Montreal lawyer and graduate of the University of Toronto. He was born 17 February 1881 in London, Ontario. Magee joined the Canadian Officer Training Corps at McGill University during the Second World War. He enlisted in the 148th Battalion from Montreal as a Lieutenant-Colonel in 1915. Organized by McGee, the Battalion was closely associated with McGill, and most of its recruitment, targeted, as it was, to English-speaking Montrealers, was largely through McGill. He served in England and France, demobilising in 1919. Magee joined McGill's Board of Governors in 1939 and served as an advisor to the Minister of National Defence in the 1940s. He married Madeleine Leslie Smith, with whom he had three children.

John Harold Magor was born on September 19, 1864, in Newton Abbot, England.

In 1882, he immigrated to Quebec, Canada. He was a merchant.

In 1889, he married Eliza Edith Ansley. He died on May 24, 1937, in Montreal, Quebec.