Alexander D. (Alec) Macmillan

After graduating in 1963 I took the route to Jordanhill College for teacher training as did a number of other people in the class. After a year or so teaching in the East End of Glasgow I went to Kenya as an Education Officer under the auspices of the Ministry of Overseas Development as it was then called. I spent four years in Nakuru in the Rift Valley Province teaching Cambridge Higher School Certificate physics interspersed with much mountaineering and safari. I returned to Scotland in 1970 and spent another two years teaching physics in Glasgow.

In 1972 I went to Canada to do a Master’s in Biophysics at the University of Western Ontario. There I met my wife Christine who is a plant physiologist by background and comes from Hamilton, Ontario.  After a diversion through Queen’s University Business School I headed for Western Canada still attracted by the mountains as well as the buoyant economy of the West. We came back to Scotland from Calgary at the end of 1985 with our five month old son Donald. Donald was followed into the world by Alasdair and Calum and they are all now in their mid twenties. But none of them have followed the trail to Gilmorehill; St Andrews and Edinburgh were the preferred options.

I worked with a housing association in Aberdeen as Director of Finance retiring some years ago. But I still go in to the office at least two days a week doing financial assessments and risk analysis on potential projects, many of them in renewable energy.

We live near Stonehaven. I am still active in the mountains usually with the Cairngorm Club as a hill walker but not as a serious climber. I also do a fair amount of cycle touring in Britain and Europe and every year I try to spend time in Lewis which is the family homeland. This is accompanied by much trout fishing, but I only do it in Lewis. Apart from that I have interests in Gaelic culture generally and the Neolithic Archaeology of Scotland.