(28 April 1906-1 Dec. 1994), private scholar. (Edwin McDonald; Edwin Joe D. McDonald) Born at his parents’ farmhouse home, near Harrison’s Corners, Stormont County. Parents: Joseph James McDonald and his wife Mary Christena Chisholm. He attended primary school and high school locally. He studied for the priesthood at the Scarboro Foreign Mission Society Seminary in Toronto 1929-1932, and again, as a middle-aged student, at the Grand Seminary, Montreal, 1955-1956, but in both instances he left the seminary before completing his studies. His occupational history over the years was mixed, for he worked at various short-term jobs in Stormont County, and was employed also in the Alberta oil fields, and at Valleyfield, Que., and was in the honey and turkey business at Harrison’s Corners. He lost one eye as a result of an accident during bush work in the early 1940s. He visited Europe (1950) and the Holy Land (1973-1974). He was married, on 25 July 1964, to Jean Cameron (died 14 July 1969). During his married life and afterwards, he lived at St. Andrew’s (St. Andrew’s West), the village with which his memory is particularly associated. He died at the Janet Macdonell Pavilion of the Hotel Dieu Hospital, Cornwall. Roman Catholic. He and his wife are buried at St. Andrew’s West.
Edwin McDonald was celebrated for his vast knowledge of the history and especially of the genealogy of the St. Andrew’s area (much of this information, of course, was about Glengarrians). The name of “Mr. St. Andrew’s” was sometimes applied to him by his admirers because of his great knowledge of that area. He planned to write a history of the village and parish of St. Andrew’s, but he never got beyond the accumulation of information. In the 1980s, two of his sisters, Sister St. Donald and Sister Margaret McDonald, prepared for family use a book called “Our Ancestral Heritage,” using tapes and other sources he provided. Duncan (Darby) MacDonald published two works based on Edwin McDonald’s manuscript notes; the titles are Cemeteries: the Old & New St. Andrews (1984) and The Story of St. Andrews West as Recorded on the Index Cards of Edwin McDonald (1987), which despite its title is mainly genealogical. Visitors to St. Andrew’s found Edwin McDonald a willing and knowledgeable guide to the St. Andrew’s cemeteries. Genealogists and others found him an impressive source of information on the history of his area and its families. The Ottawa journalist Tom Van Dusen called him “a human historical computer.” (Ottawa Citizen 22 Dec. 1980, with portrait). He also had a sizeable collection of photographs of local historical interest. A dedicated book collector, he had a library said to have numbered 16,000 volumes. It has been thought to be the largest privately-owned library in SDG in his time. Not unimportantly, he provided a praiseworthy example of the life of the private scholar, and of the life of the mind.
His nephew Howard William McDonald has published a most valuable and unfailingly interesting short biography of him, Mr. St. Andrews: a Human Interest Story (1995; pp. 25, with portraits)
Howard William McDonald, as cited * personal information * interviewed while living at Glen-Stor-Dun Lodge, Standard Freeholder 14 Dec. 1988 (with portrait) * in group portrait of founders of Glengarry Genealogical Society, Glengarry News 31 Oct. 1974