George McDonald Sutherland was born in 1886, the son of a master-mason George P. Sutherland. This elder Sutherland, educated at George Heriot's School in Edinburgh, had served as an apprentice sculptor in Edinburgh, London and New York, and in 1881 had founded the firm of George Sutherland and Sons (Galashiels), Sculptors and Monumental Masons. The firm operated throughout the Borders over the next 100 years, with war memorials and grave stones comprising a large part of the business, and ran additional businesses in Hawick and in Tweedmouth. The carvings on the local Galashiels Post Office building were created by Sutherland in 1886.

The younger George McDonald Sutherland had been apprenticed as a young architect to the firm of Sir Robert Lorimer in 1903, at the age of 17. He subsequently went to Toronto, Canada, to start an architectural business and bought land there too. On the outbreak of the Great War however, he came back to Scotland to enlist and joined the 4th King's Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB). Sadly he was killed at Arras on 9 April 1917 and was buried there.