McDonald, Kenneth

(April or June 1831?-1 March 1911), clergyman. (Dr McDonald) Born in GC, probably near North Lancaster, on Lot 31 of the 5th Concession of Lancaster Township. Parents: John (Tailor) McDonald, a farmer, and his wife, who, unless he was married more than once, was Sarah McDonald, her original surname being the same as his. Kenneth McDonald’s parents were Roman Catholics, but he was converted, when about 25, to Methodism. Later, he became a Presbyterian, and a Presbyterian minister. The 1883 Hand-Book of the Presbyterian Church in Canada (Ottawa, ed. Kemp, Farries, & Halkett) noted that he was “Reared in Roman Catholic Church to which all his relatives still belong.” He attended Knox College, Toronto. His ordination was on 25 Oct. 1865. After being minister of East Puslinch (1865-1871) and then of Thamesford (1871-1873), both in Western Ontario, he became the first resident minister for the Presbyterians of Alexandria (approval of the call by Presbytery, July 1873; induction, 30 Oct. 1873). Besides being minister of the congregation, he was to be “Missionary to the Roman Catholics of Glengarry.”

About the end of 1875, he left the Alexandria charge to become the minister of the Indian Lands congregation. The Indian Lands charge had been vacant since the Rev. Rev. Daniel Gordon had left for Western Ontario in 1871. Kenneth McDonald left the Indian Lands charge about the end of 1877, and was next minister of the united charge of Burns Church, Martintown, and Hephzibah Church, Willliamstown, serving till 1879. He was thereafter the minister of two more Western Ontario churches, first Belmont (1879-1885), then Ashfield (1886-1891). He was without a church charge, 1892-1898. It was probably during this interval that he qualified as a medical doctor. The medical training was apparently in Detroit. Again he served as minister of the Hephzibah Church (not the Burns Church this time) from about the beginning of the 20th century till he retired, on the grounds of age, in Oct. 1905. In retirement, he lived apparently at Kincardine, Ont. The obituary (Glengarry News 24 Feb. 1911) of his brother Duncan, a harness-maker at Williamstown who died 16 Feb. 1911, speaks of Kenneth as a survivor of the deceased and as resident at Kincardine. One of Duncan’s pallbearers was his nephew, Dr Donald Duncan Macdonald of Alexandria. Duncan’s obituary stresses, though without relating the matter specifically to Kenneth, this McDonald familiy’s loyalties over the centuries to the Catholic Church.

Kenneth McDonald died at Kincardine, Ont. He “had a somewhat unsettled career.” (Smith) He was married 12 April 1860 to Helen Carruthers. He is said to have been a man of great physical strength and endurance, and to have proved himself admirably in a bee for some clearance work around the Indian Lands manse.

All his pastorates in his native county were short, but that of Alexandria has especial interest from its historical context. The year before he became Alexandria’s Protestant minister saw an eruption of ill feeling of a kind rare in the history of the county between Catholics and Protestants. For a further account of this, see Fr A. Langcake. The appointment of a Protestant minister for Alexandria so soon after, and perhaps even the particular minister chosen, may be seen as a protest and reaction. But the exact narrative of events is largely incapable of being recovered and explained today, and all the more because the GC society of that time left so few records of people’s intimate opinions.

In a newspaper item–or perhaps independently circulated printed notice–that can be dated to July 1873, Fr O’Connor of Alexandria was reported to be exasperated that “a Presbyterian clergyman is about to be settled at Alexandria,” the Rev. Kenneth McDonald.