(1869-12 June 1922), clergyman. Born in the island of Lewis, Scotland. In early life, he was trained as a baker. When he was about 19, he came to Canada. He attended Manitoba College, though he does not seem to have taken a degree, and McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago. While a student, he served as a student minister in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and North Dakota. In 1902 he was ordained a minister at Milton, North Dakota, near the Canadian border, and he then served as minister at Milton for some two years.

     On 16 June 1904, he was inducted as minister of Kirk Hill West Church, in GC. The West Church (now United) was at that time Presbyterian. He remained minister there for the next 18 years, till his death at the early age of 52. His obituary in the Glengarrry News said that “Mr. Morrison was a splendid preacher in both Gaelic and English” and that “He will be remembered by the Gaelic speaking people of the Eastern Townships, Quebec, and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, for the earnest helpful sermons preached during Communion Seasons; for at such a time his services were greatly appreciated by the Scotch people.” He was the last minister of the West Church to preach in Gaelic. During his period as minister, the church building was remodelled and a new manse was built. A stained-glass window in his memory was dedicated in the West Church in 1927, and in 1968 Margaret Cameron presented a cross in memory of him and his wife, in tribute to his influence on her life as a missionary. He is buried not at Kirk Hill, but at Harriston, Ont., the home town of his wife, Agnes Lavery. (one child) They were married at Harriston two days before his induction at Kirk Hill. After Allan Morrison’s death, Malcolm Maclennan, the Gaelic scholar and future dictionary author, who had been himself a minister at the West Church, published a tribute to him in Gaelic in the Edinburgh Witness, which was reprinted in English translation in the Glengarry News, 23 March 1923. Allan Morrison’s daughter, Mrs Janet Morrison Patterson, revisited GC in June 2006, some 84 years after her family left the manse, and a few months before her own death at Port Perry, Ont., 27 Sept. 2006, in her 95th year.

     A tradition, presumably inaccurate, reports that as minister Allan Morrison buried the celebrated Allan MacRae (Allan Gorrach, Black Allan the Dogs) in the West Church cemetery, though it is more likely that Black Allan was taken for dissection, and lies in some cemetery used by the medical schools. It was during Allan Morrison’s time as minister that the Kirk Hill people were disturbed by a frightening series of some fourteen unexplained fires that occurred at the old and new manse of the West Church and at the church itself. However, it was discovered that the fires had been set by the twelve-year-old-daughter of a Kirk Hill farmer. (Cornwall Freeholder and Standard, 19 Aug. 1915) The Glengarry News, prudently, did not report the story, and the Vankleek Hill newspaper did an early report but, perhaps under pressure from the local people, did not follow it up. See also the entry for Duncan McMillan (Hook).

Glengarry News 16 June 1922, Cornwall Freeholder and Cornwall Standard both 22 June 1922 * MacMillan, Kirk: index * McCrimmon [West Church], with portraits * fires: sources stated; also Vankleek Hill Review 13 Aug. 1915; private information * presides at concert, formal opening of McCrimmon Hall, GN 21 Oct. 1904 * summary of the sermon he preached at the funeral of William D. McLeod, 1908, printed with the latter’s GN obituary * Mrs Patterson: GN 14 June (with portrait of the Morrison family) and (Jean MacLennan’s Dalkeith column) 4 Oct. 2006