(22 March 1852-7 Nov. 1939), manufacturer. Born at Glen Roy, GC. Parents: Donald Munro and his wife Janet McDermid. “A public school education was his only schooling, but he made himself by study, research and systematic reading.” (obituary, Glengarry News) Trained as a blacksmith, he established himself in business as a blacksmith on Kenyon Street West in Alexandria in 1877, a few years before the railway came to the town. His work included repairing carriages and he began to build them also. In 1880 he formed a partnership with his first cousin John D. McIntosh, who had been his employee since 1878. In 1886 they moved their carriage-building operations to a new building they had constructed on Main Street, Alexandria. This proved to be the permanent home of their factory. The factory made horse-drawn buggies, cutters and sleighs. The buggy is commemorated in GC nostalgia as “The Buggy from Glengarry.” As the firm grew, the quietly-efficient John D. McIntosh, who seems to have been a more private and more withdrawn man than Munro, concentrated on directing the manufacturing side of the business, while Munro, travelling in Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec, and more widely throughout Canada, acted as the firm’s highly-effective salesman. The carriages were sold in Canada, with some market in the West Indies, and at least one attempt was made to break into the British market. In 1898, the Alexandria Carriage Company even made a sample shipment to Bombay, India. (Cornwall Freeholder 16 Dec. 1898)

     The firm was known at first as Munro and McIntosh, or as the Alexandria Carriage Company. In 1903 it was incorporated as the Munro and McIntosh Carriage Company, with a capital of $250,000 in $100 shares. (Glengarry News 6 March 1903) As an official name, the term Munro and McIntosh did not last long, for in 1909 the firm became part of a larger company called Carriage Factories Ltd, of which Hugh Munro became a vice-president. But in practice, the familiar name of Munro and McIntosh continued to be used locally, and it is as Munro and McIntosh that this firm has been remembered and praised by generations of Glengarrians. The firm probably never, at the height of its success, had more than about 200 employees. In Jan. 1914, Mayor J.T. Hope, recounting the progress of Alexandria, and speaking perhaps with something of the decent optimism of a mayor, stated that the firm of Munro and McIntosh employed “upwards of two hundred hands.” (GN 30 Jan. 1914, also MacGillivray & Ross 481) The figure of upwards of 300 which has been sometimes stated is far too high. However, it is also very important that the firm had a considerable “ripple effect” in creating local employment through its purchase of such local services as cartage between the plant and the railway station, and through the purchasing power of its employees. For farmers and a few businessmen, the firm was very important as a purchaser of lumber from Glengarry forests. Wood was a substantial ingredient in carriages, and in 1911 about half the firm’s expenditure for supplies went for GC lumber. (MacGillivray & Ross 480)

     In 1892, Hugh Munro was one of the local men who founded the Glengarry News. (Glengarry News Centennial issue, 8 July 1992) In 1909, Hugh Munro and his wife made a tour of Europe. He described the tour in letters which were published in the Glengarry News in 1909 and were reprinted there in 1932. When the new Presbyterian Church was built in Alexandria in 1911-1912, he and McIntosh paid 2/3 of the cost, on the understanding that the congregation would pay the remaining 1/3. (GN 3 Feb. 1911, 9 Aug. 1912) In Alexandria, Hugh Munro served as councillor, reeve and mayor. In 1911, standing as a Liberal, he was elected to the Ontario Legislature as the MLA for GC, defeating Col. D.M. Robertson, the Conservative candidate. At the 1914 election, he was returned as the GC MLA by acclamation. He served out his term, but at the election of 1919 he was not a candidate.

     Meanwhile, his business partner John D. McIntosh had died in 1914. The carriage business itself had gone into decline with the increasing popularity of the automobile. Manufacturing continued into the later 1920s and there was some use of the plant for odd jobs even into the 1930s, but in 1938 the buildings, which had been standing idle, were torn down. (GN 10 June and 16 Sept. 1938) Munro left GC in June 1936 to spend his remaining years in Edmonton, at the home of his daughter Grace, who was married to Dr Gustavus John Hope (1885-21 Sept. 1958), an Edmonton dentist. (His initials are also found as J. G.) The address presented to Hugh Munro when he left Alexandria stated, “We fully realize what a great disappointment it has been to you to find the business of the Carriage Factories carried on at Brantford and to see the mills which were the product of your genius and your unfailing courage standing idle and silent.” (Glengarry News 19 June 1936 ) Hugh Munro died in Edmonton. The funeral was in Edmonton. The Glengarry News obituary noted that his death, falling within a few hours of that of Mrs John D. McIntosh, the wife of his partner, “severed the last connection of Alexandria with members of the firm” of Munro and McIntosh. Munro had property interests, though they may not have been extensive, in Winnipeg and Montreal. (Glengarry News 25 Nov. 1910, 23 Feb. 1912)

     Munro was deeply interested in the history of GC. When he spoke at the 1912 centenary celebrations for St. Andrew’s Church, Williamstown, he appealed for a more systematic effort to preserve the history, records and artifacts of GC. He himself published a series of articles in the Glengarry News in May and June 1925 on the early history of GC. He contributed material for a short history of Glen Roy which appeared in the Ottawa Citizen and the Glengarry News in 1935 (Glengarry News 20 Dec. 1935). He was married on 17 Feb. 1883 to Emma McCracken of Farran’s Point. She and the wife of his business partner, John D. McIntosh, were probably close relatives, but it has not been determined that they were sisters. In the 1990s, a bed and breakfast house in Alexandria was named the Carriage House in honour of Alexandria’s famous industry. (GN and Vankleek Hill Review 30 April 1997) Munro himself passed into GC legend as well as history. Perhaps this was happening as early as 1890 when two blacksmiths called Lauzon and Dupratto were advertising their new blacksmith shop at “Hugh Munro’s Old Stand, Kenyon Street.” (Glengarrian 10 Oct. 1890) Over the years in obituaries the local press often noted that the deceased had been an employee of the Munro and McIntosh firm. See also Buick, DaPrato and Tarlton.

     The Glengarry News, 8 Dec. 1999, printed a splendid, sombre photograph, attributed to Duncan Donovan, of the water tower of the Munro & McIntosh carriage factory against a snowy townscape.

Standard Freeholder 8 Nov. 1939, Glengarry News 10 Nov. 1939 (portrait) * Who’s Who and Why 1921 p. 1237 (with good portrait) * MacGillivray & Ross chapter XV (with much detail, data on production, portrait) * history of the firm, GN supplement 1903 * Angus H. McDonell , “The Last of ‘The Buggy from Glengarry’,” GN 9 Dec. 1938, good history of the firm written on the occasion of the demolition of the company’s buildings, with notes on the effects the firm had on Alexandria * Oakley H. Bush, “The Alexandria Carriage Co.,” The Carriage Journal, 22:1 (Summer 1984), also Bush on same Glengarry News 29 Feb. 1984 and Glengarry Life (1984); each article has its own illustr. * MacMillan, Kirk, 262 * Roderick Lewis, 95 * Rayside: index * Donald A. MacLaurin, McIntosh/Munro Family (1986) 8 (Dr Hope) * Hugh Munro’s speech, Centenary 1912 * article (illus.) on firm Munro and McIntosh GN 29 Dec. 1899 * sketch of Munro’s career, repr. from Ottawa Citizen in GN 12 Feb. 1932 * Dumbrille, U, 58 * photo of demolition of carriage factory building, 1938, in GN 3 Feb. 1988 * adverts. for Munro and McIntosh products, e.g., cutters, Glengarrian 22 Nov. 1889 * writes to Cornwall Freeholder respecting dispute over prizes for carriages exhibited at the Alexandria Fair, CF 6 Oct. 1882 * Munro is first to introduce iron fences in Alexandria, CF 3 Nov. 1882 * Munro and McIntosh are building large carriage shop at Dominionville, CF 25 Sept. 1885, cited DTL SFH 25 Sept. 1948 (no further information has been found; probably whatever was intended did not long continue) * statistics on carriages shipped, 1895-1904, GN 15 April 1904 * Hugh Munro engages firm of R.E. Carey and Co., of Manchester, Eng., to be the English representatives of the Alexandria Carriage Works, GN 26 Oct. 1900 * Hugh Munro’s statements in Ont. Legislature, GN 5 March and 2 April 1915 * speaks at testimonial banquet for Judge F.T. Costello, GN 4 Oct. 1929