Robert Machray

Robert Machray (born May 17, 1831, Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Scot.—died March 9, 1904, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Can.) was a Scottish-born archbishop of Rupert’s Land in northern and western Canada.

He studied at Aberdeen and at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and became a Church of England priest in 1856. He was elected to a fellowship at Cambridge, remaining there until 1865, when he was made bishop of Rupert’s Land with headquarters in Winnipeg. The diocese was then thinly populated and covered an area of 2,000,000 square miles (5,000,000 square km). The population grew, and by the end of the century his territory had been divided into eight sees with 190 clergy. When the Canadian Anglican churches were unified in 1893, Machray was made archbishop of Rupert’s Land and primate of all Canada.