(17 July 1762-14 Jan. 1840), clergyman, first bishop of Upper Canada. (an T-Easbuig Mor, Alasdair Mac-Dhonuill, Mr Alistair, the Big Bishop, Bishop Macdonell) Born in Glengarry, Scotland. Parents: Angus Macdonell, a Roman Catholic, and his wife, of the Cameron family, who was a Protestant, but as a widow honoured her husband’s wish to have their son educated to become a priest.

     Alexander attended the Scots College in Paris and the Royal Scots College at Valladolid, Spain. On 16 Feb. 1787, he was ordained to the priesthood. Returning to Scotland, he served as a missionary priest in the Scottish Highlands. In the 1790s, at a time of renewed war between Britain and France, he helped to form a regiment of the economically hard-pressed Scottish Roman Catholic Highlanders, the Glengarry Fencibles (They are remembered as the 1st Glengarry Fencibles, to distinguish them from the 2nd Glengarry Fencibles, who served in the War of 1812.) He himself was the chaplain of the regiment. The Glengarry Fencibles served the Crown in Guernsey and Ireland, before being disbanded about 1802. It has often been claimed that he brought the disbanded Glengarry Fencibles to Canada, where they formed one of the great founding groups of GC. Some of them certainly did reach Canada, but it seems that few, or none, settled permanently in GC. Fr Macdonell himself arrived in Canada in the fall of 1804. The following year, he became the third priest of St. Raphael’s, succeeding Fr Fitzsimmons.

     Besides serving the people of St. Raphael’s as their pastor, he travelled steadily over the years throughout what is now southern Ontario, serving the many scattered Roman Catholic settlers. At St. Raphael’s he directed the building of a great stone church (destroyed by fire in 1970; the stone ruins have been carefully and lovingly preserved), which he had begun by 1819, and which was open for services in 1826. In 1820 Fr Macdonell was made a bishop, but as the titular bishop of Rhesaena he was without an episcopal city in Canada. In 1826, he was made bishop of Kingston (Regiopolis), or as is often said, bishop of Upper Canada. About 1832 he moved from St. Raphael’s to York (Toronto). A few years later he moved to Kingston, which he made his permanent residence. He was named to the Legislative Council of Upper Canada in 1830. A man of strongly conservative opinions, he was a vigorous supporter of the Crown in the War of 1812, and during the Rebellion years of 1837-1839. In GC he was the principal founder of Alexandria, which is named after him. He died at Dumfries, Scotland, during a visit to his home country. He is buried in St. Mary’s Cathedral, Kingston. In 1861 when his his body was brought back to Canada, it was stationed at St. Raphael’s for several days on its journey to Kingston. He founded a college or seminary at St. Raphael’s not long after he came to Canada, and Regiopolis College at Kingston late in his life. He was a vigorous letter writer with a splendidly energetic style. Otherwise, he wrote little, but he did leave an important historical and autobiographical narrative of the days of the 1st Glengarry Fencibles.

     In his time he was one of the best-known men in Canada. His personal friends were innumerable among both Roman Catholics and Protestants. He associated on good familiar terms with members of the Protestant clergy in a way that would have been almost unimaginable a generation after his death. Among the people who mattered in politics, there must have been very few to whom he was not personally known. However, the notion that he was in some way a “boss” who controlled the political patronage of his area of the province and even could nominate some of its parliamentary representatives is a wild exaggeration of recent times, quite unsupported by evidence. More importantly, perfoming a role that MPs and MLAs assumed at a later date, he acted tirelessly to help large numbers of ordinary people, Protestants and well as Roman Catholics, in their dealings with officialdom. (It may be guessed that he did not always get as much thanks as he deserved from the people he spent his time helping in this way.) In Glengarry and Stormont he was part of an elite social class that included the retired members of the North West Company. He spoke Gaelic, but we may guess that in his private thoughts he accepted, practically enough, that the fate of the Gaelic language in the New World was to pass into oblivion.

     Today he is almost certainly the best-remembered of all Glengarrians by people of Glengarry descent, the nearest competitor being Ralph Connor (C. W. Gordon) the novelist. Two men included in the present dictionary, John A. Macdonell (Greenfield) and W. J. Macdonell, wrote biographies of him. Another Fr Alexander Macdonell was the first priest at St. Raphael’s, and a later Fr Alexander Macdonell was the first bishop of Alexandria.

Life by J. E. Rea, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, VII, 544-551 * George E. G. Stanley, “An T-Easbuig Mor, Alasdair Mac-Dhonuill,” Historic Kingston No. 20 (Feb. 1972) 90-105 (biog., with cover portrait) * life by Royce MacGillivray, ODict * MacGillivray & Ross: index * for other sources on the life of the Bishop, see Bibliography of Glengarry: index: many refs., esp. useful for his relationship to GC; see Bibliography of Glengarry 6 & 7 for his own autobiographical writings; the notes to the present biog. are somewhat abbreviated because of the quantity of material and the availability of its titles in Bibliography of Glengarry * preaches in Gaelic at St. Raphael’s, Cornwall Observer 15 Nov. 1833 * report on return of body to Canada, True Witness 4 Oct. 1861, partly quoted from Cornwall Freeholder