(24 March 1894-21 Jan. 1957), businessman. (William A. MacEwen, William MacEwen, Bill MacEwen, Reeve MacEwen) Born: Agassiz, B. C. Parents: Peter McEwen (called Peter the Tailor) and his wife Jane McIntyre. William MacEwen was a feed and grain merchant in Maxville from 1929, dealing also in coal, and was reeve of Maxville from 1949 till his death. As reeve, he was a member of the SDG Council. He was one of the Glengarry Scots who stayed at home and flourished in a time when economic opportunities for Glengarrians were normally seen as being outside the county. An immense sensation was created by his strange disappearance on 21 Jan. 1957. He spent that day travelling by car on various business calls in Alexandria and elsewhere. As far as is known, he was last seen by Cameron Kennedy, the SDG Counties Clerk, late in the day in Cornwall. The following day Osie Villeneuve set out in his car to retrace, as nearly as possible, his route, but without success in solving the growing mystery. On 23 January, some 200 men from the Maxville area took part in a search for MacEwen. The story broke that a gold watch, suspected to have been MacEwen’s, had been sold recently at one of the Alexandria hotels. Dr Bernard Villeneuve of Alexandria managed to borrow the watch, which proved, however, on examination by MacEwen’s son, to have no connection with the missing man.

     Finally, on 18 March 1957, when the Cornwall Canal was being drained for its annual servicing, MacEwen and his car were found under the receding waters. He had evidently backed into the canal while trying to turn around on a dead end street. His disappearance had caused a degree of excitement, rumour, and even hysteria that can hardly be imagined as being produced in GC even as little as 10 years later, no matter how well-known and well-respected the missing businessman. Altogether, the emotion-driven upheaval caused by the MacEwen disappearance must be seen as one of the very last yet markedly characteristic events of an old, inward-looking, self-absorbed GC way of life that the forces of modernization were already sweeping away with hurricane force. The account of the event in Clarence Ostrom’s history of Alexandria and Eugene Macdonald’s retrospect on the event in his Glengarry News editorial of 28 March 1957 are valuable not just for the event but for the history of the time. William MacEwen was married to Rachel (Rheta) S. MacLeod (1897-1971), whose sister was married to Osie Villeneuve. (four children) He was the father of William Rayside MacEwen, and through this connection the founder of a business dynasty in Maxville. He was a Presbyterian elder.

Campbell, Tannis, & Stewart, MacDougalls, 458-465 (with portrait) * Maxville (1991) 299, 306, 316, 649-651 * Ostrom 140 * Glengarry News 24 Jan. to 28 March 1957 (including reports of robberies in Maxville, GN 7 & 14 Feb.), Standard Freeholder 23 Jan. to 20 March 1957 * Marin 462 * MacLeods, ii, 138-139 * “forces of modernization”: see note in Alexander Angus Macdonald * under supervision of John D. MacLeod, weed inspector, instals seed-cleaning plant in his Maxville mill, GN 8 April 1932 * pallbearer at funeral of Sara Ann Tracey, Standard Freeholder 30 Dec. 1948