Hello,
Thank you all for your interest. We have a birth certificate showing that our Dad was born Alexander Reid McKay on Feb 3, 1923 on Albert Street, Glasgow to a Margaret McKay, tea room waitress. No further information on the certificate. He came to live with Robert Cochrane Harvey and Margaret Ann Burke Harvey in Glasgow sometime around 1930--we knew them to be our grandparents. They had two younger sons, our uncles James Harvey and Richard Harvey. Our dad immigrated with his "parents" to Canada in 1948--his brothers had come earlier to go to university. My grandfather died in Canada in 1955, and my grandmother and uncles returned to Scotland in their later years and all died there. My Dad was very close with his maternal aunt, Elizabeth Burke--who he listed as his next of kin on his RAF information, and her older brother Willy Burke. They remained in Scotland their entire lives. We suspect either his Aunt Lizzy or his "adopted" mother, Margaret Ann Burke Harvey, may have been his birth mother. Coincidentally like the Margaret McKay shown on his birth certificate, both our Great Aunt Lizzy and grandmother, Margaret McKay were tearoom waitresses. They worked at Lockhart's tearoom. We have had no luck finding the Margaret McKay of his birth certificate. Our grandfather Robert Cochrane Harvey had three other brothers, who lived in Glasgow and one of those brothers Hugh Harvey, a grocer in Glasgow, had three or four daughters. His other uncles and his Aunt Elizabeth had no children, nor did his brothers. So we are a very small family, just my sister and I left. It seems much of what he told us about his life in Scotland was not true, such as the schools he attended--we have checked with those two schools and there was no one registered by that name. Our grandfather was a theatre manager who travelled around Scotland opening new theatres, hence the possibility that Alexander Mckay who graduated from a school in Fife in 1938 was our Dad. We would love to unravel this mystery, mainly how he came to live with the Harvey's around 1930 and where he was before that. I will add one more thing--although he came over to Canada using his birth name, it seems he changed his name immediately on arriving here with his parents and from that day forward he was known by a different name, Kaye Burke Harvey. I'm happy to supply any other information and thank everyone for their interest and help.
