(15 Sept. 1815-24 Nov. 1885), merchant, mayor. (E. W. McGillivray) Born in GC. Parents: Donald McGillivray and his wife Catherine Campbell. He “received a very plain education in a country school.” For four years, beginning at about age 16, he worked in a store at L’Orignal, on the Ottawa River in Prescott County. He went to Bytown in 1835, worked there as a clerk for one year, then set up for business himself on Wellington Street in 1836. He dealt at first in dry goods and groceries. Later he changed over to groceries and provisions only, and became a wholesaler about 1873. Over many years he was a prosperous and leading merchant. Municipal councillor. He was mayor of Ottawa for the years 1858 and 1859, being the second mayor after Bytown was incorporated as the City of Ottawa in 1854. He was one of the two Glengarrians who were mayors of Ottawa, the other being Francis McDougal. (Also, another mayor of Ottawa, McLeod Stewart, was the son of Glengarrian William Stewart.) McGillivray was highly active in the community and business affairs of Bytown/Ottawa, though it was stated in 1880 that by then he had turned many of his positions over “to younger men with more leisure.” At the first meeting of the stockholders of the Ottawa City Passenger Railway Company (which was the Ottawa street railway company), in 1866, he was elected one of the directors. He was on the board of management of the Ottawa Ladies’ College (incorporated 1869). He was also president of the St. Andrew’s Society, of Ottawa. Presbyterian. Conservative. Member of the Sons of Temperance.

     He was married (1) on 9 Jan. 1841 to Catherine Collins (d. 1866), a native of Ireland (two children), and (2) on 18 Jan. 1870 to Matilda Perkins of Ottawa (no children). His son Edward Campbell McGillivray was drowned on 2 Oct. 1880 in the Ottawa River, at Victoria Island, which is between Ottawa and Hull. “He was about to go on a trip down the river, when, in the darkness, he stepped into the swift current.” (Witness 4 Oct. 1880) There was a family tradition that in religious issues young Edward had been on poor terms with his stepmother, who was a Roman Catholic, and that he either committed suicide or chose the appearance of drowning to make an escape to some other part of the world. The business affairs of Edward the ex-mayor crashed a few years later, and in 1885 it was reported that he “had been compelled to make an assignment.” (Cornwall Freeholder 30 Jan. 1885) Before the end of the year he was dead. The Cornwall Freeholder of 4 Dec. 1885, reporting on the funeral in Ottawa, noted that Alex. J. McGillivray, his nephew, of Kirk Hill, had attended.

     Edward McGillivray was closely involved with a project of great importance to his native county, the building of the railway linking Ottawa, by way of Alexandria, with Montreal and the American markets. When the shareholders of the Montreal and City of Ottawa Junction Railway Company, as the firm which first attempted this project was called, met at Lancaster on 10 Dec. 1872 for their first meeting, he was elected both a director and a vice-president of the company, while D. A. Macdonald, the principal promoter of the project, was elected a director and the president. In October of 1872, according to a construction report which reached the public via Edward McGillivray, there were 400 men at work on the roadbed between Ottawa and Coteau. However, the beginning of a major depression in 1873 stopped the project by early 1874, and angry charges were soon being raised against the railway’s promoters. At “a large meeting of the ratepayers” of Lochiel Township on 29 Sept. 1874 at Quigley’s Corners (now Lochiel), “The President, Hon. D. A. Macdonald, the Vice President, Edward McGillivray, Mr. Legge, the engineer, and Archibald McNab, Reeve of Lochiel, spoke at length, entering fully into explanations relative to the affairs of the company. The result was a unanimous approval of the explanations made, and an expression of confidence in the management of the Railway Company.” (Witness 30 Sept. 1874) The ratepayers of Lochiel Township were concerned, because their township was financially committed to help finance the railway. After some years of frustrating delays, the abandoned railway project was revived by the lumberman J. R. Booth, under whose direction a new company, the Canada Atlantic Railway, was formed in 1879, taking over the previous companies involved in the project. D. A. Macdonald was for a time president of the Canada Atlantic Railway and Edward McGillivray was vice-president. However, in a meeting at Lancaster of the directors of the Canada Atlantic Railway in the early months of 1881, McGillivray succeeded Macdonald as the president. (Gleaner 3 March 1881, Cornwall Freeholder 4 March 1881) And by 1882 Macdonald was gone even from the board of directors. By Sept. 1882, there was through train service between Ottawa and Coteau. As a by-product of the railway, a new village developed in northern GC and was named Maxville.

     W. P. Lett included a warm tribute in his eloquent verse celebration of Ottawa’s history to McGillivray who was young when Bytown was young, and especially notes McGillivray as a purchaser of beaver skins in the “good old time… a fine old time for trade.” From his description of MacGillivray in those prime days as “a canine blade” it appears he was a fashionable young man as well as a rising merchant. R. W. Scott, in his Recollections of Bytown (1911) has an anecdote about McGillivray, Scott himself, and the establishment of Bytown’s first rail link to the Grand Trunk line.

     Through his brother Duncan MacGillivray, a farmer at Dalkeith, Edward McGillivray was the uncle of Archibald Duncan MacGillivray and of Dr Donald McGillivray. He was thereby also the great-uncle of Archibald MacGillivray and of E. A. MacGillivray the MLA, who through their mother were connected with the eminent McDougald family (A. W. McDougald, etc.) of Alexandria.

Biog. sketch in The Canadian Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self-Made Men: Ontario Volume (1880) (QF) * W. P. Lett, Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants (1874) 71-72 * Scott, as cited, 3, 4, 28 * Historical Sketch of the County of Carleton (1879 text of Illustrated Historical Atlas of the County of Carleton) republished Belleville, Mika, 1971 * portrait in John H. Taylor, Ottawa: an Illustrated History (1986) * books on hist. of 19th-century Ottawa commonly include references to him; surprisingly, this active and prominent man has no life in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography * genealogical data, family information, from Mrs Mary Beaton * MacMillan diary (dies) * MacGillivray & Ross 149 * Allan Bell, A Way to the West [a history of the Canada Atlantic Railway] (1991) * drowning of son: also Ottawa Citizen 4 & 6 Oct. 1880 * director & vice-president, re-elected, 400 men at work, report on Coteau Bridge: Witness 11 Jan., 29 May, & 9 Oct. 1872 (from Ottawa Citizen of 5 Oct.), 4 Feb. 1880 * re-elected president of St. Andrew’s Society, Witness 3 Nov. 1871 (Ottawa news column) * chairman at meeting St. Andrew’s Church, Ottawa, on Presbyterian church union question, Witness 27 Nov. 1873 * “one of the Capital’s colorful characters,” relationship to E. A. MacGillivray noted, Standard Freeholder 27 March 1935