Dictionary of Glengarry Biography

, ( 1852-11 Feb. 1942) produce exporter. Born Aultsville, Ont. Father: Henry Alexander. James Alexander was educated at Cornwall, and was a telegraph operator on the Grand Trunk Railway, and station agent at Brockville. He founded a dairy produce business at Brockville, which he relocated in 1886 to Montreal, where he became a prominent exporter of Canadian dairy produce. It is reported that during World War I, he was organizer and chairman of the British Ministry of Food Purchasing Business in Canada, and later organized on the request of Lloyd George the British Ministry of Food and the Allied Provisions Purchasing Commission in the U.S. James Alexander retired from business about 1921. He died at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal. He was married in 1881 (FH 22 April 1881) to Anne McCuaig, of Lancaster, GC (d. 1937). Her obituary noted that she had been prominent for over half a century in the social life of Montreal. James Alexander knew the Lancaster station in its greatest and most active days, and A.W. MCDOUGALD in his history of Glengarry reported that his old friend James Alexander, in his early days a telegraph operator at Lancaster station, “has told me that it was no uncommon thing [at Lancaster station] for him to issue $ 300 worth of tickets in a day; and many times it happened that they despatched a full car of boys from Glengarry farms bound for the woods in Michigan and Wisconsin. They used to arrive mostly in farm or lumber wagons but occasionally a passenger came by stage.” Among his GC connections, Alexander was a partner of the Glengarrian Donald A. MCPHERSON in the farm produce firm of McPherson and Alexander, of Lancaster, Brockville, and Montreal in the 1880s. See MCPHERSON entry for further details of their business association. See also John A. WELSH.

Montreal Daily Star 12 & 13 Feb. 1942, SFH 13 Feb. 1942 * AOSU 236 *RUDDICK in Innis 121, 122 * A.W. McDougald GN 27 Jan. 1933 * obituary of wife, SFH 20 Oct. 1937 *