(1853-24 Nov. 1924; age at death 77, which is inconsistent with the 1853 birth date, also found), author. (sp. Lucile also found) Born in Toronto. Her father was Duncan C. Macdonell. On her mother’s side she was related to to Abbé J.-B.-A. Ferland, the distinguished early historian of French Canada. Blanche Lucille Macdonell’s education was in Toronto. As an adult, in deference perhaps to her mother’s family heritage, the principal area she chose for research and writing was the French Canada of the old regime. Her writings appeared in Canadian, British and American periodicals. She was the author of the novel Diane of Ville Marie: a Romance of French Canada (1898), which she dedicated in very warm terms to the memory of her mother. The Morgan biographical dictionary also lists the following among her “published works,” but they may have been magazine publications rather than books: The World’s Great Altar Stairs, For Faith and King, and Tales of the Soil: a Collection of Canadian Legends. At least one article she published had GC connections, her “Two Great Colonial Magnates: Sir William and Sir John Johnson,” The United Empire Loyalists’ Association of Ontario, Annual Transactions 1904 to 1913 (Brampton, Ont., 1914), pp. 69-80. Place of death: Montreal, and of burial: Mount Royal Cemetery. She was an Anglican, and her work included publications in the religious press. She never married.

     She was the sister of George Hugh Macdonell, the mayor and MP. It is interesting to speculate whether she was a Protestant student at the convent school in Williamstown, perhaps at the time when he attended the Williamstown grammar school. See his entry for a little more information on the history of the family.

Montreal Gazette 25 Nov. 1924 (death notice) * outline of her life: Canada: an Enyclopedia of the Country, ed. J. Castell Hopkins (1898-1900), V, 173; Morgan (1898) 685; Morgan (1912) 685-686; MDict 500 * marriage 1836 of, probably, her parents, Reid, MN, 122 * Watters: index * there is a useful history of the Williamstown convent, and its school, Glengarry News 30 March 1983 * a representative of the Congrégation de Notre-Dame who kindly replied to an enquiry by the present author in 2007 stated that at that time no list of the students at the Williamstown convent could be found and suggested that documentation was probably destroyed by the fire of 1892 which led to the closing of the convent