(15 Sept. 1896-20 May 1948), author. (Mrs John M. MacLean, Edith, Edie) Born on her parents’ farm on Lot A, 7th Concession of Roxborough Township, a mile and a half west of St. Elmo, GC. Parents: Peter Munroe (called Red Peter) and his wife Ellen McDiarmid. Edith attended primary school at MacDonalds Grove near her birthplace, Alexandria High School, and Ottawa Normal School. She was married at Ottawa on 22 July 1922 to John M. MacLean (1894-1951), a railway brakeman. In 1926, she and her husband moved from Coteau, Que., to Maxville, which was thereafter their home. A teacher at Athol during her last three years, she died at the Athol school shortly after suffering a stroke. (This was not the school building of Glengarry School Days, the most famous schoolhouse in Canadian history, but its successor, now removed to Upper Canada Village.) Also over the years Edith had taught in public schools in the Avonmore area, and at Alexandria, Dyer, Skye, Maxville and MacDonalds Grove. (five children, four surviving her) Congregationalist, later United Church. Edith MacLean was the sister of Dr Finlay Munroe. Another brother, Edith’s twin Leonard, was killed in WWI. One of Edith’s daughters, Helen, was married to Edward Hunter.

     Edith MacLean was the author of a 204-line poem, “Maxville, Our Home Town,” containing references to a large number of Maxville citizens. It was first published anonymously in the Glengarry News of 24 March 1933 (Edith MacLean was at this time the newspaper’s Maxville correspondent), then was reprinted in the Glengarry News of 19 Oct. 1983. It is reprinted again in the history Maxville, (1991), with more than a hundred notes (themselves amounting to a valuable short biographical dictionary of Maxville) explaining the allusions of the poem. The notes are anonymous, but their author was Gordon Winter, son of Stanley Winter and well known for his knowledge of Maxville history. In Maxville (1991) Mrs MacLean’s poem is accompanied by a new poem by Diane Cuillerier, “Maxville, Our Home Town, 1990.” Edith MacLean was also the author of a 108-line poem on the twin topics of Maxville and the Maxville Women’s Institute, with valuable allusions to the war and the current flu epidemic, first presented at a bazaar on 6 Dec. 1918 and printed at least twice, in History of Maxville and the Community (1967) and in Kenyon Agricultural Society 100 Years (1989). She was for several years the Maxville correspondent for the Cornwall Standard-Freeholder or one of its predecesssors, as well as for the Glengarry News.

     After the death of Edith’s mother from TB, Red Peter Munroe remarried to Margaret Aird, who has sometimes been identified with the Margaret Aird who appears as one of the schoolchildren in Ralph Connor’s Glengarry School Days and as a “tall, fair” young girl (sp. Margret Aird) in Man from Glengarry. However, if the real Margaret Aird was born in 1869, as has been reported, it is unlikely on chronological grounds that she was meant as the girl in either novel, given that Connor (C. W. Gordon) left GC in 1871. Still, given that Aird is a fairly uncommon GC name, it seems somewhat remarkable that Connor should by chance have hit on this particular name if it did not happen to be the name of a real child in the neighbourhood. Her step-granddaughter remembered with emphasis that the Margaret Aird who became Mrs Munroe was a wonderful grandmother to her.

Glengarry News 21 May 1948, Standard Freeholder 21 & 26 May 1948 * personal information * Maxville (1991) : 304-322, poem and notes; 245-246, 772-775, biog.; 259, 770, portraits * gravestone, Maxville Cemetery * Campbell, Tannis, & Stewart, MacDougalls, 246, 263-268 (with portrait) * Margaret Aird: Glengarry School Days 16ff., 56 & 57, 71, & Man from Glengarry 60, 62, in New Canadian Library edns; MacDougalls, 246; Maxville (1991) 772