McRae, Douglas George Wallis

McRAE, Douglas George Wallis (1908-1966) led a promising career as a student at the School of Architecture at the University of Toronto where he graduated in 1929 and later as the Sanders Fellow in Architecture at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He trained in Toronto with some of the leading firms including John Lyle (in 1928) and Darling & Pearson (in 1930), and was one of seventeen Canadian competitors who submitted plans for the Royal Inst. of British Architects Headquarters in London, Engl. in 1932. His starkly modernist proposal, with its unusual assymetrical plan, appeared in The Architect & Building News [London], 24 June 1932, 422. Instead of pursuing a career in professional architectural practice, however, McRae chose instead to devote his career to teaching; he was instructor in architectural drafting and engineering at Western Technical School in Toronto and later taught at Ryerson Polytechnical Inst. He possessed a keen interest in the history of Canadian architecture and art, and published a profusely illustrated but uncritical narrative on the subject entitled The Arts and Crafts of Canada in 1944. McRae died in Toronto on 6 September 1966 (death notice Globe & Mail [Toronto], 7 Sept. 1966, 35; biog. Canadian Who's Who, iv, 1948, 662; inf. Ontaro Assoc. of Architects)