(May 1898-5 Dec. 1972), physician. (Dr Markson, Moses Markson, Mose Markson) Born in Alexandria, GC. Parents: Abraham Markson and his wife Zilda Rebecca Albin. He was a graduate of Alexandria High School, and obtained his medical degree from McGill University. In Sept. 1921 he began his Alexandria medical practice. (Glengarry News 23 Sept. and 14 Oct. 1921) Thereafter, his whole medical career passed in Alexandria, apart from some involvement as a surgeon at one of the Cornwall hospitals in the later stages of his practice, commuting for this purpose by car from his home in Alexandria.
There are many references in the Glengarry News to his active involvement in the support of soccer, hockey, lacrosse and curling. He is said to have used the name MacDonald when visiting in Quebec province with GC teams at a prestigious resort which did not admit Jews. At least briefly, he was involved in Conservative Party activities. (GN 9 Oct. 1931, 7 Oct. 1932) Also, he served as an Alexandria town councillor. A Mason, he was master of the Alexandria Masonic lodge in 1929 and 1944. As a sideline or hobby, he was involved in his later years in the business of woodcutting by employing gangs of woodcutters in GC woodlots. Probably the wood was mostly for fuel, in these days when woodburning was still standard in GC homes. He was appointed a coroner for SDG. (Glengarry News 18 Aug. 1955)
Increasingly incapacitated by illness, he withdrew from his medical practice. His death came after an illness of many years. Late in life he was married to Agnes McCosham (1896-1983). Place of death: Macdonell Memorial Hospital, Cornwall. In his later years he was a member of the United Church, and he and his wife are buried in the Protestant cemetery on Main Street, Alexandria.
Dr Markson was a GC legend in his own lifetime. Easily, he captured the GC imagination and attracted widespread notice and comment. He was thought to be an outstandingly good doctor in lung complaints, including the pheumonia so much feared by the Glengarrians in the days before modern antibiotics. The Markson medical office, with its collection of stuffed wildlife, was intriguing and a little frightening to children. This office, where in earlier days A.L. Smith had practised law, was in Mill Square, up one narrow flight of stairs of legendary steepness. Dr Markson himself was said to have broken his collar bone in a fall down these stairs. He never kept a nurse or receptionist at the office. He preferred to mix his own medicines instead of writing prescriptions. The glug-glug of the bottles for mixing the tonics of the day were themselves a part of the legend. He was known for his phrase “ponder that.” He was known also for the huge looping, scrawled “doctor’s handwriting” of his enormous Christmas cards, which he always addressed himself to his patients, with the stamps sometimes upside down. He knew his patients by sight, and as was expected from a GC doctor of his time, knew who their relatives were. On Sundays, even before he joined the United Church, he sometimes attended the churches of the various local denominations. Report said that he was the physician of the Roman Catholic clergy in Alexandria. The present author’s uncertain impression is that as Clarence Ostrom, tireless in his zeal for the latest Alexandria news, made his many daily information-gathering and information-imparting trips from his jewellery store 20 yards to the door of Gerald McDonald’s barbershop (where the famous “Senate” of men gathered to talk), Dr Markson’s office was one of the stops on his circuit.
A superb photograph, probably by Duncan Donovan, of the young Moses Markson and two other young men, was printed in the Glengarry News 10 Oct. 2001.
Many refs. Glengarry News over years (includes 7 and 14 Dec. 1972, with editorial of tribute) * personal knowledge * Ostrom 238-239 (list of masters, Masonic lodge) * Royce MacGillivray, The Slopes of the Andes: Four Essays on the Rural Myth in Ontario (1990) 22, 92 * Lochinvar to Skye 560 & GN 1 June 1983: photo of McCrimmon soccer team, 1925, with Dr Markson * plunges through Mill Pond ice, Alexandria, in childhood accident, GN 26 Nov. 1909 * president, lacrosse club, GN 11 April 1924 * officer of Eastern Glengarry Football League, GN 29 May 1925 * re-elected president, Alexandria Lacrosse club, GN 31 March 1933 * one of the honourary presidents, Glengarry Football League, GN 12 May 1939