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The Right Honourable  Charles Vincent Massey  PC CH CC CH GCJ CD LLD (hc) DCL (hc) MA (Oxon) BA FRSC
18th Governor General of Canada
In office February 28, 1952 – September 15, 1959
Prime Minister	Louis St. Laurent, John Diefenbaker
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Preceded by	Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis
Succeeded by	Georges Vanier
Born	February 20, 1887(1887-02-20) Toronto, Ontario
Died	December 30, 1967 (aged 80) London, United Kingdom
Spouse	Alice Massey
Profession	Diplomat
Religion	Methodist/United, then Anglican

Charles Vincent Massey PC CH CC CD^[1] (February 20, 1887 – December 30, 1967) was the eighteenth Governor General of Canada and the first who was born in Canada.

Vincent Massey was the son of Chester D. Massey who owned the Massey-Harris Co., predecessor to the Massey-Ferguson Tractor Company. The family was one of Toronto's wealthiest and Vincent grew up among Toronto's elites. When he was young, he attended St. Andrew's College. His family was strongly Methodist and played an important role in supporting local religious, cultural and educational institutions, including Victoria College at the University of Toronto where Massey was sent for his university education, Massey College, also at the University of Toronto where he joined the Kappa Alpha Society through which he met his long-time friend William Lyon Mackenzie King , Massey Hall, a concert hall in Toronto endowed by the Masseys and Metropolitan Methodist Church (now Metropolitan United Church).

Massey then continued his education at Balliol College, Oxford. After his father donated a new residence, Burwash Hall, constructed at Victoria College, he returned there to be appointed its first Dean of Men in 1914. On 4 June 1915, he married Alice Parkin, daughter of Sir George Parkin, a former principal of Upper Canada College and secretary of the Rhodes Trust. Mrs. Massey died in July 1950, just 18 months before her husband's appointment as Governor General. As a result, his daughter-in-law, Lilias, acted as Chatelaine of Rideau Hall while Massey was in office.

Before beginning his career in diplomacy, Vincent Massey spent four years as president of the business his father had founded. During this time, he pursued philanthropic interests – promoting the arts, education and letters. He also began compiling one of Canada's great art collections and through the Massey Foundation, was the principal influence on the construction of Massey College at the University of Toronto, to which his protegé Robertson Davies was appointed as first Master.

Massey was a member of The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada, enlisting in 1907.

Massey was appointed Minister without portfolio to the Cabinet of Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King in September 1925. He did not have a seat in the House of Commons and Massey needed to win a seat in the 1925 federal election held on October 29 in order to retain his posting; however, he was defeated and had to leave cabinet.

Sir Esme Howard, Rt. Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King, Vincent Massey at the Canadian Legation during a visit to Washington on November 22, 1927

In 1926, King appointed Massey the first Canadian envoy to the United States of America with the rank of Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Washington. As such, he was Canada's first envoy with full diplomatic credentials to a foreign capital (that is, a capital outside of the British Empire). Massey resigned his posting to Washington in 1930 to accept an appointment from King as High Commissioner to London, however, the Liberal government was defeated in the 1930 election before he could take up his posting and the new Prime Minister, Conservative R.B. Bennett objected to Massey on the grounds that as a former Liberal cabinet minister he did not enjoy the political confidence of the new government that was needed for the position of High Commissioner to the British government. When King returned to power in 1935, Massey was again named High Commissioner to London and was, this time, able to take up his position.

While in London, Massey travelled in the same circles as Lord Astor and his wife Nancy and their largely aristocratic anti-Semitic and pro-German Cliveden set. According to Irving Abella and Harold Troper's book None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948, Massey was an enthusiastic supporter of the Munich Agreement and worked with Ernest Lapointe to put obstacles in the way of Jewish refugees attempting to immigrate to Canada. Seven decades later, his actions resulted in a campaign in Windsor, Ontario to rename a high school originally named in his honour.

Nevertheless, Massey was a Canadian and British patriot and worked to maximize Canada's war effort once World War II broke out. He made such a favourable impression in England that in 1946, King George VI invested him with the Companion of Honour.

In 1949, Massey was appointed chairman of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences. The ensuing report issued in 1951, known as the Massey Report, led to the creation of the National Library of Canada and the Canada Council.

Vincent Massey received another honour from the Queen when, on 11 December 1963, a Royal Warrant was signed assigning an Honourable Augmentation to his arms (he had already been granted armorial bearings in 1926 by the Kings of Arms at the College of Arms in London, England). It consisted of a blue square placed in the upper left bearing the crest from Her Majesty's Arms in right of Canada. Very few augmentations are granted, and even fewer to Canadians.

• The Massey building at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario was named in his honour in 1960. This academic building houses offices, classrooms, and the Massey library.
• The Massey building at the Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean in Saint-Jean, Quebec was named in his honour.
• The Massey Quadrangle at Upper Canada College in Toronto, Ontario.

• Vincent Massey Junior High School in Calgary, Alberta
• Vincent Massey School in Medicine Hat, Alberta
• Vincent Massey School in Saskatoon Saskatchewan
• Vincent Massey Community School in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan (Elementary)
• Vincent Massey Collegiate in Winnipeg, Manitoba
• Vincent Massey High School in Brandon, Manitoba.
• Vincent Massey School in Ottawa, Ontario
• Vincent Massey Secondary School in Windsor, Ontario.
• Vincent Massey Collegiate Institute in Etobicoke, Ontario, now closed
• Vincent Massey Public School in Bowmanville Ontario
• Vincent Massey Public School in Cornwall Ontario (closed)
• Vincent Massey Collegiate in Montreal,Quebec (Secondary)
• Vincent Massey Elementary School in St. Andrews, New Brunswick
• Ecole Massey School in Regina, Saskatchewan

Adapted from http://www.gg.ca

1. ^ Massey's post-nominal letters are listed as PC, CH, CC on his Order of Canada citation [1]. It should be noted that he was entitled to far more letters than are listed. In particular his 1948 autobiography On Being Canadian lists him as C.H., DCL, LL.D (hon.), FRSC. The department of Veterans Affairs page about the Canadian Forces Decoration mentions that Massey was the first GG to be awarded the medal upon taking office in Rideau Hall which entitled him to utilize the postnominal letters CD. The same page lists him as The Right Honourable Vincent Massey CC CH GCJ CD, although this listing in inconsistent with the accepted Canadian/Commonwealth Order of precedence [2]

• Rt. Hon. Vincent Massey (1961), Canadians and Their Commonwealth. The Romanes Lecture delivered in The Sheldonian Theatre, 1 June 1961. Oxford, At the Clarendon Press. 20 pages.

• What's Past is Prologue: The Memoirs of Vincent Massey. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964. [pp. 540 illus]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Vincent Massey

• Order of Canada Citation
• Arms of Vincent Massey

• Vincent Massey School in Medicine Hat
• Vincent Massey Community School in Prince Albert, SK
• Vincent Massey Community School in Saskatoon, SK
• Kinsmen/Vincent Massey School for the Developmentally Delayed in Cornwall, Ontario
• Vincent Massey Public School in Bowmanville, Ontario
• Vincent Massey Public School in Bowmanville
• Vincent Massey Ecole in St Hubert, PQ
• Vincent Massey Collegiate in Montreal, PQ
• Vincent Massey Elementary School in St Andrews NB
• Ecole Massey School in Regina, SK

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v • d • e Canadian Ambassadors to the United States
Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary (1926-1943)	Massey · Wrong (Chargé d'Affaires a.i.) · Herridge · Wrong (Chargé d'Affaires a.i.) · Marler · Christie · McCarthy
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary (1943-)	McCarthy · Pearson · Wrong · Heeney · Robertson · Heeney · C. Ritchie · E. Ritchie · Cadieux · Warren · Towe · Gotlieb · Burney · de Chastelain · Chrétien · Kergin · McKenna · Wilson