William Mackenzie
Plot 10, Lot 27C
Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto
Late in the afternoon of April 23, 1929, 27-year-old William Mackenzie was at the controls of the Toronto Flying Club’s MOTH biplane, G-CAVF, when it lost power shortly after take-off from the Leaside airfield near the corner of today’s busy Eglinton Avenue/Laird Drive intersection, and crashed. Both the pilot and his young student, Noel Marshall (Plot L, Section 13, Lot 34) were killed in the accident, the first to befall the recently organized flying club. Ironically, Mackenzie was the nephew of Count Jacques de Lesseps, who, in 1911, was the first person to fly an aircraft over Toronto. He, too, was killed in a plane crash near Gaspé in 1928.
Mike Filey
Mount Pleasant Cemetery: An Illustrated Guide
Second Edition Revised and Expanded