(13 April 1891-26 Jan. 1966), restaurateur. (Blue Room Joe; otherwise, in print, his name is almost invariable as J. J. MacDonald) Born on Lot 22, 2nd Concession Lochiel Township, GC. Parents: John L. MacDonald and his wife Mary Anne Weir. He got the name by which he was commonly known, Blue Room Joe, from a restaurant called the Blue Room which he operated in Alexandria from 1922. Afterwards, on 14 May 1940 he opened Shirley’s Restaurant in Alexandria. (Glengarry News 17 May 1940) Named after his daughter Shirley, this large, clean, pleasant, well-run café on Mill Square was a popular meeting place in Alexandria throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s. It played a role in GC more important than can readily be appreciated seven decades and many social revolutions later. In those days, GC was sadly lacking in such amenities. It was followed in its role by Lloyd McHugh’s no less-agreeable Hub restaurant. Both these restaurants were much valued by farm people in town for shopping. J. J. MacDonald also operated a Shirley’s Restaurant in Cornwall, from early in 1943. (GN 18 Dec. 1942, Standard Freeholder 3 March 1943) The same name was used for the two restuarants operated simultaneously in the two towns. He also operated a restaurant or similar facility (names found: Glengarry Lodge, MacDonald Hall) on Sheek Island, near Cornwall, probably from 1947. (SFH 28 April 1947)

     From the mid-1920s till he sold the business in 1930, J. J. MacDonald operated a cinema in Alexandria located in MacLaren Hall.

     Most of MacDonald’s long business career was spent in Alexandria and Cornwall, but he was also, probably rather briefly, in business at Haileybury and Williamsburg, Ont. For the final 23 years of his life, he was a Cornwall resident. He died at the Macdonell Memorial Hospital, Cornwall. (five children, four surviving him) The burial was at St. Finnan’s cemetery, Alexandria.

     “Unsatisfied with the programs of the old parties, he had through the years worked actively for new causes as they developed. Associated with the CCF…he had helped organize in these counties and had been a candidate on one occasion.” In the Ontario provincial election of 4 June 1945, in which Eddie MacGillivray (Liberal) was elected, MacDonald was the CCF candidate for the GC constituency. He must have known that he could not be elected, given the intolerance with which the people of this area (however much addicted, formerly, to farmers’ parties) now regarded any parties that were neither Liberal or Conservative. In the event, the 615 votes he got seem impressive. Notably, he got more soldier votes than the Conservative candidate (Osie Villeneuve) and compared well in this category with the Liberal candidate.

     At St. Finnan’s Cathedral, he was married on 26 June 1922, to Agnes MacDonald (19 March 1895-16 Feb. 1991). She was the daughter of Alexander “Sandy Ranald” MacDonald, who was a teamster for the Schell enterprises in Alexandria, and his wife Mary Jane Timmings. Agnes MacDonald was a prized pupil of D. Mulhern. She was for many years important in the musical life of Alexandria as a music teacher, and as a pianist, and in the staging of local concerts and musical entertainments. At her husband’s cinema, she played the piano for the musical accompaniment often used with films of the time. She was known as Agnes Sandy Ranald. Her sister was married to Angus H. McDonell. There were eight “Sandy Ranald” girls, and six or seven of them (but not, apparently, including Agnes) were telephone operators in Alexandria. During a 40-year period, beginning about 1909, there was always at least one of the “Sandy Ranald” sisters working as a Bell telephone operator at the Alexandria switchboard, of which Clarence Ostrom was for many years the manager. Agnes MacDonald died in Cornwall, aged almost 96, having outlived her husband by a quarter century.

     Their daughter Shirley (already mentioned), who worked in her father’s restaurants, married Arthur Marsolais in 1957. She and her husband lived in Montebello, Calif., and she died 2 April 1985, before her mother, aged sixty. (her obituary, GN 10 April 1985)

Glengarry News 27 Jan. 1966 (QF), with portrait * marriage, GN 30 June 1922 * obituaries of his wife, GN 20 Feb. & 6 March 1991, with biog. tribute by Angus H. McDonell, 27 Feb. 1991 * George D. Weir, The Weir Sept. of Lochiel [Stephens City, Virginia?, 1989] 63-67, genealogical * Ostrom 34, 147, 184 * Dane Lanken, “Alexandria Movie Palaces,” Glengarry Life No. 34 (1995) * soldier vote: Roderick Lewis, 96 * Marin 390 * McCormicks 201 * obituary of his son, George F. MacDonald, GN 28 March 1990 * another son Capt. John B. MacDonald, retired RCAF and American Airlines pilot, flies Russian MIGs, GN 6 March 1996 (illustr.) * Clarence Ostrom, “Telephones in Alexandria,” Glengarry Historical Society, 14th Annual Volume (1974-1975) p. 15 * see also entry for D. Mulhern * obituary of Mrs Catherine Lapierre (another of the “Sandy Ranald” sisters), GN 11 May 1988 * obituary of Mrs Hilda Marguerite MacKinnon (another of the “Sandy Ranald” sisters), GN 19 Oct. 1988 * to open Blue Room, to open a cinema (Alexandria), also on Shirley’s, GN 7 April 1922, 26 Feb. 1926, 3 May 1940, 7 Nov. 1941, 13 Feb. 1948