MacIntyre, Donald Leitch
(17 Feb. 1844-26 March 1903), schoolteacher. (date of birth 1839 also found) Born at Morven, Argyleshire, Scotland. He emigrated to New York, and after a year or so, came, in 1873, to Canada, where he taught at Prescott, Kingston, Guelph, Cornwall, and Lancaster in GC–not necessarily in that order of names. At a date given as 1886, he gave up teaching for reasons of ill health–though perhaps, at this stage, not permanently?–and from 1890 he was employed by the inland revenue. He remained in government employment till his final illness. There is great uncertainty about the dates and order of events in his teaching career. He was the stern, opinionated, inspiring schoolmaster described memorably in Prof. John Ford MacDonald’s article “A Glengarry Dominie” in the periodical The School 1947. Besides regular school subjects, MacIntyre taught Highland dancing and was sometimes a judge of dancing and bagpipe playing at Highland games. He died at his home in Montreal, and was buried at St. Andrew’s cemetery, Williamstown. (three children) He was married, probably in 1877, to Annie Dunlop (1853-1940), presumably of the GC family. MacIntyre is depicted in two of the three illustrations by W. R. Stark to the 1947 article in The School, but it would be rash to suppose that any obligation was imposed on the artist to recover how MacIntyre actually looked.
It would seem from the very general dating that Macdonald (b. 1878) gives, that he was MacIntyre’s very young pupil at about the very end of MacIntyre’s Canadian teaching career. The possibility should be noted that MacIntyre taught in GC on more than one occasion. And, for that matter, there is even the possibility–though it seems a very small one–that Macdonald was writing about another MacIntyre.
Glengarry News 3 April 1903 * Fraser, Gravestones, II, 78 & 79 * without the illustrations, the School article is repr. in Standard Freeholder 19 June 1947 & (with a few notes) in Ross, Lancaster, 379-382
