(2 Dec. 1839-14 April 1927), figure of legend. (known as Col. Donald McGregor) Born presumably on his parents’ farm, on the King’s Road, Martintown, GC. Parents: James Alpin McGregor and his wife Flora (or Isabella) McDougall. He went to British Columbia in 1864 by way of the Isthmus of Panama, and was in the Cariboo gold rush. Over many years, he lived in New Westminster, B. C. From 1887 to 1890 McGregor was librarian of the Public Library, New Westminster, but he was not, as has been sometimes claimed, the first librarian in that city. The statement on his gravestone that he was mayor of New Westminster is in error. During his New Westminster period, he travelled back east to be a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa for two parliamentary sessions. He was involved also in colonization work for the B. C. government in the period of Premier Robson. His obituary in the Glengarry News explained his title of Col., by which he was consistently known: “The genial Colonel was never an officer in the Canadian militia, but had held the title since 1879 when the Marquis of Lorne, Governor General, then in the West was presented with an address the same being read by Mr. McGregor, and the Governor in thanking him called him ‘Colonel’–so he was known ever after as such to a large coterie of friends.”

     At the time of the Klondike gold rush, at the age of about 60, Col. Donald McGregor migrated to the Yukon, where he lived for approximately the next ten years. He edited a Dawson City weekly newspaper, called the Yukoner. The Cornwall Standard, 19 Dec. 1902, reported that “The first issue of The Yukoner, of Dawson City, is to hand.” It was published, the Standard said, by Col. Donald McGregor, an ex-Glengarrian. Nearly a century later, in 1999, only one surviving issue of the paper could be located, that of 20 or 29 July 1903 in the Yukon Archives; it names him as editor. McGregor was active in Yukon politics, and in a wide range of public functions and entertainments. During his Yukon years he is reported on two occasions to have thwarted an insurrection of the miners by soothing addresses. He was called the Grand Old Man of the Yukon, and the Father of the Yukon–these titles being, presumably, as was usual with such titles, used by the press rather than the actual populace. He resettled in GC about 1910, returning, it would seem, a poor man with no assets but the family farm. In the 1920s, he was one of the people involved in promoting the placing of a monument on Simon Fraser’s grave. In 1925, he was made a non-resident fellow of the Royal Colonial Institute, of London, Eng. He was an elder in St. Andrew’s Church, Williamstown, and with other elders he served as a pallbearer at the funeral of George H. McGillivray. McGregor died at his home on the King’s Road, Martintown. He was buried in St. Andrew’s cemetery, Willamstown.

     McGregor was said to have “contributed many interesting articles to the press during his long residence in British Columbia and the Yukon Territory.” (Cornwall Standard 10 Dec. 1925) He was probably not the Donald A. McGregor who wrote an article, handsomely illustrated, on “The Marvel of Vancouver,” in the British Columbia Magazine of 1911. Col. McGregor ‘s sister Margaret while in B. C. wrote “a poem of some merit, entitled ‘The Fraser River’.” (her obituary Cornwall Standard 2 Feb. 1912) No copy of this poem has been located. In his last decades, Col. McGregor, who was never shy of publicity, was a “celebrity,” but it is hard now to separate the image and the self-advertisement from the more real achievements of his lifetime. James D. Ross, a farmer on the King’s Road, Martintown (and uncle of Ewan Ross) wrote a two-page sketch of the Colonel’s life in which he expressed the utmost contempt for his character but adduced few hard facts to alter the public image, or to justify his own dislike of the man. Some may well have found the colonel annoying, and not just in GC, but the evidence seems to be that people and families of prominence in GC treated him as a man of honour and importance–a distinction one cannot easily believe would be allotted to a someone who was seen as either a joke or despicable.

     See also Alexander K. McLennan, one of McGregor’s adventuresome western friends.

Glengarry News 22 April 1927, Cornwall Freeholder & Cornwall Standard 21 April 1927 * Fraser, Gravestones, I, 177-178 * MS of James Ross * recollections of the colonel by Gertrude Wood, in Wood letter of 18 Nov. 1976 * librarian: A. M. Hutcheson, New Westminster Public Library 1865-1965 (1965?) 9; New Westminster area directories 1887-1890 * David R. Morrison, The Politics of the Yukon Territory 1898-1909 (1968), many refs. * Royal Colonial Institute: Cornwall Standard 10 Dec. 1925, GN 18 Dec. 1925; archives of the Royal Colonial Institute, in Cambridge University Library; United Empire: Journal of the Royal Colonial Institute, XVI (Dec. 1925) 764 (list of fellows); for significance of this honour, cf Dictionary of Canadian Biography, XI, 221 * Centenary 1912 11-13, 97 * various clippings (undated clipping), WSC 4-23 * many refs. in press, many of them based on interviews; see Glengarrian 10 Oct. 1890, Cornwall Standard 22 Oct. 1909 (from Montreal Standard) & 18 Feb. 1910 (from Ottawa Evening Journal), CF 22 April 1910 (from Ottawa Citizen), 29 Sept. 1911, 20 Oct. 1911, 29 May 1919, 28 Aug. 1919, 3 June 1920, Cornwall Standard 26 July 1917 (his article on B. C. gold rush, from Vancouver World), 5 June 1919, 3 June 1920, 16 Sept. 1920, 23 Dec. 1920