(10 Oct. 1879-19 Nov. 1949), political figure. (J. Wilfred Kennedy, Wilfred Kennedy) Born near Apple Hill, GC. Parents (whose farm was on Lots 9-11 of the 13th Concession of Indian Lands): John Kennedy and his wife Catherine McDougall. Education: the local primary school, high school at Williamstown and Alexandria High School, Cornwall model school, and Ontario Agricultural College. For a few years in his early life he was a teacher, then a farmer and Holstein breeder. He was reeve of Kenyon Township, 1919. He was elected to the House of Commons for the constituency of Glengarry and Stormont, 27 Oct. 1919, in the by-election made necessary by the death of the incumbent MP, John G. McMartin. In this by-election Kennedy was the candidate of the United Farmers of Ontario, and defeated General C.L. Hervey. In the general election of 6 Dec. 1921, Kennedy (by this time a Progressive candidate) was again elected for the Glengarry and Stormont constituency , defeating General Hervey (Conservative) and J.E. Chevrier (Liberal), who was the father of Lionel Chevrier. At a major public event in Alexandria’s history, the unveiling, 1 Oct. 1923, of the war memorial there by Governor General Byng, J. W. Kennedy, as the constituency MP, read the English language address of welcome to the viceregal party. (Glengarry News 5 Oct. 1923, with text of address) In the federal election of 29 Oct. 1925 Kennedy was the Progressive candidate for Glengarry (which had been re-established as a parliamentary constituency in its own right in 1924) but he was defeated by Archibald John Macdonald, a Liberal. (Angus McGillis, a Conservative, was also defeated by Macdonald in this contest.)

     Kennedy lived in Maxville for two years after his defeat. Thereafter, he was the owner and operator for many years of a business college in Ottawa. Harkness reported in 1946 that after operating the business college he become a civil servant in Ottawa, working in the area of income tax, but that he had “recently purchased another Business College in Ottawa.” His obituaries (Glengarry News, Standard Freeholder) stated only that “In recent years he had been owner and principal of the Willis Business College,” Ottawa, purchased from the Hon. George Dunbar. Kennedy died at his home in Ottawa. He is buried in the Maxville cemetery. There were funeral services in Ottawa and Maxville, with Mackenzie King attending the former. United Church. Mason. He was married in July 1915 to Helen Meehan or Meighen, of Lindsay, Ont. (three children, two surviving him) He was a brother of Peter Hugh Kennedy. One of their brothers, Stuart Kennedy (1887-1915), was killed in action in the First World War. Their sister Emily Belle Kennedy, who at one stage looked after her aunt, the mother of Sir Edward Peacock, died in Ottawa in 1985 at the age of 100. John Wilfred Kennedy and his siblings were first cousins of Sir Edward Peacock, Prof. Frank MacDougall, Mrs Ada Johnston, and Mrs Violet Pollard. Angus H. McDonell (1982) preserved a tradition that the Liberal party leadership considered that John Wilfred Kennedy had destroyed his prospects of a distinguished political career in the Mackenzie King regime (“most likely becoming a Senator”) through his attachment to United Farmer and Progressive politics.

Standard Freeholder 21 Nov. 1949, Glengarry News 25 Nov. 1949 (portrait) * Johnson (1968) * death of his mother, GN 16 April 1937 * Campbell (1986), 86, 112-119 (portrait), 133-141 * Campbell (1990), 503-504, 556-561 (portrait), 571-574 * Harkness: index (portrait) * Maxville (1991) , 284-285, 629-630 * Rhodes Grant, ii, 131 (sells farm for local record price) * Green 53 * marriage 28 Oct. of his parents, Witness 17 Nov. 1869 * obituary of Emily Belle Kennedy (which includes some family history), GN 22 May 1985 * death of his daughter, Mrs Katherine Armstrong, Winter GN 11 July 1990 * M.G. O’L [Grattan O’Leary], “’The Man from Glengarry’: Wilfred Kennedy, the Advance guard of the United Farmers, Is Introduced to the House of Commons,” clipping (undated), probably from Ottawa Journal, describing Kennedy’s appearance (respectably spruce, and free from “the bucolic atmosphere of the country”) on his first entry into the House of Commons * Kennedy remembered as promoter of local hockey (GC’s Little Four Hockey League), Angus H. McDonell’s sports column, GN 6 Jan. 1982 * education: see also Dr G. E. L. MacKinnon * 1919 election victory: see quotation from Farmers’ Sun in life of Gen. Hervey