R. Wor. Bro. Robert John Macaulay
District Deputy Grand Master of
Brant Masonic District - 1985

Born 1921 at Glen Morris, south Dumfries Township of Brant County, the eldest son of J. Stewart, later W. Bro., and Dorothy Macaulay. His father was a railway worker and his mother, a professional seamstress, was the first officially recorded librarian of the Glen Morris Library, in which building they lived in an apartment. A transfer of work caused the move of the family to Oakland where Bob and his brothers, Leslie and Gale, grew up, getting their elementary education in the old one-room school. Bob was confirmed in the Oakland United Church of Canada.

He attended Scotland Continuation School for the four grades that were taught there then it was off to Brantford Collegiate Institute and Vocational School for Grade Thirteen. At about age seventeen he was elected Member of Parliament for Brant County boys in the Older Boys' Parliament for a one year term. The Parliament's sessions occurred at McMaster University during the Christmas recess there.

When Bob was nineteen he began work as a station operator and ticket clerk in the Brantford station of the Lake Erie and Northern Railway. He was often called on to do holiday relief at most of the other stations up and down the line from Port Dover to Kitchener. In 1953 promotion to the Train Dispatchers office took him to Preston where he remained until 1981, retiring as Chief Train Dispatcher and Traffic Supervisor.

Bob was initiated in Scotland Lodge No. 193 in 1943, shortly after enlistment in the Royal Canadian Air Force. As posting overseas as a navigator-bomb aimer was imminent he received his Fellowcraft and Master Mason degrees at the same meeting, the only member of the lodge ever to do so. His bomber crew performed a number of operational trips over Europe, including returning liberated British Army prisoners of war home to England; then they volunteered for service in the Far East. With the sudden end of hostilities Bob was discharged with the rank of Warrant Officer.

In 1948 he married Miss Norma Shaw, a clerk of Brantford City Hall, in Mount Pleasant United Church where they both were very active, having built a home on Mount Pleasant Road. Bob served in several official capacities at the church, including Steward, Treasurer, Elder, Clerk of Session and Lay Delegate. Five children were born to the couple, three sons and two daughters.

Bob was Worshipful Master of Scotland Lodge in 1958 and also became involved in Farringdon Hill Home and School Association. Several brethren invited him to be their Installing Master. Other sources of satisfaction come from being Ticket Chairman for the four or five District Receptions and heading up the Brant District's parking zone at the International Plowing Match near Paris. In 1985 he was elected District Deputy Grand Master of Brant District and had the pleasure of working with the Most Worshipful Brother A. Lou Copeland. In 2003 Scotland lodge presented him with the Veterans Jubilee Medal and Clasp for sixty years of membership and service. Being a friend and mentor to many Lodge and District brethren provides Bob with his greatest feeling of satisfaction and he continues to be as active as possible considering having been suddenly paralysed below the waist by transverse myelitis in November, 1998. Among his private interests are reading, listening to classical music, doting on their eight grandsons and family tree research as a member of the Brant Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society.