Francis Edmund McKenty was born in Bath, Ontario in 1881 and went to school there. In 1900 he entered McGill University and graduated MD CM in 1904. After a period of internship at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal he came to England and early in 1907 passed the Conjoint Board examinations and also obtained the FRCS. He then went to Freiburg to study pathology under Aschoff, and afterwards to Berlin where he spent a year with Bier. He subsequently visited clinics in Paris, Vienna, and the United States, returning to Montreal in 1909 to become clinical assistant in surgery at the Royal Victoria Hospital. There he introduced spinal anaesthesia, and the use of intravenous infusions, methods which he had learned in Europe. He was also appointed demonstrator of anatomy at McGill a position he held for five years, combining this work with lecturing on applied anatomy and operative surgery. On the outbreak of war in 1914 he returned to England and then served in France at the base hospital at Treport and with the McGill Unit at Boulogne. He went back to Montreal in 1916 as associate in surgery, in 1923 was promoted assistant surgeon, and in 1932 full surgeon. In all these posts he undertook a great deal of teaching of clinical surgery and it was therefore appropriate that he should be appointed assistant Professor of Surgery at McGill in 1936 and at the same time should be awarded the Fellowships of the Canadian and the American College of Surgeons. McKenty became Surgeon in Chief of the Royal Victoria Hospital in 1937, and although his retirement was due during the second world war he remained on the staff until the return of his colleagues, and finally retired at the end of 1945, retiring at the same time from the Chair of Surgery in the university. His was a remarkable record as surgeon and teacher which was greatly appreciated by his colleagues and the governors of the Hospital. When he died on 8 December 1965 after a long illness his wife survived him.