Ken McCluskey was the first orthopaedic surgeon to be appointed in Northern Ontario, Canada. He was born in Sorbie, Scotland, on 18 July 1925, where his father, James Joseph McCluskey, was a secretary. His mother was Alice née McShane. He was educated at St Joseph’s College, Dumfries, and then Stonyhurst, Lancashire, from which he entered St Bartholomew’s Hospital. He won a prize in the first MB and the Dean’s prize for anatomy. After qualifying, he was house surgeon to R S Corbett, A J Hunt and J E A O’Connell and then joined the RAMC, where he served as a casualty officer at the Cambridge Military Hospital, Aldershot. He was then a registrar in the orthopaedic department of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary under Sir Walter Mercer and Lawson-Dick. In 1958, he won a fellowship to Toronto General Hospital. He also worked at Women’s College Hospital and Doctors Hospital, before becoming the first orthopaedic surgeon to St Joseph’s Hospital, Sudbury, Northern Ontario, where he remained until he retired from surgery in the 1990s, having become chief of staff. He was also the founding chief of the orthopaedic department at Laurential Hospital. He carried on seeing patients for another decade, having remained in private practice in Sudbury in partnership with his old Edinburgh friend J C Wardill. Outside medicine, he was an amateur investor and a keen gardener and golfer. He married Aileen Tildesly in 1952. She predeceased him in 2005. They had three sons (Alastair, Ian and Stuart) and a daughter (Fiona).