| <tab>The Highland Society of Glengarry, founded in 1909, and aptly described by Ewan Ross as an on-again off-again organization, attracted attention and support for a time, and even warmth and loyalty, but after all proved short lived: rather– and the parallel thereby has an explanatory side– like the unstable farm protest and farm self-help organizations of GC history. There is not enough documentary evidence surviving, so far as is known, to make a history of the society possible, though a sketchy outline could just possibly be established by close searching in the //Glengarry News// files. On 28 Oct. 1913, Dr MacDonald, on the stationery of the Highland Society of Glengarry, wrote from Alexandria to Alexander Fraser, the archivist of Ontario, about the work of the society and included a flyer for a Scotch concert to be held in Alexandria 19 Sept. “We always speak Gaelic at all our meetings. All the directors and officers speak Gaelic fluently save one who is a Lowlander.” The old language lay helplessly on its deathbed as Dr MacDonald wrote these brave words. And while admitting he knew more than posterity does one wonders nonetheless whether a less impetuous and domineering man would not have advisedly added the firmly qualifying word “some” after the first “speak.” | <tab>The Highland Society of Glengarry, founded in 1909, and aptly described by Ewan Ross as an on-again off-again organization, attracted attention and support for a time, and even warmth and loyalty, but after all proved short lived: rather– and the parallel thereby has an explanatory side– like the unstable farm protest and farm self-help organizations of GC history. There is not enough documentary evidence surviving, so far as is known, to make a history of the society possible, though a sketchy outline could just possibly be established by close searching in the //Glengarry News// files. On 28 Oct. 1913, Dr MacDonald, on the stationery of the Highland Society of Glengarry, wrote from Alexandria to Alexander Fraser, the archivist of Ontario, about the work of the society and included a flyer for a Scotch concert to be held in Alexandria 19 Sept. “We always speak Gaelic at all our meetings. All the directors and officers speak Gaelic fluently save one who is a Lowlander.” The old language lay helplessly on its deathbed as Dr MacDonald wrote these brave words. And while admitting he knew more than posterity does one wonders nonetheless whether a less impetuous and domineering man would not have advisedly added the firmly qualifying word “some” after the first “speak.” |
| <tab>Dr MacDonald’s son Arnold (b. Alexandria 14 May 1905; d. Cornwall 9 June 1991) was collector of customs at Cornwall from 1948, for 21 years. For Dr MacDonald and Alexandria politics, see also [[moloney_paul_j|Dr P. J. Moloney]]. And see Senator D. McMillan for a notice of a newspaper account of MacDonald and McMillan being called to treat a boy injured in a farm accident. Claude Nunney lived for some of his early years at the home of Mrs Donald Roy McDonald of North Lancaster, Dr MacDonald’s sister. The doctor and the future Victoria Cross winner must sometimes have met. How good it would be to hear what they thought of each other! | <tab>Dr MacDonald’s son Arnold (b. Alexandria 14 May 1905; d. Cornwall 9 June 1991) was collector of customs at Cornwall from 1948, for 21 years. For Dr MacDonald and Alexandria politics, see also [[moloney_paul_j|Dr P. J. Moloney]]. And see [[mcmillan_donald|Senator D. McMillan]] for a notice of a newspaper account of MacDonald and McMillan being called to treat a boy injured in a farm accident. Claude Nunney lived for some of his early years at the home of Mrs Donald Roy McDonald of North Lancaster, Dr MacDonald’s sister. The doctor and the future Victoria Cross winner must sometimes have met. How good it would be to hear what they thought of each other! |
