Keith William MacLellan (30 November 1920 – 29 September 1998) was a Canadian soldier, scholar, and diplomat who championed the cause of a federal, united Canada.

[2] In this time, he was on the college's rowing team and was a contemporary of political figures such as Tony Wedgewood Benn and the organisers of the Oxford Manifesto.

Like many of his generation, his studies were interrupted by the war and he joined the Royal Montreal Regiment, with whom he trained, was commissioned as an officer and was sent to the United Kingdom.

In this time, he was part of small jeep mounted units that operated behind enemy lines in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Norway.

Keith MacLellan joined the Department of External Affairs in 1950, and was part of the group of Canadian Foreign Service officers who helped shape Canada's post-war diplomatic efforts and policy.

[4] The group's ethos of "multilateralism" successfully defined Canada's separate identity while enabling it to exert influence through institutions such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization.

MacLellan's career dealt with political instability in a number of countries, most notably: Laos in 1965–1966, which was in turmoil throughout the 1960s due to the conflict in neighbouring Vietnam and the resulting Laotian Civil War; Afghanistan in 1974–1977, where a series of coups in the 1970s eventually led to the Soviet invasion of 1979; and Pakistan, also from 1974–1977, during the deposition of then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Finally, he witnessed the onset of Yugoslavia's disintegration when President Josip Broz Tito's illness in 1979, and subsequent death in 1980, created the power vacuum that would ultimately end in civil war.

[5] While inconceivable in this day and age of instant communications and "special envoy" shuttle diplomacy, the task of bringing Prime Minister Bhutto to the negotiating table and obtaining an agreement fell on Keith MacLellan as Canada's representative in Pakistan.