(20 July 1886-20 Oct. 1939), newspaperman. (D. B. MacRae, David B. MacRae, David MacRae, known to friends as “Dave,” “Mac, ” “D. B.”) Born on a farm near Maxville, GC. Parents: John Murdoch MacRae and his wife Catherine Reid Davidson. He attended public school locally and high school in Alexandria, and worked on newspapers in Ottawa (the Ottawa Valley Farm Journal) and in Peterborough, before joining, in 1910, the staff of the Manitoba Free Press (later known as the Winnipeg Free Press). He had the distinction of being assistant editor of the Manitoba Free Press under the celebrated John W. Dafoe, who was the editor-in-chief. In 1929 MacRae was named editor-in-chief of the Regina Leader-Post (which, like the Manitoba Free Press was a Sifton family newspaper) and he remained editor-in-chief there until his death. He was married in 1912 to Christina Margaret (Gretta) MacIntosh, who was also born near Maxville, and was the sister of Dr John Hampden MacIntosh. Before marriage, she was a music teacher, principally in the Martintown area. Their four children were all born in Winnipeg.

     The Leader-Post was a Liberal journal, and MacRae has been called “a Liberal by instinct and tradition.” He was a hard-working and prolific journalist, producing articles, editorials and humorous columns. As an editor, he was also much involved in reshaping the writings of others. He was in great demand as a public speaker, being noted especially for his humour and for his warmth. Likewise he was a skilled performer on the radio. Besides being one of the organizers of the Royal Visit to Regina in 1939, he took a prominent part as a broadcaster in radio coverage of the event.

     Regrettably, little of his writing survives outside of the back issues of newspapers. However, the reports he published in the Leader-Post in 1934 of his observations of the drought-stricken areas of southern Saskatchewan were reprinted in booklet form. And one of his radio talks, on gardening, was reprinted by the CBC in pamphlet form.

     As the editor of what was commonly regarded as Saskatchewan’s principal newspaper, MacRae was a man of importance, but he enhanced the role by being a community man. He was an active worker for the Regina Board of Trade, the YMCA, the Kiwanis Club, the Canadian Club, and his church, Knox United of Regina. In Peterborough he had been involved in amateur theatre. In his Regina years, he was interested in the local music scene, and he was on the executive of the Saskatchewan Musical Association and the Regina Orchestral Society. Sports interested him, and he faithfully attended major Regina sports events. International press conferences in London, South Africa and California saw him present. Also, he was a director of Canadian Press. And inexhaustibly energetic as it seemed, he found time for hunting ducks and other fowl and curling and horse racing. He was a great companion, a noted wit, and a gifted story teller.

     During the last summer of his life, he was ill with heart trouble and on reduced workload. He and his wife visited Maxville that fall. While they were en route from Maxville to their home in Regina they visited their daughter Margaret Evelyn and her husband Wilfred Alexander MacDougall, also a Glengarrian, in Sudbury. While in Sudbury, MacRae died suddenly, aged 53. His daughter gave birth to her first child a few hours after MacRae’s funeral.

     The attention attracted by his death and funeral is an indication of the importance he was seen to have at the time. The pallbearers included Victor Sifton, the publisher. The honorary pallbearers included A. P. McNab the lieutenant-governor, W. J. Patterson the premier of Saskatchewan, W. R. Motherwell, who was formerly federal minister of agriculture, John W. Dafoe, and an old GC friend, Dr H. H. Christie. At his death, there were messages and statements of tribute from Prime Minister Mackenzie King, Premier John Bracken of Manitoba, who praised the excellence of MacRae’s reporting of the debates of the Manitoba legislature, and J. G. (Jimmy) Gardiner, the federal minister of agriculture and former premier of Saskatchewan. Burial was in Regina.

     The minister Rev. Harvey Campbell said at the funeral that “D. B. McRae came to Saskatchewan just before the black years came down on this province, and he went up and down the west spreading courage and good cheer…” An anon. writer in the Glengarry News, presumably the eloquent T. W. (Tom) Munro, Maxville, wrote in an obituary tribute “To the West he gave of his best. Its vastness and buoyancy appealed to his sympathetic and adventurous nature.”

     MacRae was noted for his love of the romantic tales of Scottish history, and for his knowledge of Scottish poetry and song, which he delighted to quote from memory. The anonymous tribute writer just quoted believed that he “revelled” in the history of early GC. The journalist Grant Dexter wrote that “On the Sunday before he died, D. B. MacRae and I spent the afternoon roaming the Glengarry countryside,” and Dexter recalled the anecdotes with which on that occasion MacRae connected the long, romantic history of Scotland with the lore and personalities of the Canadian Glengarry. MacRae spoke to the Glengarry Association of Winnipeg in 1932, and at the Burns night celebration of the St. Andrew’s Society, Saskatoon, in 1933. (Glengarry News 12 Feb. 1932, 10 Feb. 1933 )

     His sister Catherine, Mrs Benjamin Graham, who died at Vulcan, Alberta, on 20 March of the same year 1939, was described in her obituary as having come “to the Vulcan district with the first settlers in 1905.” At the time of her death, two other brothers besides D. B. MacRae were living in Saskatchewan and Alberta.

     In Regina, at the Knox United Church which he attended, the minister was the previously mentioned Rev. Harvey Campbell, who was the husband of the well-remembered GC novelist, Grace Campbell. The Rev. Harvey Campbell was the principal clergyman at the funeral of D. B. MacRae, and had performed the marriage ceremony of MacRae’s daughter Margaret Evelyn the previous year.

Obituaries, obituary tributes, photographs: 12-page file (all undated clipping, but the obituary from his Regina Leader-Post can be identified here ) on him in collection of Gordon Winter, Maxville; includes article “MacRae of Glengarry,” by Grant Dexter * Standard Freeholder 23 & 25 Oct. 1939: editorial of tribute repr. from Ottawa Journal; obituary (with portrait) * Glengarry News 27 Oct. 1939: long obituary repr. (with some cutting) from Regina Leader-Post; report on funeral; anon. tribute and character sketch by Maxville columnist, evidently T. W. Munro * obituary (about 50 lines) New York Times 21 Oct. 1939 * obituary London Times, 25 Oct. 1939 (not in every edition) * Maxville (1991) 685 (portrait), 689, 738-739 * his daughter Margaret Evelyn MacRae (1914-1995): her engagement & marriage GN 7 & 28 Oct. 1938 (the latter repr. from Regina Leader-Post); her death, Winter GN 17 May 1995; Campbell, Tannis, & Stewart, MacDougalls, 613-616 * Archie & Lois McDonald, I Am Mackintosh (1987) 126 (wife) * his sister Mrs Benjamin Graham: her obituary GN 7 April 1939 from The Vulcan Advocate; Wheat Country: a History of Vulcan & District (1973) 466-467 (with portrait) * joins Ottawa Valley Farm Journal, GN 9 Oct. 1903 * visits Maxville, GN 6 May 1938