(16 June 1881-27 May 1939), hotel keeper. (Name on gravestone is Daniel Duperron. Form of name in English always Donald. Spelling DuPerron also used for this family) Born at Dominionville, south of Maxville. Parents: Francis Duperron (1852-1934) and his wife Agnes Collette. Donald and his father Francis became established in business in Maxville in 1904 when A.J. Kennedy sold the Commercial Hotel to Francis Duperron, of Montreal. (Glengarry News 5 Feb. 1904) For half a century, three generations of Duperrons would be prominent in the business life of the little village of Maxville. And, it may be added, they were well regarded besides. Before coming to Maxville, the Duperrons ran a number of shoeshine stands in Montreal. Still earlier, Francis had been a businessman or tradesman at Dominionville. In 1909 Francis and Donald bought the Windsor Hotel, also in Maxville. (Glengarry News 3 Dec. 1909) This hotel was later sold to Simon Villeneuve. It does not seem possible now to determine exactly what relationship the two hotels already mentioned had to the King George and Commercial Hotels the Duperrons later owned in Maxville.

     It was reported in 1915 that Donald Dupperon of Maxville’s King George Hotel planned to acquire an automobile to be used in connection with his livery business. (Glengarry News 9 July 1915) The great Maxville fire of 1921 was devastating to the Duperrons. The King George Hotel and the Commercial Hotel were burned, and with the King George Hotel went its stables and the sample rooms used by travelling salesmen to display their wares, and besides Donald lost his home and the restaurant he was operating. (GN 13 May 1921, Maxville (1991) 70 & 71) After this setback Francis and Donald farmed for some two years at Greenfield until they built and opened a new hotel, again called the King George, on the site of the old Commercial Hotel in Maxville. (Maxville (1991) 548) In late August 1922, W. J. Bryant, director of the Dominion Commercial Travellers’ Association, laid the cornerstone of the new hotel Donald Duperron was building at Maxville. (GN 1 Sept. 1922) In 1923 Donald, the proprietor of the King George Hotel, was reported as having finished building a heated garage capable of housing 7 cars. (GN 2 Nov. 1923) In the 1920s and 1930s the Duperrons had cars meet the trains at Maxville to serve the needs of any members of the public who needed hotel accomodations. Francis died at Maxville 6 Nov. 1934, in his early 80s. He had been born at St-Polycarpe, Que., the son of J.-B. Duperron and his wife Marguerite Langlois.

     Donald‘s wife Celina St. Louis (born 1883 in the 16th Concession of Indian Lands, GC) died 31 Aug. 1937. Donald himself died 2 years later in Montreal, where he had gone for medical treatment. On his death, his Glengarry News obituary stated, “Eastern Ontario lost one of its most widely known hotelmen, a man who numbered his acquaintances by the thousand, particularly among the travelling fraternity who learned to look upon the King George Hotel, as a home away from home.” Donald and Celina had 16 children, 14 of whom survived their father. Two of the sons, Alex and Albert, operated the King George Hotel after Donald’s death. The partnership was then dissolved and Alex ran the hotel alone. In 1947 Alex, whose health was failing, sold the hotel to his brother William (Bill), a returned World War II overseas army veteran. (Standard Freeholder 4 Feb. 1947, GN 7 Feb. 1947) Alex died in the following year, aged 43 (obituary SFH 24 June 1948). In 1953 William sold the hotel, thus severing the long Duperron connection with hotel-keeping at Maxville. (GN 14 May 1953) William was afterwards an inspector for the Ontario Liquor License Board (for which he worked for 29 years) and he died at Windsor, Ont., on 13 April 1993 aged 72.

     It is remarkable how often (as in the laying of the cornerstone) the sources on the Duperrons and their Maxville hotels touch on the importance of these hotels to the traveling salesman who were so much a feature of the economy of the day. Throughout most of the years the Duperrons were in the hotel business in Maxville, the village was “dry” and no alcoholic beverages could be served. It was only in the first and last years of their ownership that alcohol was served. William wrote in his outline of family history, “I ran two elections [i.e., plebiscites on the dry versus wet question] in 1947 and 1950 to obtain a liquor license for Maxville. The King George began serving liquor in 1951.”

Standard Freeholder 29 & 31 May 1939, Glengarry News 2 June 1939 * obituary of Mrs Donald Duperron GN 3 Sept. 1937 * obituary of Francis Duperron GN 9 Nov. 1934 * Maxville (1991) 71, 76, 83, 140, 307, 308, 317-320, 545-549 (portrait of Francis and Donald; William’s outline of family history), 785 (Dancause family connection) * Duperron gravestone, Greenfield cemetery * Maxville and temperance, MacGillivray & Ross 206, 690 * Duperrons and the aftermath of the 1921 fire, GN 20 May 1921, 31 March 1922 * Donald Duperron takes out permit to build new hotel in Maxville, GN 21 July 1922 * windstorm damage to sample rooms, GN 24 June 1932 * Standard Freeholder 31 Jan. 1942, banquet in Orange Hall, Maxville, for Albert Duperron who is leaving town * Angus H. McDonell, GN 14 April 1982: anecdote about Donald Duperron’s legal action over the unpaid hotel bills of the Maxville hockey team * letter by Arthur Campbell, GN 8 June 1988, on Donald Duperron * Duperrons mentioned, recollected, in Gordon Winter’s column: GN 7 Oct. 1992 (death of Mrs Albert Duperron), 21 April 1993 (death of William and see sep. death notice this issue), 3 Nov. 1993, 9 & 16 Feb. 1994, 15 Feb. 1995