(23 Nov. 1893-9 Nov. 1949), political figure. (Eddie MacGillivray, Edmund A. MacGillivray, E. A. MacGillivray) Born in Alexandria, GC. Parents: Archibald Duncan MacGillivray and his wife Charlotte Anne Chisholm. He attended primary and high school in Alexandria. He was to some degree deformed (he had a hunchback). Most of his life was spent in Alexandria. He began to involve himself in Alexandria affairs, and in Liberal Party activities, belonged to the Alexandria Public Utilities Commission 1931-1934, and was reeve of Alexandria 1935-1937. Also, as an organizer, he was involved in local lacrosse activities. The present author remembers Fr C. F. Gauthier praising him as someone who, unable to take part in sports himself, overcame his disabilities by doing administrative work in lacrosse. Eddie MacGillivray was president of the Eastern Ontario Amateur Lacrosse Association 1933-1934 and director of the Ontario Amateur Lacrosse Association 1933-1935. As MLA, he remained interested in local sports activities, and contributed a silver medal as a most-valuable-player award to the Maxville Millionaires and a football trophy to the Pine Grove Football Club. A fine group portrait of the Alexandria Hockey Club 1913-1914 shows Eddie with a bow tie (Glengarry News 28 April 1999). From the mid-1930s, and perhaps earlier, and still at the end of his life, he was an Alexandria agent for Excelsior Life insurance.

     MacGillivray was elected MLA as a Liberal for the Glengarry constituency (which at that time consisted of GC and a part of Prescott County) at the three successive Ontario general elections of 6 Oct. 1937, 3 Aug. 1943 and 4 June 1945. In the first election he defeated Joseph St. Denis (Conservative), in the second Lionel Devaux (Conservative) and Kenneth L. Walter (CCF), and in the third Osie Villeneuve (Conservative) and J. J. Macdonald (CCF). The main opponent in the two later elections was the Conservative, the local support for the CCF being very minor. In the 1945 election, his constituency had resisted the Conservative sweep which confirmed Premier George Drew in office with a landslide majority. However, in the Ontario general election of 7 June 1948 Eddie MacGillivray was defeated by Osie Villeneuve. From this time onwards–and the Scots quickly and calmly accepted the fact–the local MLAs would normally be French Canadians. Eddie MacGillivray was now 54 years old, had been MLA for over 10 years, and had about a year and a half left to live. At a time when Glengarrians had very restrained expectations for their MPs and MLAs, he seems to have been a reasonably competent representative of local interests, which he recognized to be substantially those of farming. He kept a watchful eye on the cheese business, so essential to GC (Mr MacGillivray “is assiduous in his attendance at cheese board meetings”–Glengarry News 12 May 1939), and helped the short-lived GC wartime venture into growing and processing flax. Amid wartime tensions, he defended the loyalty of the French Canadians in his speech in the Ontario Legislature on 9 April 1942. (Standard Freeholder 10 April & text SFH 15 April 1942) All politicians have lapses of judgment which rivet themselves in the public mind, and his worst was to complain in the Ontario legislature about the Ontario government practice of selling watered liquor. However rapacious the government, many a mind appears to have flown to the conclusion that anyone who complained about such an outrage must be doing so for very personal reasons.

     He was closely related through his mother to the McDougald family of Alexandria, which proved so eminently successful in the wider world, and the files of the Glengarry News show that the McDougald connection remained important in his life through exchange of visits with Dr W. L. McDougald (e.g., Glengarry News 11 Aug. and 10 Nov. 1939), Mrs John McMartin, Mrs A. L. Smith and Duncan J. McDougald. Eddie MacGillivray was a Roman Catholic, though if report is correct, not consistently so in his earlier days. He was unmarried. In Alexandria, he lived in the old MacGillivray house on Mill Square with his unmarried sister Joanna (Joey). Her obituary noted that she was “a familiar figure in Queen’s Park, Toronto, having acted as hostess for her brother,” but that otherwise she was “a life-long resident of Alexandria.” (Standard Freeholder) She died 30 Oct. 1949, and her brother followed her in death 10 days later, dying at his home in Alexandria. He and Joey share a gravestone with their mother in St. Finnan’s cemetery, Alexandria. His funeral at St. Finnan’s was very well attended, and while among those present were local Liberal organizers and leaders, Lionel Chevrier was the only Liberal who could be regarded as having national eminence.

     Eddie MacGillivray was the brother of Archibald MacGillivray.

Standard Freeholder 11 & 14 Nov. 1949, Glengarry News 11 (portrait) & 18 Nov. 1949 (also for Joanna MacGillivray, SFH 31 Oct. & 3 Nov. 1949, GN 4 Nov. 1949 * GN over his adult years has innumerable refs. to this active citizen of the town and to other members of his family; GN and SFH print texts of his speeches in Legislature * private information * Ostrom 184 * Harkness, 327, 330, with portrait * other portraits: many in press, e.g. with his message to farmers, GN 21 June 1946, and in group greeting Mackenzie King at Alexandria, Glengarry Life 1993 p. 14 * biog. sketch by “R. A. J.,” repr. SFH 27 March 1935 from Ottawa Citizen * insurance adverts., e.g., GN 18 Dec. 1936, 27 Oct. 1939 * watered liquor incident: SFH 7 April 1948, GN 9 April 1948 * his three-story warehouse in Alexandria is destroyed in fire, Cornwall Standard 30 Jan. 1930 * honoured as first president of the Highland Society of Glengarry, GN 27 June 1930 * Eddie and Joey MacGillivray, with Clarence and Ethel Ostrom, to motor to Toronto for official Ontario government reception for King and Queen, GN 19 May 1939 * is patient in Toronto hospital, GN 17 Nov. 1939 * speaks at Orange Walk at McCrimmon (as does Dr W. B. MacDiarmid, MP), SFH 14 July 1941