(1867-10 Jan. 1957), clergyman. (D. R. Macdonald, Dan R. Macdonald, Dan Ranald Macdonald, “Father Dan,” name with titles Mgr, and Rt. Rev.) Born at Mongenais, Que., near the GC border. Parents: Hugh R. Macdonald and his wife Catherine Ann Macdonald. D. R. Macdonald was a nephew in the 4th degree of the great Fr Alexander Macdonell, the first bishop of Upper Canada. He came to Alexandria with his parents as a child. He attended the primary separate school and the high school in Alexandria, and afterwards the University of Ottawa and the Ottawa Seminary. On 10 July 1892 he was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Alexander Macdonell of Alexandria.

     As a young priest, he was curate at St. Finnan’s, Alexandria, for some years. R. R. (Big Rory) McLennan, MP, writing on 30 June 1894 to George Hopper McGillivray, who was defeated a few days earlier in the Ontario election, mentions a man who was evidently Fr Macdonald, “I am told that the young Priest, Hughey R’s son, who was strong with us a few days before the election had changed and used all his influence in the other direction.” Otherwise, McLennan had hoped to get “a large majority of the French and Catholics of the County” for McGillivray. Under Fr Macdonald’s supervision, a cadet corps was under formation at the Alexandria separate school in the spring of 1896. (Glengarry News 17 April 1896) And while at St. Finnan’s, Fr Macdonald took a leading role in the building of Alexander Hall by the St. Finnan’s Temperance Society in 1896. In 1897 he patented an improvement on the election ballot, which is said to have been adopted by the federal government and by Sask., Ont. and Quebec . Afterwards, he was pastor of Crysler from 1898 to 1906. At Crysler, he led in the building of the new church there.

     For close to a third of a century, from 1906 to 1934, he was pastor of Glen Nevis. During that time, he established St. Margaret’s Elementary School, and a secondary school, Maryvale Abbey, both at Glen Nevis and staffed by the Sisters of Providence. The corner stone of St. Margaret’s Elementary School was laid in 1912 and the cornerstone of Maryvale Abbey in 1913. Maryvale Abbey was both a boarding school and a day school, and one of the best known and most important ventures in GC educational history, and has been distinguished by the achievement in later life of many of its students (one of these was Auditor General James J. Macdonell). Duncan J. McDonald, who became a Rhodes Scholar in 1940, had been one of the students at Maryvale Abbey. He died 24 Jan. 2005, at Flagstaff, Ariz., where he had spent the last years of his retirement. Maryvale Abbey, conducted in its later years by the Sisters of Holy Cross, was finally closed as a school in the 1960s.

     To understand the importance in its time of Maryvale Abbey, it is necesssary to remember how limited the local educational opportunities were in GC before the 1950s, and that as part of the background to this there was in GC from the 1920s till the 1950s not only a situation of economic limitations and backwardness, but also a sense of the utter unlikelihood of success for any new enterprises of any kind whatsoever.

     In 1923, Fr Macdonald was made a domestic prelate, and received thereby the title of Monsignor. (GN 5 Oct. & 9 Nov. 1923) An Ottawa Citizen journalist noted in 1939 that he had been “laboring out there on the hillside in Glengarry’s Glen Nevis longer than some of us can remember,” and that “the snows of time are thick upon his brow,” and declared him to be “a very observant, kindly and learned sort of traveller along life’s highway.”

     Having been named chaplain to the Precious Blood Monastery in Alexandria in 1940, he left his parish at Glen Nevis and moved to Alexandria. And at Alexandria in 1949, when he was several years into his 80s, he founded a missionary congregation for English-speaking Roman Catholic women, Our Lady’s Missionaries. The decree by Bishop Brodeur instituting the new congregation was dated 15 Aug. 1949. The women of the congregation remained in Alexandria for 10 years before moving in 1959 to Toronto, where the congregation now has its Canadian home. While they lived in Alexandria, their home on Kenyon Street was known as Immaculata House. It had once been the residence of E. J. Dever. The first 5 sisters took their first vows on 8 Dec. 1951. Sisters in the congregation have worked in places which include Mexico, South America, Africa, Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. The Glengarry News, over many years, has reported closely and affectionately on the work of the congregation and on the locally connected people who have been members of it. A 50th anniversary celebration of the founding of the congregation was held in Alexandria in May 1999.

     In 1942, he celebrated the golden jubilee of his priesthood. (GN 17 July 1942) He died at the Hotel Dieu Hospital, Cornwall, just before the first missionaries of his congregation left for Africa. He is buried in St. Finnan’s cemetery, Alexandria. A man of strong personality, and a vigorous community leader, he stands in the upper ranks of importance of the Glengarrians of his time. He preached in both English and French. He published an article on Alexander Macdonell, the first bishop of Upper Canada, in the 1938-39 Report of the Canadian Catholic Historical Association. See also George D. Sabourin.

Glengarry News 17 Jan. 1957 (with editorial of tribute) * Sister Mary Electa, The Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul (1961) 89-94 (on Maryvale Abbey) * Villeneuve [24c, portrait], 53-54, 219 * Dumbrille, U, 86-89 * Sinnsearachd 232, 244-248, 252-253 (includes valuable history of Maryvale Abbey) * Ostrom 117, 263, 266 * Macdonald, St. Finnan’s, 29, 33-34 * NAC-MD, Vol. 15, ff. 1546-1548 * character sketch by R. A. J., Ottawa Citizen repr. GN 27 Oct. 1939 * Canadian Intellectual Property Office: Patent No. 55763, dated at Bishop’s House, Alexandria, 25/26 Jan. 1897 * transferred to Crysler, GN 4 Feb. 1898 * “Fights for Public Money Glen Nevis Convent School: Second Round in the Glengarry Attack on School System: ‘Father Dan’s’ Campaign: Aim to have Separate High School Recognised as County–Seeks Division of the Taxes–Story of the War Waged by the Church,” Toronto Telegram 22 Oct. 1915: this long, aggressively Protestant news report on the themes indicated by its series of subtitles has a valuable glimpse of “Father Dan” at his most persuasive, and a few musings on the GC character * Our Lady’s Missionaries: events, GN 18 Feb. & 25 March 1949, 26 Feb. 1959 * “Alexandria-Born Our Lady’s Missionaries Look Back 25 Years,” GN 27 June 1974 * “Our Lady’s Missionaries at Work South America,” GN 19 May 1977 * Anna-Margaret MacDonald, “Father Dan MacDonald Fulfills His Dream,” GN 24 March 1999 (with interesting biog. details probably not available elsewhere in print); and Greg Peerenboom, “Missionary Order Celebrates 50th Anniversary,” GN 10 Feb. 1999; also on 50th anniversary, GN 5 & 12 May 1999; biographies of four members of the congregation, GN 14-28 April 1999 * obituary of Sister Mary Ida (Norah McCormick) of Sisters of St. Joseph, one of two sisters of her congregation who were obtained by Mgr Macdonald to assist in the early training of Our Lady’s Missionaries, GN 13 Jan. 1977 * in sermon at Cathedral, Alexandria, strongly condemns holding of raffles and dances, Vankleek Hill Review 6 Sept. 1895 * GN 29 March 1907: his “The Church in France,” on anti-clericalism in France, originally a lecture in St. Finnan’s, now published in several instalments at this time in GN * speaks in Ottawa to CWL group on the poet Francis Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven,” Cornwall Standard 31 Jan. 1924 * speaks at organizational meeting for Red Cross, GN 15 Sept. 1939 * Duncan J. McDonald, Rhodes Scholar: obituary, North Lancaster column, GN 30 March 2005; date of death from The Rhodes Trust; see also GN 2 Feb. 1940, 20 Sept. 1946, 14 Aug. 1958 * Rhodes Scholars: see also Stanley Scott and the note there