(2 April 1860-16 June 1939), lawyer. (George S. Macdonald, G. S. Macdonald) Born at his parents’ home, Ivy Hall, Cornwall, Ont. Parents: John Sandfield Macdonald, who was later the premier of the old Province of Canada and the first premier of Ontario, and his wife Christine Waggaman. He studied at Upper Canada College, and at the University of Toronto, where he received his B. A. from University College in 1882. He was the first editor of the University of Toronto student publication Varsity and in his will he made Varsity the residual beneficiary of his estate. As a private in the 2nd Queen’s Own Rifles, from Toronto, he took part in the North West Campaign of 1885, and he received the service medal and clasp. He was called to the bar in 1885.

     His obituary in the Glengarry News, the newspaper of his first cousin Col. A. G. F. Macdonald, stated, “After completing his preliminary education he studied law in Toronto and subsequently went into partnership, forming the legal firm of Macdonald, MacIntosh and MacCrimmon. When he abandoned his legal practise he came back to Glengarry and resided for some time in a house on the old homestead near St. Raphael’s. He then moved to Montreal and after a number of years in that city left for the United States, finally moving to Florida where he passed away on Friday last. In his legal practise he specialized in the formation of joint stock companies and was considered a very good corporate lawyer. His generous hospitality was a by-word with his many friends.” Harkness, however, who had a keen eye for all the lore of the legal profession, gives quite a different view of his legal career, saying that “He nominally headed the law firm of Macdonald & Macintosh, first at Cornwall for two or three years and then at Toronto but he never devoted himself to the practice of the profession.”

     In the 1890s, he was active in the GC branch of the Patrons of Industry. He was the secretary-treasurer of the GC branch at least twice (1994, 1895), his address at this time being given as St. Raphael’s. He also wrote an article or editorial for the newspaper of the Ontario and Quebec Patrons, The Canada Farmers’ Sun, 16 May 1893, protesting the lack of farmers in political life. During the 1894 election campaign, which saw D. M. Macpherson elected MLA for GC as the Patrons’ candidate, Macdonald was accused of having held a political meeting in the 7th of Lancaster on a Sunday evening, contrary to the feeling that such events should not occur on the Sabbath. (election supplement, Glengarrian 22 June 1894) When Alexander, the son of his sister Mrs Langlois, died in 1911, George was still a Montreal resident. (Glengarry News 13 Oct. 1911)

     He died in Istachatta, Hernando County, Florida. He was buried, as he arranged, without clergy or coffin, and apparently on his own property and on the same day as his death. At the time of his death he was a widower, but no children are recorded.

     He was the author of “The Literary Aspect of the Keltic Settlement in the Counties of Stormont and Glengarry,” Transactions of the Celtic Society of Montreal (1887). In this 12-page article, rich in ideas, he praises the rise of the Highlanders of Eastern Ontario from a crushed peasantry in Scotland to fame and distinction in the New World. But mockingly, John A. Macdonell (Greenfield) in his history of GC reviles the article, where he finds “very grievous rubbish.” The National Archives has five notebooks of Macdonald’s containing data from interviews and other Glengarry lore from the mid-1880s. In 1910, he gave the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Montreal the uniform his father had worn as a loyal soldier at the time of the 1837 Rebellion. (Cornwall Freeholder 28 Jan. 1910)

     He was the brother of Henry Sandfield Macdonald.

Glengarry News 23 June 1939 * short obituaries, Montreal Gazette and Montreal Star, both 20 June 1939, in UTA * will & petion re administration, & Florida death certificate, all in records, Clerk of Circuit Court, Hernando County, Fla. * The Law Society of Upper Canada Archives * Pringle 271 * Boss 51 * Harkness 426 * Macdonell, Sketches, 59-60, 106-107 * Hodgins: index * Macdonald, Sandfields * W. S. Wallace, A History of the University of Toronto (1927) 109 * notebooks: MacGillivray & Ross 671; McLean, 11, 106, 267 * The Canada Farmers Sun, 20 Feb. 1894, 8 Aug. 1894 (asks for “ode or song” for Patrons), 9 Jan. 1895