(1863-1923), clergyman. (John D. McEwen, J. D. McEwen) He was born near Maxville, probably on his parents’ farm, which at that time was on Lots 9 and 10, in the 18th Concession of Indian Lands, GC . When he was 10 years old, his parents moved to another farm, on Lots 10 and 11 in the 19th Concession of Indian Lands, near St. Elmo. Parents: Donald McEwen and his wife Elizabeth Begg. He learned Gaelic as his first language, speaking no English until he was six years old. Later, after he had learned Portuguese in Brazil, he reasoned that his early acquaintance with two languages left him more receptive than he would otherwise have been to language-learning. He attended school locally, being possibly a fellow student of Ralph Connor (C. W. Gordon) at the Athol school, though it is more likely that they missed each other by a narrow margin. He also attended Mt. Herman School at Gill, Massachusetts. Having entered the Congregationalist ministry, he was a Congregationalist pastor in the joint charge of Brooklyn Harbour and Beach Meadows, N. S. (1891?-1896) and at Stouffville, Ont. (1896-1899).

     He became a missionary in Brazil, where he arrived in Dec. 1899, and was joined by his wife and family about two years later. He and his wife operated a school and conducted Protestant mission work at a place called Orobo (later known as Itacira). Mrs McEwen died of a fever in Brazil in 1912 while her husband was revisiting Canada. He returned to Brazil after her death, but his mission work there seems to have ended shortly afterwards. In 1970, when the late Ewan Ross was researching the life of McEwen, he got into contact with Harold H. Cook, a 92-year old missionary in Brazil who had been in Brazil since 1911 and who in his youth had been assigned to investigate McEwen for a British missionary organization. After all the years, Cook still remembered McEwen with indignation. Cook wrote savagely to Ewan Ross in 1970 that McEwen’s “general conduct [in Brazil] indicated him to be an eccentric and unbalanced. But he had a persuasive way of talking and dreams that he spoke of sounded as if they already existed.”

     The Rev. John D. McEwen was first married, during his Brooklyn pastorate, to Edith McLeod of Nova Scotia, the daughter of Capt. James McLeod. (seven children, four of the children were born in Brazil) In 1926, her son Keith brought her body (and that of a daughter Ernestine who had died in Brazil shortly after her mother) back to Maxville for burial. Secondly, the Rev. John D. McEwen married Mrs C. Hurd (née Sarah E. Brooks) of Sherbrooke, Que. Her grandfather had been a member of the provincial legislature and the family were successful in law and banking. The Rev. John D. McEwen married, thirdly, Mrs Alexander P. McDougall (née Christena McKinnon), the sister of Duncan A. McKinnon the Maxville lumber merchant. There were no children by the two later marriages. After his death, his widow returned to live in Maxville. She was described in her obituary as “one of Maxville’s most beloved citizens.” (her obituary Standard Freeholder 23 Sept. 1936)

     In the later years of his life, Rev. John D. McEwen seems to have worked in Canada for the Canadian Bible Society, but evidently he took no further Canadian pastorates.

     Besides a pamphlet called Glimpses of South America and Experiences There (Toronto, W. Edwin Mertens, date perhaps 1914, pp. 37), he was the author of two books: Brazil: a Description of People, Country and Happenings There and Elsewhere (1915; 2nd edn., Montreal, Witness Press, 1916, pp. xiv, 259) and a novel written in the Ralph Connor manner, Sandy McDonald in Brazil (Sherbrooke, Que., 1921;pp. 123). The pamphlet was described in 1916 as being “now in its third edition of 20,000” (note at end of Brazil). Brazil, of which copies are fairly common in the second-hand book market, is described in its opening pages as “Authorized for the some 2,000 Quebec School Libraries by the Board of Education in the Province.” Copies of the novel are exceedingly rare. His grandson Ewan Ross said of the novel that “its lack of literary merit is outstanding.” It does, however, have some passages set in GC, and a Glengarrian as hero, and it counts therefore as one of the Glengarry novels. All these works are strongly marked by the author’s emotionalism and individuality of opinion—a combination that blurs the factual side of what he is saying and which may or may not amount to the eccentricity about which Cook complained.

     He was the brother of Dr Duncan McEwen, of Maxville, and the grandfather of Ewan Ross. Dr and Mrs McEwen helped to raise the McEwan children after the death of their mother in Brazil. On the title page of at least some (and perhaps all) copies of the pamphlet on South America Dr McEwen is listed as one of the two distributors (the other being the Toronto publisher).

Campbell, Tannis, & Stewart, MacDougalls, 344- 354 (with portrait) * Maxville (1991) 220-223 (valuable biog. study by Gordon Winter) * his gravestone, Maxville Cemetery * notes taken by present author in 1973 from Ewan Ross’s large biographical file on John D. McEwan; letters of Harold H. Cook to Ewan Ross, 7 July & 14 Sept. 1970 * autobiog. passages in his Glimpses and Brazil (with portrait); the novel also draws on his experiences in Brazil * death of last surviving of his children, Winter GN 14 June 2000 * private information * article about him, Glengarry News 7 Nov. 1913 * obituary of his father, Cornwall Freeholder 8 April 1910 * he and his wife honoured at Maxville, CF 30 June 1899 * visiting at St. Elmo, GN 10 May 1912 * to speak at Maxville, Moose Creek, Avonmore, Cornwall Standard 10 May 1912 * Maxville column, Cornwall Standard 17 May 1912: death of his wife in Brazil, he “narrowly escaped” being on the Titanic * fractures leg while returning from conducting church service at Kirk Hill, Dr McEwen came “with his car” and took him home, CF 5 Sept. 1913 * report of his speech on Brazil, CS 4 July 1918 * speaks to Baptist congregation in Cornwall, is called a “missionary on furlough from Brazil,” CF & CS both 11 July 1918 * he and former Mrs Hurd return from extended honeymoon on west coast, CF 15 April 1920 (from Montreal Gazette) * publication of Sandy McDonald in Brazil, GN 9 Dec. 1921 (mostly from Vancouver Province), also CS 24 Nov. 1921 * no obituary has been found