Wallace McAlpine, known as Mac, was a thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon who worked in Toledo, Ohio, USA. He was born on 7 October 1920 in Wapella, Saskatchewan, Canada, the son of Frederick Emerson McAlpine, a telegrapher, and Nellie Maud McAlpine née Goodyear. He studied medicine at the University of Manitoba and qualified in 1944. He served as a major in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps during the Second World War. After the war, he went to Europe to train in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery, working with Russell Brock in London and in Stockholm with Clarence Crafoord. He also trained in the USA at the University of Michigan with John Alexander and Cameron Haight. He was a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the American College of Surgeons. He was a thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon at Toledo, Ohio from 1951 to his retirement in 1983. He also wrote *Heart and coronary arteries: an anatomical atlas for clinical diagnosis, radiological investigation, and surgical treatment* (Berlin, Springer, 1975), which won a gold medal at the International Book Festival in Leipzig, Germany. In September 1944, he married Kathleen Shirley Cruickshank in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He travelled the world with his wife to study music, art and history. They had four children, Kim, Fraser, Leigh and Laurel, and 11 grandchildren. McAlpine died in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida on 28 January 2005. He was 84.