(1764-16 Oct. 1825), fur trader. (Hon. William McGillivray) Born Dunlichty, Scotland. Parents: Donald McGillivray and his wife Anne McTavish, who was the sister of Simon McTavish of the North West Company. He came to Canada 1784. Entering the NWC as a clerk, he rose to be a partner and chief director, and helped arrange the merger of the NWC and Hudson’s Bay Company, and was one of the most prominent Canadians of his day. He was a member of the Legislative Council of Lower Canada. From about 1809 McGillivray struggled to acquire the Indian Lands tract along the western side of GC from the St. Regis Indians. The Crown insisted that the lands must first be surrendered by the Indians to the Crown after which they could be conveyed to McGillivray. A completed surrender seems to have occurred in 1815. Still, in the end McGillivray did not get the land and thus missed being the largest landowner GC ever had. Schemes to secure him a smaller portion of the tract also failed.

     On 22 Dec. 1824 he was granted a parcel of lots totalling 5600 acres in nearby Plantagenet Township, Prescott County–perhaps as compensation for his disappointment over Indian Lands. This land was part of a 6000 acre grant to McGillivray that Lord Bathurst had approved in June 1823. Andrew Picken, in his immigration guide The Canadas (London, 1832), p. 137, wrote that “no lands have been granted in this township [“Plantagenet rear”], except the surveyor’s per centage, and 5000 acres to the late Honourable William M’Gillivray, who built a saw-mill on his property on the Scotch river, which is the only stream of importance in it, on which timber is rafted, in high water, down to the Nation.” The Hon. William McGillivray’s land-seeking contributes thus, for the GC historian, one part of the jigsaw puzzle which makes up the story of the Glengarry lumber workers’ exploitation of the Scotch and Nation Rivers.

     He was lieutenant colonel of the Corps of Canadian Voyageurs of 1812-1813, which had Glengarry connections. His first wife was a Cree woman called Susan. (four children) In 1800 he married Magdalen the sister of John Mcdonald of Garth. (six children) He died at St. John’s Wood, London. He was a relative of John McGillivray, and probably played a part in bringing him to Canada. William was probably the McGillivray who wrote to John on 15 Oct. 182[0?] reporting that the Council at York had decided favourably on certain claims of his [the writer’s] respecting the St. Regis Reserve, “so that I shall also become a Proprietor in Glengarry.” (NAC-MD, Vol. II, f. 595) William McGillivray belonged, as one of its founding members, to the Glengarry-based Highland Society of Canada. “

     See also Narcisse M. Cantin for another major outsider and entrepreneur who turned his attentions, again unsuccessfully, to GC.

NAC, Land Petitions, Reel C-2116 * “Provincial Secretary: Index to Land Patents 1790-1825 Arranged by Names,” Archives of Ontario, Ms 1 Reel 6 p. 180 * Brault 256-260, 356: location of McGillivray’s lots (all of 1824) in Plantagenet Township * MacGillivray & Ross 50, 53, 683 * his life by Fernand Ouellet in Dictionary of Canadian Biography Vol. VI * Wallace * MDict 512 * life in Hurtig (with fine colour portrait) * Harkness: index