(Sept. 1884-14 April 1938), mining man. (Duncan J. McDonell) Born at St. Raphael’s, GC. Parents: Finley A. McDonell and his wife Helen McDonell. “The greater part of his life was spent in the Northern Ontario mining camps. He went to Cobalt in the boom days of 1907 and later was in Gowganda during the silver rush. From there he went to Shining Tree in 1911, being one of the pioneer prospectors of that district.” Shining Tree seems to have been his home from then onwards. Shining Tree and Gowganda, about 25 miles apart, are about 80 miles north of Sudbury and are west of Cobalt. In the early 1930s, McDonell had nine mining claims in the Montreal River area between Shining Tree and Cobalt, but the one most investigated at that time seems to have shown only “low gold values.” In the last year of his life he was superintendent of the Thompson Bousquet Mining Company in the Kewagama, Que., district. He died at his home at Shining Tree, aged 53. Roman Catholic. He was married 7 Feb. 1917 to Bella Catherine MacDonald of Glen Donald, on the Glengarry-Stormont boundary.

Standard Freeholder 29 April 1938 (QF-1) * Percy E. Hopkins, West Shiningtree Gold Area (1920; pp. 26 with maps), Bulletin No. 39 of Ontario Dept. of Mines, repr. from Ontario Dept. of Mines Report, Vol. 29, Pt 3, 1920: useful for background, has no mention of McDonell, unless perhaps as McDonald * Ontario Dept. of Mines Report, Vol. 44, Pt 7, 1935 p. 46 (QF-2)