The Canadian missionary George Mackay (1844-1901) arrived in Taiwan in 1872. He was based in Tamsui (淡水) which had been opened to Westerners by the Qing regime after the Treaty of Tientsin in 1862. Mackay soon rented a house which he began to use as a hospital - one of the first, if not the first, hospitals in Taiwan to practise Western medicine. It was named the Ho-be Mackay Hospital, Ho-be being the name for Tamsui in the Ketagalan indigenous language. Wounded soldiers were treated there in the Sino-French War of 1884. Mackay also founded the Oxford College, which was the first Western style university college in Taiwan and the forerunner of the Aletheia University, which still functions in Tamsui. There is a Presbyterian church in Tamsui which was founded by Mackay. He also founded other churches throughout Taiwan. He married a Taiwanese woman and they had several children. Mackay died in 1901 and was buried in Tamsui. There are several monuments to him and institutions such as hospitals named after him.
