Dictionary of Glengarry Biography

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====== MacKinnon, George Ernest Lawson ====== 
 (12 Dec. 1879-25 Oct. 1969), physician. (Dr George E. L. MacKinnon, G. E. L. MacKinnon) Born at Alexandria, GC. Parents: John MacKinnon, a blacksmith, and his wife Jane Anna Lawson. Her father, George Lawson, earlier of Morayshire, Scotland, was for the last 30 years of his life overseer of the Hon. Donald A. (Sandfield) Macdonald’s “farm property near” Alexandria.” John MacKinnon died when his son was about 11, and the widow left George with his Lawson grandparents while she took employment in Montreal. George attended Alexandria High School. Ethel Ostrom remembered that he and J. Wilfred Kennedy (also later an MP) were students of Greek there. A McGill graduate in medicine, MacKinnon was reported early in 1903 to be joining the Allan line of ships as a surgeon (//Glengarry News// 30 Jan. 1903), but this involvement, whatever it amounted to, proved short term. He practised medicine for a few years at Williamstown, at first in association with Dr M. M. Mowat, who died in May 1903. In 1905 he was given a banquet by his friends at Williamstown, on his leaving Williamstown to become a house surgeon at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal. After this Montreal venture, Dr MacKinnon practised medicine in Alexandria for a year or two, before leaving for the West, perhaps in 1907.

<tab>A resident of B. C. from probably 1908, he practised medicine at several places there, including Cranbrook, before settling permanently at Cranbrook during WWI. On 1 Nov. 1921 he was married to Helen Ainsworth Giegerich (1891-1980). From 1940 to 1945, Dr MacKinnon represented Kootenay East in the House of Commons, as a Conservative. (Another GC physician, Dr W. B. MacDiarmid, a Liberal, was the GC MP during the same years, both men being in their 60s.) When the //Glengarry News// of 23 Feb. 1945 reported that MacKinnon had declined to be renominated as the Conservative candidate for Kootenay East, it added that “During his five-year term at Ottawa Dr MacKinnon has been a frequent visitor to Alexandria, where his mother Mrs John MacKinnon, resides.” On concluding his parliamentary career, he retired also from medical practice. Protestant (probably a Presbyterian). Mason. See also [[robinson_edward_joseph|Dr E. J. Robinson]]. By way of political connections, it may be noted that Dr James Horace King, for whose Cranbrook medical practice MacKinnon had once worked, became a Liberal MP, senator and speaker of the Senate, and a Dr Green who was MacKinnon’s medical partner in Cranbrook was elected to the B. C. Legislature.


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<fs small>Johnson (1968) 421 * //Cranbrook and District Key City Chronicles 1898-// (Fort Steele, B. C., 2002) 575-577: biog. sketch by his son Dr George MacKinnon (with portrait) * Parker (1912) 345 (with portrait) * Ostrom 225 *Williamstown: //Glengarry News// 22 May 1903 (obituary of Dr Mowat), 7 July 1905 * spends weekend with his mother, of Harrison St., Alexandria, //GN// 30 Jan. 1942 * George Lawson: obituary //Cornwall Freeholder// 4 Aug. 1893 (QF); his wife’s fine display of flowers, rare in Alexandria, praised, //CF //11 Aug. 1882
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