He attended Queen's University, from which he graduated with a gold medal in philosophy, and then studied for a year in Toronto, Ontario.

That firm dissolved when its senior partner, Frederick W. A. G. Haultain, went to Regina to serve as the first Premier of the Northwest Territories.

[4] In the first legislature he, along with most members from the province's south, favoured Calgary over Edmonton as the Alberta's permanent capital; his side was out-voted 16 to 8.

[9] In keeping with the era's custom, McKenzie responded to the cabinet appointment by resigning his seat in the legislature to contest it in a by-election.

[10][11] McKenzie's tenure as treasurer was not to last long: he caught a chill while attending the convention that nominated him as the Liberals' Claresholm candidate in the 1913 election, and by the time he returned to Edmonton on March 10, 1913, he was sufficiently ill to confine himself to bed.