(17 Nov. 1833-25 Dec. 1923), figure of legend. (also Isabel, Isabelle; known usually as Belle John, i.e., by a once-familiar GC system of names, Belle the daughter of John; form Belle Jean also found) Born at St. Raphael’s. Parents: John McRae and his wife Anne MacDonald. Belle John was a noted singer of Gaelic songs, and was also celebrated for her knowledge of GC genealogy. Among the remarkable people Belle John could remember were her great-uncles Big Finnan of the Buffalo and his brother John (Finnan and John Mcdonald). She never married. She did practical nursing in households in the GC area, caring for the old and the ill, and assisted at childbirths. Eighty years after her death, a family connection was quoted by the GC columnist Ken McKenna as saying, “Belle John spent her life in service to others.” On one occasion, presumably at a time of railway construction there, she accompanied a family to Port Arthur. Aged 90, she died on Christmas morning at St. Raphael’s, in the home of her nephew Duncan Angus McRae, on the farm where she was born.

     Her funeral at St. Raphael’s was described by the well known Canadian journalist Gregory (Greg) Clark (1892-1977) in an article published in the Toronto Star Weekly of 5 Jan. 1924. Entitled “Glengarry’s Heart Still in the Highlands: Historic Clans Gather at Funeral of Pioneer,” it is one of the most eloquent statements ever committed to print of the GC legend. “Her funeral was an occasion for the gathering of the clans not only for herself and her good works, but because she was the last of a mighty generation in a sequence of mighty generations.” Her kinsman John A. Chisholm of Cornwall (see his entry) later claimed privately that he was the effective author of the article, as having dictated it to Clark at St. Raphael’s. This is the kind of claim, however, that need not be decided conclusively one way or another; doubtlessly both men made contributions indispensable in their way: the Cornwall ex-mayor rich in his Glengarry lore, the Toronto journalist with his grasp of how words operate in print and his sure eye for the place of these events in the larger picture of Canadian history. This handsomely illustrated article is among the best known short publications on Glengarry history.

     Quotations (giving some impression of her own character) from conversations with her by John A. Chisholm on the subject of the Big Finnan already mentioned are preserved (with other valuable references to her) in Chisholm’s papers in the Finnan McDonald file of the Oregon Historical Society. She was the sister of John Joseph McRae the contractor (see his entry for more on the family connections). Other relatives of hers in the present dictionary (hers was a distinguished family connection) include R. R. (Big Rory) McLennan, D. R. Mcdonald the MLA, and her great-nephew Mgr Ewen J. Macdonald.

     When Mrs Helen Telfer (7 Dec. 1907-30 Aug. 2004), née Tobin, a native of Lancaster, GC, widow of Walter Telfer, who was editor of the Humboldt Journal, died at Humboldt, Sask., aged 96, it was thought that she “was perhaps one of the last to remember the funeral of her great-aunt Isabel ‘Belle John’ McRae which was so vividly described in a Toronto Star [Star Weekly] article in 1924.”

Cornwall Freeholder & Cornwall Standard both of 27 Dec. 1923, Glengarry News 28 Dec. 1923 * John A. Chisholm as cited * Paradis, chapter 2 & pp. 34, 77, [90-91] * Ewan Ross, St. Raphael’s (1985) 41-48 (Clark article repr. here and in Paradis vol.) * Bibliography of Glengarry 37 * there is a sketch of Greg Clark’s life Hurtig, I, 433 * McKenna GN (5 March 2003) * obituary of Helen Telfer, GN 29 Sept. 2004