(27 Feb. 1878-7 Sept. 1965), university teacher. (J. F. Macdonald; “Red” Macdonald; known to friends as “J. F.”; name often with title Professor) Born at Huntingdon, Que. Parents: Henry Macdonald and his wife Nancy Smith. Nancy Smith is reported to have been the aunt of James Alexander Robb (1859-1929), who was finance minister in the Mackenzie King government. (See also W. J. Barker)

     While J. F. Macdonald was still a child, both his parents died in an influenza epidemic of 1889. After that event, he lived near Williamstown, GC, with one or the other of two married sisters of his. He attended high school at Williamstown, where he was taught by Donald MacKay, later the principal of Alexandria High School. In a speech in 1961, he remembered MacKay as “a great headmaster.” As a youngster, he had summer employment in sawmills of the Lancaster Village area. He had relatively little involvement with GC in his mature years, but he was one of the speakers at a banquet for Queen’s University graduates and undergraduates held at Williamstown on 28 Dec. 1911 (Cornwall Standard 19 Jan. 1912).

     He attended Queen’s University on the GC scholarship founded by R. R. (Big Rory) McLennan. He graduated M. A. at Queen’s, 1899. At some stage in his early life as a university man, he was one of the first people to teach at Frontier College, the lumber camp institution. After being a Latin tutor at Queen’s 1899-1901, he taught high school till 1908 at Carleton Place, Barrie and Lindsay, then he taught at Queen’s 1908-1925, with rank rising from lecturer to full professor of English. In 1925, at a time of tension between the Queen’s principal and the teaching faculty, he resigned, then taught at the University of Toronto 1925 till his retirement in 1948, with rank rising from special lecturer in English to, once again, full professor. He did graduate work at the University of Chicago for at least nine summers, but he seems not to have completed a degree there.

     He died in a hospital in Ottawa, the city where he and his wife lived in retirement. He appears to have been a genial man, with a love for literature and an unusual gift for friendship. He was a Presbyterian who supported Church Union, 1925; afterwards, he belonged to the United Church.

     J. F. Macdonald edited a selection of the Habitant poems of William Henry Drummond, William Henry Drummond (Toronto, The Ryerson Press, [1923?], Makers of Canadian Literature series), with a biographical sketch and an essay of appreciation. He also edited school texts for Oxford University Press (about 12 by 1927, he estimated), and he wrote book reviews which were broadcast nationwide on the CBC. But the remarkable composition of his which is most likely to interest posterity is an affectionate and graceful essay of only a few pages published in the education journal The School in 1947 in which he recalled Donald Leitch MacIntyre, who had been his schoolteacher in GC long before.

     J. F. Macdonald was married on 1 July 1902 to Annie Eliza Bassam, of Kingston (four children) She outlived him to die in Ottawa 1978, aged 100. She and her husband were popular with the students, and often entertained groups of students at their home. When he resigned from Queen's in 1925, his students presented him and his wife with a silver bowl with Gaelic inscription.

Morgan (1912), 682, 1209 * Who’s Who in Canada 1945-1946 * Neatby: index * Anglin: biog. and character sketch, with two group portraits * Norman Miller [prof. of Mathematics at Queen’s], obit. tribute to Macdonald QAR (Sept.-Oct. 1965), with portrait * M. D. R. T., “Professor J. F. Macdonald–an Appreciation,” Queen’s Alumnae News (Nov. 1925) 26-28 * Kathleen Ryan [sister of Ottawa mayor, Charlotte Whitton], “Annie Macdonald: ‘Bless Us with Some of Her Spirit’,” obit. tribute to Macdonald’s widow, QAR (Sept.-Oct. 1978), with portrait * Queen's University Archives, various biog. materials, includes 10-page typescript of Macdonald’s speech (with autob. reflections) to an alumni group, 1961 * Macdonald’s “A Glengarry Dominie,” The School (Centennial Number, June 1947), repr. without the three illust. in Standard Freeholder 19 June 1947 as “Teacher from Glengarry” and in Ross, Lancaster, 379-382 * for William Henry Drummond, see also notes to life of Dr D. D. Macdonald, present dictionary * his radio broadcast “book-reviews on Saturday evenings,” mentioned, Canadian Forum (June 1936) p. 25