(4 Oct. 1893-4 Feb. 1951), teacher and sportsman. (J. A. Macdonell, Alex, John Alex, John Alex Angus John, Alexander Angus John, J. Alex Macdonell, Alex the Teacher) Born at Baltics Corners, on Lot 24 in the 6th Concession of Kenyon Township, GC. Parents: Angus John MacDonell and his wife Catherine J. Campbell. John Alexander was a soldier in the First World War, serving in the trench warfare. From Queen’s University he obtained his B. A., 1921. He was a schoolteacher by profession, at a time when full-time career male schoolteachers were unusual at the primary level in GC. He taught at Pembroke, Ont. (at collegiate level) and in Western Canada before his war service, then after the war for many years at several primary schools in GC, where he was for some years the principal of S. S. # 5 Lochiel, the “Cement School” west of the hamlet of Lochiel. Committed over many years to athletics, he played lacrosse and soccer in GC, and was a coach and organizer. He was prominent in the work of the Glengarry Football League and served as its president. During the Second World War, he struggled to keep soccer alive in the county. He was also involved in the work of the Lochiel Junior Farmers (Alexandria Junior Farmers). He died suddenly of a heart attack, aged only 57. He never married. Roman Catholic. The burial was at Greenfield.

     In 1935, he obtained the nomination to be the GC federal constituency’s candidate for the Reconstruction Party, founded by H. H. Stevens, a prominent former Conservative cabinet minister. Other names proposed at the time for the GC nomination included J. A. McCrimmon, J. W. MacRae and Horace Marjerrison. At the election on 14 Oct. 1935 (at which Stevens himself was the only candidate of his party to be elected), Macdonell’s opponents were John D. MacRae (Liberal), who was elected, and Angus McGillis (Conservative), with Macdonell getting 1065 votes out of 8853 cast.

     In the Cornwall Standard-Freeholder, where he was the Alexandria columnist, he wrote vividly, 27 Sept. 1941, on the runaway wood lot and wasteland fires then raging along the Glengarry-Prescott border in the McCrimmon-Skye area. (Fires were by local custom set every summer by farmers on their own property for “clearing land.” However, the conflagration of 1941, when these fires ran wild with great destructive force, was still remembered decades later as “The Big Bush Fire.”) “Why,” Macdonell asked, “are fires set in such periods of protracted dry weather? Well, just because men on the land are usually so busy they haven’t the time to think. They just go ahead and do it.” He declared that his area of Eastern Ontario was getting as dry and windy as the West, the situation made worse by “the depletion of the woodlands and swamps.” The newspaper, in an editorial on “The Bush Fires,” commended his views on the destruction of bush and swampland, winds and dryness. (29 Sept. 1941, cf. editorial on reforestation, 2 March 1943) The possessor of a forceful, impressive literary style, it is to be regretted that he did not write more widely. He was the brother of Fr John Angus Macdonell.

Glengarry News 9 Feb. 1951 * birth, baptism: St. Alexander CR, I, 95 (Greenfield mission) * biog. prepared by Angus H. McDonell for Glengarry Sports Hall of Fame, GN 24 June 1987, with line drawing by Douglas A. Fales * MacMillan Soccer * MacMaster 103-106 with portrait * Butternuts and Maple Sugar 308-309 * organization of Stevens Club for GC, GN 16 Aug. 1935; also GN 17 July 1936 for Stevens Club meeting of year later * nomination, Standard Freeholder 23 Aug. 1935, GN 30 Aug. 1935 * GN & SFH on election campaign & results * elected president, Glengarry Football League, GN 12 May 1939 * chairs meeting as president of Alexandria Junior Farmers, GN 27 Oct. 1939 * other writings in SFH 1941 signed or probably by him: 8 Oct., 16 Oct. (on Queen’s University Centennial), 27 Oct.