(died 31 March 1893), lumberman, hotel keeper. (Dan MacMaster) Born on the MacMaster homestead, near Caledonia Springs, in Prescott County, Ont. Parents: Donald MacMaster and his wife Dorothea or Dorothy McLachlin (d. 12 Aug. 1888, at Alexandria, aged 85), who belonged to the well-known McLachlin lumbering family of Arnprior, Ont. An obituary, probably from the Glengarrian of Alexandria, says, “Perhaps no man in Glengarry had such a large circle of acquaintances and such a host of friends, and we have yet to learn of a man with whom he was at enmity. Kind, hearty and genial, no one could help liking Donald, and his lavish kindness to the poor and needy will always keep his memory green in the hearts of the poor in any place he ever resided… Donald started at the early age of 15 for the woods, and with the exception of the 12 or 12 [sic] years during which he kept hotel in Alexandria, he spent his lifetime lumbering on the Upper Ottawa. For many years he worked for his cousins, the McLachlin Bros, on the Madawaska, and there is not a lumberman north of the Ottawa that does not know and respect our departed friend–in fact, he is almost as well known in Almonte, Arnprior, Renfrew and Pembroke as Alexandria.… On the arrival of the corpse at Alexandria all the stores were closed out of respect, and some 200 of the citizens were on the platform of the station, and followed the remains to the St. Lawrence house. The funeral took place from that hotel on Sunday afternoon, and again Main street was crowded with sympathisers. After His Lordship Bishop Macdonell had read the prayers for the dead, the cortege, consisting of about 60 carriages and headed by the Citizens’ Brass band playing solemn music, and followed by a number on foot started for Lochiel burying ground,…”

     When he was a child, or by another account, when he was about twenty years old, he moved with his family to Lot 34 in the 5th Concession of Lochiel Township. Donald was married on 8 Aug. 1866. He operated the Commercial Hotel in Alexandria for some twelve years, and the July before his death he took a lease of the Royal Exchange Hotel in Ottawa, but the most important business of his life was lumbering. Connected for many years with his relatives the McLachlins, he was also associated with James Rayside.

     In late 1888, “Donald McMaster, Alexandria, left with a gang of men to begin operations on a timber limit, 240 miles west of Ottawa, which he had purchased from the Ontario Government.” (Cornwall Freeholder 28 Dec. 1888, cited in 20 Years Ago column, CF 25 Dec. 1908)

     Nearly 60 years later, the Cornwall newspaper looked back on a remarkable event of the late summer of 1889: “The Rayside-McMaster raft reached Quebec and was turned over to the purchasers, McArthur Brothers [see entry for Alexander McArthur], of Toronto. The trip took six weeks and the raft was handled by a crew of 40 men. It was a huge affair, containing 75,000 cubic feet. It was sold at 40 cents a foot.” (CF 30 Aug. 1889, as cited DTL Standard Freeholder 30 Aug. 1947)

     The subject of the present sketch was presumably the Dan McMaster who at the beginning of 1890 was reported in the Glengarrian of Alexandria to have left for his timber limits in Renfrew County, taking five teams of horses with him. (Glengarrian 3 Jan. 1890) In March of that year, it was reported in the same newspaper that “Mr. Archy Clark, of Lochinvar [GC], returned from the Macmaster-Rayside camp a few days ago. He reports a very successful winter’s work, and also says that in his 35 years’ experience in hewing he has never met with better treatment or seen better lumber.” (Glengarrian 21 March 1890) At the beginning of Aug., the McMaster-Rayside raft of timber was reported to have reached Ottawa. (Glengarrian 1 Aug. 1890)

     Donald MacMaster died suddenly in Ottawa. His obituaries suggest, through the names of the people involved in his funeral and burial, that he was an exceptionally well-connected man, though his memory has faded with the years, and he is now one of the least-known of the once-eminent men of 19th-century Glengarry. His pallbearers in Ottawa included ex-Mayor Francis McDougal, and in GC included Senator McMillan and R. R. (Big Rory) McLennan. Remarkably, however, there was no mention of any of the Raysides being involved in the services– or the McLachlins. He left a widow and at least one child. Admittedly inconclusive though the evidence is, it may be guessed that he was, politically, a Conservative.

     A writer for a Conservative newspaper, The Cornwall Reporter, 15 Oct. 1881, describing a tour through GC on the Canada Atlantic Railway then just beginning operations, said that “Our stay in Alexandria was necessarily limited; but it was long enough to enable us to secure a good supper at the Commercial Hotel, over which the portly Dan Macmaster presides, making everyone welcome, and comfortable. We found him looking not quite so thin as last March!”

Obituary, in ASC, ii, 84 (QF; probably from Glengarrian of 7 April 1893), Cornwall Freeholder & Glengarry News both of 7 April 1893 * Thomas 629-630 * Butternuts and Maple Sugar 213-215 * obituary of his mother, CF 17 Aug. 1888, cited DTL Standard Freeholder 17 Aug. 1946 * St. Finnan’s CRNI, III, 629-630 (family, not Donald) * life of Daniel McLachlin in Dictionary of Canadian Biography Vol. X * Archibald (Archy) Clark (1828-1917): MacMaster 280; Lochinvar to Skye 176-177