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A swimming party around the mill pond at the Mill of Kintail in Almonte.
1937
The Mill of Kintail

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In 1937, at a party to celebrate his seventieth birthday friends and colleagues gathered to toast McKenzie with poems or limericks in his honour. He also spoke of his life and accomplishments as well as physical education and its value for all.

"The man who is well educated physically is not the football hero or the tennis star. He is the one who has practiced many forms of sport and who retains the memory of many of its great sensations….the memory of them remains and when he sees them done by his successors, he relives these experiences with intelligence, knowledge and intensity of emotion."

His last years were spent busily dividing his time between sculpting, writing, and administrating the American Academy of Physical Education and the American Academy of Physical Medicine. On April 28, 1938, McKenzie suffered a heart attack and died at his home. At the Penn Relay Carnival the following Saturday, at which he had long been a fixture, the flag was lowered to half mast on Franklin Field and an announcement was made.

As a sculptor, physician, educator and administrator Robert Tait McKenzie knew, illustrated and furthered the joy of effort.