(3 Sept. 1858-7 Nov. 1927), physician, poet. (Dr D. D. MacDonald, “Dr D. D.”) Born at North Lancaster, GC. Parents: Donald MacDonald and his wife Mary MacDougall. He attended high school at Williamstown, and taught school at North Lancaster for two years and at Glen Nevis for 1 year before attending McGill University, where he graduated in medicine in 1887. At least in his final year of medical study, as a needy student in the winter of 1887 he borrowed money from R. R. (Big Rory) McLennan, and he invited McLennan to his graduation. The young doctor opened a medical practice at North Lancaster the same year, 1887, then after two years there transferred his practice to Alexandria, which was his home for the remainder of his life except for three years (1917-1920) he spent at Sault Ste. Marie and 1 year (1921) in Ottawa. In 1890 he was married to Catherine Macdonell (d. 1944), the daughter of Hugh Macdonell of Alexandria. Dr MacDonald died in Alexandria. (four daughters, 1 son) Roman Catholic. He is buried in St. Finnan’s cemetery, Alexandria.

     “The late Dr. MacDonald was an eminent scholar, a lover of the Gaelic language of which he was a thorough master and possessing a very retentive memory his anecdotes and stories were always appreciated by friends and acquaintances familiar with the Gaelic language. As the organizer and for years director of the Highland Society of Glengarry, he took great interest in the activities of that body. He was well known throughout the county for his literary ability which produced an unpublished work, ‘The History of Glengarry’.” (obit. Glengarry News & Cornwall Standard) The reference to his having written a history of GC is, unhappily, apparently an error, and seems to have been based on the mistaken guess that an anonymous manuscript found among his papers was from his hand. The correct author of the anonymous manuscript was almost certainly John Cattanach McMillan.

     Dr MacDonald was a poet, writing poems and songs in Gaelic. At the time he was doing so, the old language was rapidly disappearing in GC; many older people still spoke and loved the language, but virtually no one in the younger generation was taking the trouble to learn it. The notes to the present biographical sketch list a number of publications of his Gaelic writings in the Glengarry News.

     It is, however, for two English language poems or songs that Dr MacDonald is best remembered today. One of these, in 56 lines, written in the “Habitant” mode made fashionable by the Canadian poet William Henry Drummond, celebrates Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s visit to Alexandria on Monday 4 Sept. 1911 during the election campaign of that year, in support of his candidate John Angus McMillan. It has a number of allusions to contemporary Glengarrians. The other poem, “A Trip the Cairn,” dated 1919, is a highly professional work in 80 smoothly written lines, describing the narrator’s thoughts during a day’s car tour (from Alexandria, presumably) to the cairn built at South Lancaster about the end of the 1830s under the direction of Col. Carmichael. The poem has a theme, not hidden but especially visible on re-readings, which is that of ghosts; the poem ends with the statement that no ghosts have been seen, but in fact in the poem the narrator moves through a phantasmagoric landscape populated by the ghosts of Glengarrians of the admired past. Even the site of the cairn has its claim to ghosts, for MacDonald notes that in pre-Cairn times it was an Indian burial ground, with “the bones of Indian braves.” The topic never appears explicitly, but MacDonald perhaps had in mind the plans to build another cairn at Alexandria, as the county war memorial. The new cairn was dedicated in 1923.

     In English, he wrote a fluent prose, vigorous and compelling. One example of his command of this medium was reprinted as a space-filler in the quarterly Ontario History of Sept. 1979, being his dramatic denunciation (originally published GN 4 May 1917) of car owners who rode tirelessly up and down the Main Street of Alexandria, waving to the public and raising noxious clouds of dust. Another finely managed outburst, which apparently remains unreprinted, appeared in the Alexandria Times of 11 May 1917, J. A. Laurin’s newspaper; this time, the doctor wrote bitingly about the poor factory wages (in Alexandria, by inference, though the place is unnamed) which led, he believed, to malnutrition and therefore disease.

     Dr MacDonald was difficult and stubborn. As Alexandria’s medical officer of health, (1911?-1917) he was, at least in the later years, in conflict with the town council. There are letters from and much other valuable material relating to Dr MacDonald in the files of the Provincial Board of Health in the Ontario Archives, from the period in which he held this office. Revealed is a man short-tempered, defensive, combative, and dealing none too successfully with the turmoil of his own deeply-troubled personality. There is unsparing material on Dr MacDonald’s personal life and his problems of alcohol and his need to take refuge twice in mental hospitals. And there is besides much remarkable material on the untamed Alexandria and GC of those days.

     In 1975, when Angus H. McDonell (b. 1905) was questioned about the supposed history of GC by Dr MacDonald, and about the whereabouts of the private papers of “Jack Greenfield) (John A. Macdonell), he replied, “I would hope that you might be able to track down this work of ‘Dr. DD’ as he was known like ‘Jack Greenfield.’ And they both enjoyed a drink of Johnny Dewar or any other Scottish Mist. Dr. D. D. was a brilliant medical student at McGill. A real country Dr. and beloved by all. I would think that his memoirs of Glengarry would be very interesting. He was not an import, shall we say, like Jack Greenfield. They were at opposite poles in every way but intellect. Jack Greenfield attending 10:30 Sunday Mass at St. Finnans impeccably dressed in grey stripe trousers, swallow tail coat with far better than Trudeau lapel flower, monocle and cane complete with gloves and top hat. Usually late would be Dr. D. D. with loosely tied shoes tarnished with county [sic] clay or Alexandria dust, baggy pants, battered hat, and likely a day old stubble on a ruddy face–but what a manly character. They were so opposite in their ways that I rather think their writing just might be that way, too, and the Doctor’s effort most likely would be homey as he was himself.”

     If by a time machine we could go back and talk to any Glengarrian of his generation, we might well choose Dr MacDonald on the guess that his conversation would be the most interesting of them all. His son, Arnold, stated that Dr MacDonald could speak French. (letter to present editor, 10 June 1975) In politics, Dr MacDonald’s sympathies were strongly Conservative.

     The Highland Society of Glengarry, founded in 1909, and aptly described by Ewan Ross as an on-again off-again organization, attracted attention and support for a time, and even warmth and loyalty, but after all proved short lived: rather– and the parallel thereby has an explanatory side– like the unstable farm protest and farm self-help organizations of GC history. There is not enough documentary evidence surviving, so far as is known, to make a history of the society possible, though a sketchy outline could just possibly be established by close searching in the Glengarry News files. On 28 Oct. 1913, Dr MacDonald, on the stationery of the Highland Society of Glengarry, wrote from Alexandria to Alexander Fraser, the archivist of Ontario, about the work of the society and included a flyer for a Scotch concert to be held in Alexandria 19 Sept. “We always speak Gaelic at all our meetings. All the directors and officers speak Gaelic fluently save one who is a Lowlander.” The old language lay helplessly on its deathbed as Dr MacDonald wrote these brave words. And while admitting he knew more than posterity does one wonders nonetheless whether a less impetuous and domineering man would not have advisedly added the firmly qualifying word “some” after the first “speak.”

     Dr MacDonald’s son Arnold (b. Alexandria 14 May 1905; d. Cornwall 9 June 1991) was collector of customs at Cornwall from 1948, for 21 years. For Dr MacDonald and Alexandria politics, see also Dr P. J. Moloney. And see Senator D. McMillan for a notice of a newspaper account of MacDonald and McMillan being called to treat a boy injured in a farm accident. Claude Nunney lived for some of his early years at the home of Mrs Donald Roy McDonald of North Lancaster, Dr MacDonald’s sister. The doctor and the future Victoria Cross winner must sometimes have met. How good it would be to hear what they thought of each other!

Glengarry News 11 Nov. 1927 & Cornwall Standard 17 Nov. 1927 * Harkness 273 (in group portrait), 461 * Ostrom 268, 269 * Ross, Lancaster, 263-265, 290-294, 315 * Gaelic songs, poems, &c., by him printed in GN, 21 & 28 July & 13 Oct. 1905, 23 Feb. 1906, & (his eulogy of John A. McLachlan) 11 Sept. 1908 * text of his address (in English, not Gaelic) at Scotch concert, Williamstown, 6 March 1914, as president of the Highland Society of Glengarry, GN 27 March 1914 * text of report (in English, not Gaelic), signed by him, on Scotch concert (attendance 700) held at McCrimmon by Highland Society of Glengarry for war benefit, GN 17 Aug. 1917 * for the complex and obscure history of the printed versions of the two English poems, see Bibliography of Glengarry 39; also, more recently, the “broadsheet” text of the Cairn poem has been repr. in GHS Newsletter Feb. 1997 and the Laurier poem in The Manor Chatter (Jan. 2009) * other “Habitant poets of GC area: entry for Ewen Maclennan; 1898 poem by R. D. A. (“Dick”) Mulcahy, on Victoria Day in Cornwall, Standard Freeholder 1 June 1934; and poem by Hugh J. Brown (formerly a Martintown resident), “De Ole Boys from Cornwall,” Cornwall Standard 7 March 1902 & SFH 15 June 1934; see also entry for Prof. J. F. Macdonald; cf. Lochinvar to Skye 370 * opens office North Lancaster: CF 2 or 22 April 1887, cited DTL SFH 21 April 1945 & 22 April 1961 * he and bride return from honeymoon trip, Glengarrian 10 Oct. 1890 * recites in Gaelic at concert in Alexandria: Toronto News notice of attempted Gaelic revival in GC, repr. CS 16 July 1909 * Highland Society of Glengarry receives shipment of Gaelic books from Scotland, GN 11 Nov. 1910 * Dr MacDonald buys Ford car, GN 15 May 1914 * Archives of Ontario-RRM, D. D. MacDonald, “Medical Student,” to McLennan, 11 & 24 Feb. & 26 March 1887 * factory wages: the clipping, from the vanished files of the Alexandria Times, is preserved in the Prov. Board of Health Municipalties files (see next) * “valuable material relating”: Archives of Ontario, Provincial Board of Health. Office of Chief M. O. H. Correspondence with the D. O. H.’s. ALSO in Archives of Ontario, Reports of D. O. H.’s. AND Prov. Board of Health, Municipalities, SDG. * letter of Angus H. McDonell to present author, 26 Feb. 1975 * Archives of Ontario-F * death of wife, Le Droit 5 May 1944 * Arnold MacDonald: his gravestone, St. Finnan’s cemetery, Alexandria