(baptized 15 Oct. 1882, born probably 1 or 10 Oct.; died 27 Oct. 1918), clergyman. (John A. Macdonell, J. A. Macdonell) Born at his parents’ home on Lot 24, in the 6th Concession of Kenyon Township, GC. Parents: Angus J. MacDonell and his wife Catherine J. Campbell. His education included studies at the Grand Seminary, Montreal. On 21 Dec. 1912 he was ordained to the priesthood in St. James’s Cathedral, Montreal. He was an assistant at Nativity Church, Cornwall, and at St. Finnan’s, Alexandria, and then was curate at Crysler in northern Stormont County till his death in the 1918 flu epidemic at the age of 36. He died at the Hotel Dieu Hospital, Cornwall, and is buried at Greenfield, GC. He was described as a forceful speaker, “equally at home in English and French.” Probably he was the only professional man of GC birth to die in the great flu epidemic. There is a tradition that as he was struck down by his illness he bought only a one-way ticket from Crysler to Cornwall, believing that he would not live to return. At the time of his death, when WWI was ending, he had two brothers “on active service in France,” and his sister was a U. S. Army nurse in Maryland. He was the brother of John Alexander Macdonell (1893-1951) and a first cousin of Fr John J. Macdonell.

GN 1 Nov. 1918 (QF), 11 April 1919 (obituary of his father), repr. Fraser Obits. 183-184, 138-139 * his baptismal record, St. Alexander’s Church, Lochiel, Ont. (Greenfield mission), copy supplied by Alex W. Fraser; also St. Alexander CR, I, 95 * Sinnsearachd 73 (warm personal tribute by Fr Ewen J. Macdonald) * St. Catherine of Sienna Parish Greenfield, Ontario 1894-1994 (1994) 33-37, with portraits, also 42-43 for his sister * flu epidemic: Ostrom 119; Rhodes Grant, ii, 117-120; MacGillivray & Ross 513-514