trader and explorer who worked for the North West Company and the Pacific Fur Company. He co-founded Fort Astoria near the mouth of the Columbia River on the Pacific coast.

MacKay was probably born in the Mohawk Valley area of central New York, where his father Donald MacKay had brought the family after the Seven Years' War. Loyalists during the American Revolutionary War, the family departed the area and first lived in the Trois Rivières area of Lower Canada. They settled in the Glengarry region of Upper Canada about 1792.

Alexander MacKay married Marguerite Waddens or Wadin and had one son, Thomas McKay, and three daughters: Annie Nancy McKay, Catherine McKay and Marie Wadin McKay. His natural son Alexander Ross MacKay was borne by another woman.

MacKay was working for the North West Company (NWC) sometime before 1791. In 1792 he was transferred to Fort Fork (Peace River, Alberta) on the request of Alexander Mackenzie. MacKay accompanied Mackenzie on his 1793 overland journey to the Pacific Ocean, the first such journey north of Mexico.

From 1793 to 1800 MacKay was probably a clerk in the NWC's Upper English River (now called Churchill River) fur district near Lac La Loche, present-day Saskatchewan. In 1800 he was made a NWC partner and worked in the English River district until 1804. In 1808 MacKay resigned from the NWC and returned to the East to retire wealthy at age 38 in Montreal. This was an indication of the scale of income which partners received in the fur trade.

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