(23 Oct. 1900-15 Aug. 1969), physician. (Dr George V. McDonald) Born at Apple Hill, GC. Parents: Alexander Angus McDonald and his wife Mary Agnes McDonell. He attended Williamstown High School and Queen’s University, where he got his B. A. in 1926 and his medical degree in 1928. He interned in Kingston General Hospital and in New York. Starting about Jan. 1930, in succession to Dr A. R. Walters, who moved to Quebec province, he practiced medicine during close to 40 years at Apple Hill, extending the practice about 1939 to include Martintown. As health officer, he organized school clinics and TB clinics. Nor did he fail to find time to be active in Apple Hill community affairs. In 1954, he was honoured by a large assembly at the Green Valley Pavilion for 25 years’ service to the communities of Apple Hill and Martintown (gifts included a motor boat). (Glengarry News 18 Nov. 1954) In 1967, he was given Centennial medals by Kenyon and Charlottenburgh Tps.

     Rhodes Grant, who gives 1939 or shortly after as the time he extended his practice to include Martintown, reports that he was “cross as a bear,” but eulogizes his medical skills, his kindness, and his unfailing devotion to duty, and says that “very few medical men have been as much respected and loved.” In an editorial tribute, Eugene Macdonald called him “retiring and self-effacing to a degree,” and said “he was of that reliable breed of country doctor, now almost extinct, who was on call right around the clock and could be reached in almost any emergency.” It was “doubtful,” Eugene Macdonald added with characteristic gloom (though in this case his fears proved incorrect), that “there will ever again be a doctor at Apple Hill.” Dr McDonald died at Hotel Dieu Hospital, Cornwall, Ont. Roman Catholic. Unmarried. The Dr. George V. McDonald Memorial Clinic at Apple Hill opened in 1970 with Dr Vaidya as its first physician.

Glengarry News 21 Aug. & 18 Sept. 1969 includes editorial, portrait, anon. tribute * Queen's University Archives * Apple Hill (1982) 27 (with portrait), 77 * Rhodes Grant, ii, 70 * obituary of last to die of his siblings, Miss Evelyn McDonald, of Apple Hill & Maxville Manor, died 14 Jan. 2001, aged 92, GN 17 Jan. 2001 * degree, practice, GN 25 May 1928, 31 Jan. 1930