(1 Nov. 1896-4 Sept. 1953), author. (Alexander Lunny, Alec Lunny, Alex Lunny; the sp. Lunney is found also in this family) Born on the Lunny (Lunney) homestead, Third Line of Fitzroy Township, Carleton County, Ont. Parents: Hugh Andrew Lunney or Lunny, and his wife Margaret. Alex Lunny was the author of a verse description of the people of Apple Hill called “Apple Sauce from Apple Hill,” published under his name in the Glengarry News 30 March 1923. It was republished with explanatory notes in Glengarry Life (1980). And it reappears in 1882 Apple Hill 1982: 100 Years of Good Will (1982), without the explanatory notes but with a verse update (called “1982- Apple Sauce from Apple Hill- No. 2”) by Maureen Bissonnette. Again it reappears, this time as a photocopied newspaper clipping, in the Manor Chatter of Dec. 2008. Nor will this perhaps prove the final retrieval of what is, considered quite apart from its continuing biographical interest, a sprightly, well-executed piece of community verse.

     Lunny was a teacher at the Apple Hill Separate School, which opened in 1920. By birth, he was from the Pakenham area. Pakenham is a place not frequently mentioned in connection with GC, but was the hometown, incidentally, of Dr Dolan, who settled in GC, 1921. When inquiries were being made about the poem in 2004, a woman was able to identify the date of publication by month and year, because it coincided with a wake from that period. From such exactitude of historical retrieval we may conclude how much the poem intrigued the GC public at the time. It appeared likely that only one person named in the poem was still living in 2004.

     Alex Lunny, who died of cancer, is buried in the Indian Hill Cemetery, Pakenham. He was married to Margaret McLachlan, but there were apparently no children. Apart from occasional contributions to newspapers, and the Apple Hill poem, Lunny seems to have written little, but his poem “Pakenham Personalities,” of 1936, which was probably rather similar to the Apple Hill poem, is remembered favourably in the Pakenham area for its wit and references to the people of its day.

Apple Hill (1982) 22, 23 (group portrait), 77 * private information