(3 July 1858-31 July 1945), physician. (Dr Archie L. McDonald) Born on the family homestead at Glen Donald in Charlottenburgh Township, GC. Parents: Alexander Ban McDonald and his wife Catherine McGillis. He was educated in GC and Cornwall primary and high schools and at McGill, where he got his degree in medicine 1887. By the following year, he was in practice as a physician in Alexandria, and had purchased and begun operating an Alexandria drug store. He was married in Alexandria on 10 May 1891 to Miss Annie Coleman of Leeds, Eng. She died in Alexandria, 19 Jan. 1903, after a long illness. (Glengarry News 23 Jan. 1903)

     In 1910, when he was in his early 50s, Dr Macdonald left Alexandria after more than 20 years there, and became a Department of Indian Affairs doctor at Fort Smith, which was for many years the administrative centre for the Northwest Territories, and is situated on the Slave River where the Northwest Territories and Alberta meet. In this remote area, he administered to a widely-distributed practice in the Mackenzie River district. One of Macdonald’s contemporaries at Fort Smith was Dr Harry Conroy, a veterinarian formerly resident in Alexandria and Maxville, who was appointed as a government veterinarian to his Fort Smith post at about the same time as Macdonald. Travelling many thousands of miles in his professional duties, Macdonald used canoes in summer and dog teams in winter, and frequently travelled down the Slave and Mackenzie Rivers to Aklavik. In an interview of 1935, he reported that his twenty years in the North were “among the best” in his life.

     Dr Macdonald was the brother of Allan B. Macdonald. In 1896, still an Alexandria resident, he was about to spend several weeks as the guest of Allan on the Glengarry Ranch, which the latter managed in what is today Alberta. (Glengarry News 14 Feb. 1896). And in 1920, when he was a physician in the North, he and Allan revisited the GC area. (GN 5 March 1920, Cornwall Standard 11 March & 13 May 1920) Dr Macdonald retired in 1930 and returned to GC where he spent his retirement on the home farm at Glen Donald, where a brother John Alex was living. Dr Macdonald’s only son, Alexander Coleman Macdonald, was killed 24 June1933 in a car accident. (GN 30 June 1933 ) Dr Macdonald died at Glen Donald, on the farm where he was born. Roman Catholic. He is buried at Alexandria. He was the last surviving of his parents’ ten children and was himself he was survived by one granddaughter.

Standard Freeholder 1 Aug. 1945, Glengarry News 3 Aug. 1945 * interviewed, DTL, SFH 9 Aug. 1935, repr. GN 16 Aug. 1935: valuable biog. detail * obituary of his brother Allan, SFH 5 Nov. 1932 * Symington 52 & 53 (with reproduction of his drug-store ad, 1888)