Rev. Augustine Mackie was born in 1879 in England.He graduated with an MA from Cambridge and proceeded to Ridley Hall Theological College where he was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1904. Following several years as curate in various parishes in East Anglia, he came to Vernon with his brother, Hugh Mackie, in the fall of 1913, with the hope of starting a private school. In January of 1914, he began teaching a small number of boys at the Tunbridge residence in Coldstream. The school grew quickly and it moved to larger quarters near Coldstream Ranch. As the years passed, the Vernon Preparatory School increased in numbers and reputation, until Rev. Mackie relinquished the headmastership in 1945. After his retirement, he purchased Lake House (now a provincial heritage house), where he lived until his death in 1965. He was known as a relentless pursuer of rattlesnakes, started by the death of one of his students in 1927 from a rattlesnake bite.