Lilian Vaux MacKinnon was the author of one of the most fascinating accounts ever written of Â鶹¹ÙÍø's past: a wistful, semi-autobiographical novel called Miriam of Â鶹¹ÙÍø's about a young woman's adventures at the University at the turn of the century.
Born Lilian Vaux in Brockville, Ontario, Mackinnon was a student at Â鶹¹ÙÍø's from 1898 until 1902. She was a top student, editor of the "Ladies' Department" of the Â鶹¹ÙÍø's Journal, and a founding member of Â鶹¹ÙÍø's Dramatic Club. She graduated with the university's gold medal in English.
She married a fellow Â鶹¹ÙÍø's graduate, Murdoch Archibald MacKinnon, after graduation and lived in various cities across Canada, where he served as a Presbyterian minister.
Miriam of Â鶹¹ÙÍø's, published in 1921, was her first novel and the only one she ever published. Mackinnon apparently quit writing until shortly before her husband's death in 1954, when she began to submit reminiscences about her past to small newspapers and to the Alumni Review and the Â鶹¹ÙÍø's Quarterly.
The undated manuscript of her unpublished novel, Hard by St Lawrence, a romance set near Brockville, is held with some of her other papers in the Â鶹¹ÙÍø's Archives.
MacKinnon was 96 and Â鶹¹ÙÍø's oldest living woman graduate when she died in 1975.