(8 Oct. 1836-19 April 1906), pioneer member of the North-West Mounted Police, rancher. (A. R. Macdonell, Alexander R. Macdonell; titles Capt. and Major also used; sp. Macdonald sometimes found) Born at Alexandria, GC. Parents: Col. Angus Macdonell and his wife Isabella Macdonell. Alexander R. Macdonell served in the defence of Canada during the Fenian Raids. In 1876, having travelled to the West by way of the Missouri River, he joined the NWMP, the predecessor of the RCMP. He was promoted to sub-inspector, inspector and, in 1885, superintendent. He served at various places in what are now the Provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta; places of service included Battleford, Fort Walsh, Fort Macleod and Lethbridge. In 1895, when the NWMP management was being reduced in an economy drive, he was retired on pension. In retirement he was a rancher at Loch Garry Ranch (Lochgarry Ranch), a property of some 400 acres a few miles from Lethbridge. Later, this land was used for a provincial prison and prison farm.The ranch was bought with money Mrs Macdonell had received in a bequest from her mother. Capt. Macdonell died at his ranch. He is buried apparently at Lethbridge. In his earlier years in the NWMP, he was contributing from his salary to the support of his widowed mother and two unmarried sisters. Capt. Macdonell was the great-nephew of Fr Alexander Macdonell, the legendary bishop of Upper Canada, and he was a cousin of Alexander D. Macdonell, mayor of Alexandria.

     In 1881 at Fort Walsh, in what is now southern Saskatchewan, he played a decisive role in persuading Chief Sitting Bull, whose followers had destroyed Custer’s army so dramatically at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, to return to the United States. (For Sitting Bull, see also James McLaughlin) Capt. Macdonell and his widow and her second husband felt that Macdonell had never been given the official credit he deserved for this role, and they were supported by a passage in the memoirs of the celebrated Sam Steele, who was married to Mrs Macdonell’s niece. In the 1930s Macdonell’s widow had a collection of some forty artifacts (arrowheads, moccasins, &c.) which Sitting Bull had given to Macdonell. It is not now clear what became of this collection.

     Macdonell was married on 8 March 1887 at the Archbishop’s Palace, Montreal, to Mary Sophia McGillis, who was the youngest daughter of John McGillis, the laird of Williamstown. She was born at Williamstown. After her husband’s death, she sold the ranch, to find that it was resold quickly afterwards for many times what she received for it. She believed she had been, in her word, “swindled” out of her property. As a widow, she lived for a time in the home of her nephew-in-law, Sam Steele. She then married, in June 1912, as her second husband, Lt. Col. William Frederick Wallace Carstairs (1860-?). He was born in Kingston, Ont., of U E Loyalist descent, and served in the Canadian military forces, and in the NWMP, and as an officer in the Royal Nigerian Constabulary and the West African Field Force. He had a minute retirement pension. In their later years, she and Carstairs were in severe financial difficulties. They addressed the authorities with dignity and eloquence, but unsuccessfully, for relief by way of a better pension. She wrote, “Both of my husbands have made History, have been pioneers, honorable soldiers, and gentlemen; and while they have not been moneymakers, they have been Empire builders.” Mary Sophia died on 22 Feb. 1939 in an Edmonton hospital. An obituary remembered her services to the “sick and needy.” The burial was in Edmonton. She seems to have had no children by either marriage. She is said to have been born in 1866, but the obituaries, inconsistently with this, state she died aged 82. Most certainly, she was considerably younger than Capt. Macdonell, who was already in his 50s when he married. She and Capt. Macdonell were Roman Catholics.

Lethbridge Herald 19 & 26 April 1906, Saskatchewan Herald 25 April 1906, Medicine Hat News 26 April 1906, Glengarry News 27 April 1906, death remembered in 20 Years Ago col, CF 22 April 1926 * date of birth: St. Finnan’s CRNI, II, 294 * rancher, Lethbridge area, in Lovell’s Directory 1900/01 & Henderson’s Directory 1905 * NAC, RCMP service files, RG 18, Vol. 3437, File #0-39: much valuable biog. data on Macdonell and his wife and her second husband * Dictionary of Canadian Biography, XIV, 969 (mentioned) * obituaries of his wife, Calgary Herald 23 Feb. 1939, Edmonton Journal 23 Feb. 1939 (two items), Edmonton Bulletin 24 Feb. 1939 * Col. S. B. Steele, Forty Years in Canada (NY 1915) 160-161, 272-273 * John Peter Turner, The North-West Mounted Police: 1873-1893 (2 vols., 1950): index * Stanley Vestal, Sitting Bull: Champion of the Sioux (1957) 229-230 * Grant MacEwan, Sitting Bull: the Years in Canada (1973) 189 &c.