(1 Jan. 1842-8 March 1907), contractor, public figure. (Big Rory McLennan, R. R. McLennan, Roderick R. McLennan; called Big Rory because of his size and stature; in more formal references, his title of Major or Col. or Lt. Col., was often used with his name by contemporaries) Born in Charlottenburgh Township, GC, at Glen Donald. Parents: Roderick McLennan (1803-1893) and his wife Hannah McDonald (1816-1890). Hannah McDonald was a niece of Big Finnan of the Buffalo Mcdonald, and of Col. James Mcdonald of the Glen and John Mcdonald le Borgne. Big Rory attended primary school at Glen Donald. Early in life, he worked at “lumbering operations with his father and brothers in the rear of Glengarry.” And at the same time or a little later, he began the involvement with railway construction projects which was to prove to be so important in his life, working as an employee on those projects in the Maritimes, New York State and Minnesota. In these early years, he also developed a great reputation as an athlete, competing especially in the distinctively Scottish sports of shot putting and hammer throwing, not just in the GC area but more widely throughout North America. (For two of his rivals, see the entries for T. Jarmy and Donald Dinnie) Tragically, in Cornwall on 24 May 1877, he accidentally struck and killed a young factory employee, Ellen Kavanagh, when he was throwing the hammer. The incident, which is said to have deeply moved McLennan, is retold in somewhat different form (and without McLennan being the protagonist) in the novel Corporal Cameron (1912), by Ralph Connor (C. W. Gordon).
From about 1870, having gained further experience in railway work in Nova Scotia and in Quebec Province, he was in business as a contractor, with his base in Toronto. As a contractor, he worked on the Georgian Bay extension of the Midland Railway, and on the Canada Southern Railway and the CPR. What made him a rich man, however, and established him for life as a man of importance, was his work in the early to mid 1880s as a contractor on the CPR north of Lake Superior. He later had a contract to build a part of the Winnipeg and Hudson’s Bay Railway, but in the end no work was done on that contract.
Back in GC, he settled, in the mid-1880s, at Alexandria, where he established a business as a moneylender, and where, also, as a separate venture, for a short time he operated a private bank called McLennan and Brown which was sold to the Union Bank of Canada in Nov. 1886. Many prominent men in the GC of his time were moneylenders, making loans of a kind that in later generations would be made by banks. The business was not disreputable, and a skilful lender usually knew how to keep himself from being an object of public resentment, and it had important connections with politics, since the loans gave a politically-minded lender an influence on the vote of the borrower–an influence which the lender might use for himself, or for his political friends. (See the entries for Patrick Purcell and the Hon. D. A. Macdonald for other moneylenders in GC politics)
Big Rory ran unsuccessfully as a Conservative against James Rayside in the provincial general elections of 1883 and 1886 for the GC constituency. He was closely associated at this time with a fellow Conservative, Donald (later Sir Donald) MacMaster. For Bishop Cleary’s involvement in the 1886 election, see James Rayside. At the federal general election of 1891, Big Rory was elected MP for GC, defeating J. T. Schell. The election was voided in the courts for election irregularities, but in the consequent by-election, on 14 Jan. 1892, McLennan was again victorious, this time over Archibald McArthur the lumberman. When the 1896 federal election arrived, McLennan had a wonderfully strong point in his favour, and that was that he and others (see the entry for J. A. Macdonell of Greenfield) had convinced the Conservative government to build an immense reformatory in Alexandria to house boys from all over Canada. Fighting against a strong opponent, the clever, articulate, ambitious J. Lockie Wilson, who stood as the candidate of the farmers’ movement called the Patrons of Industry (there was no Liberal candidate), McLennan was again victorious. But with the 1896 national victory of Laurier and the Liberals, the reformatory, as a Conservative project, was quietly allowed to die. A limited amount of work was actually done for the reformatory, mostly in the nature of locating a site and gathering materials. The lament over the loss of the vast reformatory was to echo through GC history for the next half century. With Laurier in office as prime minister, and not just as the aspiring leader of the Opposition, McLennan was faced even more than before with Laurier’s appeal for the French Canadian voters. In the federal election of 1900, McLennan was defeated by his old opponent, the Liberal J. T. Schell. McLennan, by now in ill health, did not stand again for public office.
In 1899, McLennan moved from Alexandria to Cornwall. In Cornwall, in the house on the corner of Second and Sydney Streets Street once owned by George Macdonell of Athol , and later, through the benefaction of Mrs McMartin, to be the Nazarene Orphanage, he lived in the comfortable style of a rich man. He died at his home in Cornwall. He was buried in St. Andrew’s cemetery, Williamstown. He was a Presbyterian and a Mason. The funeral services included “one of the greatest masonic ceremonies ever seen in the county.” He was not married. Two of his brothers, Alexander R. and Angus R. McLennan are separately noticed in this dictionary, as are two of his right-hand men, David Fraser and Farquhar D. McLennan.
Big Rory McLennan controlled two newspapers, the Glengarrian of Alexandria, and the Standard of Cornwall. Both of these were Conservative journals, subsidized by him, and used to further his political career. In Cornwall, he established William Gibbens in what proved to be a 43-year editorship, lasting almost the whole independent life of the Standard before it was absorbed into the Standard-Freeholder in 1932. In Alexandria, C. J. Stilwell was one of his editors– one of the many the Glengarrian was to have before it went out of business in 1913.
One of the best known Glengarrians of his time, both in the GC area and more widely in Canada, well liked, much respected, Big Rory McLennan was endlessly mentioned in the GC-area press of his day (quite as much in the papers he did not control as in those he did), and he had a hand in many a local project and many a merrymaking, and was a pallbearer at many a funeral, including that of Pat Purcell. He is one of the GC figures of legend still, and is one of the best remembered to this day of all the 19th-century Glengarrians; indeed, he has long had a fame that seems inadequately justified by his career and achievements, remarkable though they were. But in the long run, what he is most likely to be remembered for is the massive, wonderful collection of his papers, for many years in the custody in Cornwall of his executor Farquhar D. McLennan, which the well-known Glengarry researcher and historian Hugh P. MacMillan acquired in the 1970s and 1980s for the Ontario Archives. Dealing in intimate detail with Big Rory’s business, politics and family affairs, these papers are one of the great sources for GC history, and include a surprising amount of material on the lives of humble individuals–the rank and file Glengarrians from the farms and the villages– people who did not, like Rory, become rich and famous.
As a businessman, he invested in various Canadian companies. He also owned land for speculation or development purposes in Ontario and the West. Close to home, he was one of the investors in a paper mill at Mille Roches, near Cornwall. (Senior 348) Like a number of other eminent Glengarrians, he was one of the investors in the Glengarry Ranch in Alberta (see the entry for Allan B. Macdonald).
An active and prominent figure in the militia, he rose to the rank of colonel and was commonly known by his military title–first as Major McLennan, later as Col. McLennan. He encouraged curling and rifle-practice, and in 1899 he offered a prize for chess (Cornwall Standard 24 Feb. 1899). He was fond of horse racing, and in 1901 rented the racetrack at Wales, west of Cornwall, to train his horses. As a supporter of education, he gave eight town lots in Alexandria as a site for the Alexandria High School. (Glengarry News 28 Feb. 1894) At Queen’s University, he established the McLennan scholarships for GC natives. Interested in promoting the claims for reward of veterans of the loyal forces in the 1837 Rebellion, he published a 52-page booklet on these claims, with the title beginning To the Surviving Veterans of 1837-8-9 (Alexandria, 1892). It must be admitted, of course, that the contemporary projects of compensating the Rebellion veterans, whether advanced by Big Rory or others, owed a lot to considerations of electoral strategy.
His character, as it comes through from his correspondence and from his public utterances, is that of a man who was highly intelligent and in all respects well-balanced, but not colourful as a personality (it was his career that was colourful, not the man), and very firmly in control of himself. He was noted as a generous host, but we may guess that the inner Rory was not very accessible to most people. The anonymous writer of his obituary tribute in the Glengarrian gives us a glimpse drawn from the life, not from the sources we must use now, “Though not effusing in his manner, Colonel McLennan was a warm-hearted Scotchman, and his charitable deeds were many and timely.”
There is at least one thesis on his athletic career, done in the Faculty of Education, Brock University, by Gregory Eric Gillespie. (And by way of connection, it may be noted there is also a thesis, done in the Faculty of Human Kinetics, University of Windsor, by Courtney W. Mason on the Glengarry Highland Games.) For a note on the election of 1900, see also Col. Alexander Fraser, archivist.
His life by Alexander Reford, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Vol. XIII * Cornwall Standard 8 March-5 April 1907 (includes summary of will), Glengarry News 15 March 1907, Glengarrian (QF) 22 March 1907 * Fraser, Gravestones, I, 129 * Archives of Ontario-RRM * his will in SDG Surrgate Court Records * his life in Morgan (1898), Johnson (1968), MDict, and Joan Finnegan’s Giants of Canada’s Ottawa Valley (1981; has fine full-page portrait) * Harkness, Bibliography of Glengarry, MacGillivray & Ross (esp. for the Reformatory episode), and Senior, Cornwall: all per index * Roderick Lewis, 94 (defeated in 1871 election? See entry Justice James Maclennan for this problem) * Boss 51, 53, 252 * drawing of him by Douglas A. Fales, GN 11 April 1990 * GHS Newsletter, Sept. 1993, June 1994, April 1998 * death of Ellen Kavanagh: Witness, 25 May 1877, Cornwall Reporter, 26 May & 2 June 1877 * Roy F. Fleming on his prowess as athlete, Standard Freeholder 17 July 1948, 23 July 1949 * horse-racing: CS 3 Oct. 1902; 20 Years Ago column in Cornwall Freeholder 21 April 1921 *Old Boys 1906 [106-107]: biog. note, portrait, and fine photos of his house in Cornwall, Standard office * the story of the rediscovery of the Big Rory papers: Hugh P. MacMillan, Glengarry Life 1988; Hugh P. MacMillan, Adventures of a Paper Sleuth (2004) 165-168, 339, 342 * “Mr. R. R. McLennan, of Glengarry, the champion Athlete of America,” honoured at banquet, Peel County, Ont., & praises GC, Cornwall Gazette 7 Sept. 1870, based on Orangeville Sun * is welcomed back to Alexandria after tour of Britain and Europe, Glengarrian 29 Nov. 1889 * promoted to lt.-col., Glengarry News 5 March 1898 * J. A. McDougall, aged 27, of Cornwall Township, & four others, killed on R. R. McLennan’s CPR contract, in explosion, Cornwall Freeholder 1 Feb. 1884, cited DTL SFH 29 Jan. 1949 * auction sale of properties from Big Rory’s estate, Glengarry News 30 July & 6 Aug. 2008 (illust.)