(13 Aug. 1886-9 July 1959), newspaper proprietor, mayor. (J.A. Laurin, Albert Laurin, Mayor Laurin) Born in Alexandria, GC. Parents: Isaac Laurin and his wife Eloise Joanette. He was educated at the separate school and high school in Alexandria. He learned the printing trade as an employee of the Glengarrian and later of the Glengarry News. He himself founded and for many years edited the Alexandria Times of Alexandria, Ont. This was a Conservative newspaper, evidently intended to fill the gap created by the death of another Conservative publication, the Glengarrian, in 1913. With the founding of the Alexandria Times, Alexandria once again had two weekly newspapers.

     The publication of the first issue of the Alexandria Times on 14 May 1915 was noted in the Cornwall Standard of 20 May 1915 and in the Glengarry News of 21 May 1915. No back files of the Times were kept at the Times office, or elsewhere, and thus a valuable source for GC history has been lost. A few copies of the Times survive, some of them in private collections. It does not seem to have competed vigorously with the widely distributed Glengarry News, and the circulation may have been confined largely to the immediate area of Alexandria. A native of McCrimmon West remembers his father coming home from Dr Markson’s office about the early 1950s and observing as a great curiosity that he had seen a copy there of the Alexandria Times. The newspaper was discontinued in 1955. Job printing was also done at the Times office. The job-printing side of the business continued after the closing of the newspaper. Laurin’s daughter Alice continued the job printing business during her father’s final illness and after his death. Alexandria gossip held that when Alice Laurin found herself on her own in this way, other business people, seeing that she was insufficiently attentive to her accounts, contrived ways to cheat her. Alice Laurin (1919-1994) never married.

     J. Albert Laurin was mayor of Alexandria 1923-1940, thus during much of the period between the two world wars. J. Albert Laurin was preceded as mayor by George Simon and was succeeded by Dr D.D. McIntosh, who in late 1940 had been chosen by acclamation as mayor for the following year. (Glengarry News 29 Nov. 1940) J. Albert Laurin had the difficult and thankless task of administering the affairs of the town during the hard years of the 1930s. The Great Depression struck Alexandria with exceptional force. Part of the trouble was that before the Depression struck in 1929 the town had lost most of the industries which had been built up so impressively a few decades before. Unemployment in Alexandria during the 1930s was very high, creating problems of relief. Alexandria continued to be a purchasing centre for the local farm community, but rural GC had itself been laid low by the Depression. A Toronto official who later recalled Laurin favourably was Dr J.S. Band, who had been in a position to see Alexandria affairs from a position of some intimacy, as a representative of the Ontario government in Eastern Ontario overseeing welfare matters during the Depression. In an interview of 1976, Band spoke of Laurin’s competence, and he indicated that Laurin was unfairly criticized for being over-soft in dealing with welfare cases.

     Politically, Laurin was a Conservative, as was his newspaper. Compared with some of the local men of his youth, he does not seem to have been much of a party activist. And by his mature years the old age of fiery party loyalties in Alexandria was passing into memory. Alice Laurin spoke of Donald A. (Sandfield) Macdonald, Q.C., as being her father’s especial enemy. She thought the enmity was based on English-French rivalries (though Donald was, of course, of French descent on his mother’s side) and on the competition of the two families’ printing businesses. Donald’s role as a Liberal strategist and activist should perhaps also be added. In Jan. 1956, J. Albert Laurin resigned from the post of secretary-treasurer of the Alexandria Separate School Board, which he had held since he took it over from F.T. Costello in 1921. (two articles, Glengarry News 19 Jan. 1956) Laurin had also been chairman of the Alexandria Public Utilities Commission during most of his period as mayor. Laurin died following a long illness. The funeral services were at the Sacred Heart Church and burial was in the Sacred Heart Cemetery.

     An intelligent, quiet, somewhat self-effacing man, Laurin was a born administrator rather than a stereotypical politician by either birth or training. It is perhaps a rash guess after all these years, but it is hard not to suspect that he was a man whose feelings were easily hurt. Students of the absolute minutiae of GC culture will note that obituaries from his Alexandria Times were occasionally reprinted in other newspapers; therefore a few bits from the lost files have been saved. Job printing done by J. A. Laurin included the 1500 copies of the Minutes of Proceedings for the SDG Council for 1943, a stapled soft-cover volume of about 150 pages which includes the printed text of his own letter summarizing and accepting the terms of the printing contract.

     J. Albert Laurin was married on 22 June 1916 to Delphine Courville, who was born in Maxville in 1894, the daughter of David Courville. (two children surviving him) She died in Glengarry Memorial Hospital, 20 July 1974, aged 80. Alice Laurin during interviews in 1976 and 1977 spoke of the Laurins as a family of printers, as a family with printing in their blood, and said that they had been involved in 42 different printing enterprises. For the printing connection, see also W. E. Crateau.

Glengarry News 9 & 23 July 1959 * gravestone * biog. outline, with portrait, in John R. MacNicol, National Liberal-Conservative Convention Held at Winnipeg, Manitoba October 10th to 12th, 1927: a Review (Toronto, 1930) 185 * MacGillivray & Ross 524-526 (portrait) * checklist of GC newspapers in Bibliography of Glengarry 191 * Harkness 381-382 * Ostrom 273 * marriage, Vankleek Hill Review 30 June 1916 * obituary of his wife, Glengarry News 1 Aug. 1974 * Mayor Laurin replies in long letter to charges of overriding decisions of the Welfare Board and giving out welfare over lavishly, printed GN 17 Nov. 1933 * addresses public meeting to present auditors’ report and the town’s 6-year budget, GN 28 Oct. 1938 * National Conservative executive for GC riding passes motion to send letter of sympathy to Mayor J.A. Laurin, “a member of the executive, at present very ill in a Montreal hospital,” GN 26 May 1939 * Mr & Mrs Thomas Vineberg, of Montreal, sue him for large sum re car accident, Standard Freeholder 10 June 1940 * on committee to obtain young French Canadians for Army commissions, GN 23 Jan. 1942 * interviews of present author with Dr J.S. Band, 14 June 1976, and with Miss Alice Laurin 30 July 1976 and 10 May 1977