Robert Macbain

Two Lives Crossing Robert Macbain

The sons of a Scottish immigrant and a Blackfoot cook are separated after their mother dies giving birth to the second son at a ranch near Calgary in May, 1939. The father is killed less than three years later defending the British Crown colony of Hong Kong. One brother is raised as a Blackfoot at an Indian reserve southwest of Calgary. The other is raised white in a middle-class neighborhood in Toronto. Bill Eagletail is taken to sweat lodges, sun dances, rodeos and pow wows. He is the first Indian to graduate from the University of Alberta, has a doctorate in Sociology from Berkeley, and is the Director of the North American Indian Studies program at the University of Toronto. Gordon MacArthur is raised white in Toronto, regaled with stories about King Robert the Bruce and Bonnie Prince Charlie, and is taken to the Highland games and other places where Scottish-Canadians celebrate their shared heritage. He is a professor of political science at the U of T and will be the Conservative candidate in the 1974 federal election. When the brothers get into a verbal spat on a live Toronto TV show, neither of them knows that they are adopted or that they are brothers. They soon find out and their lives are changed dramatically.