(fl. 1920s), physician. Dr Monfette, who had previously lived at Curran, Ont., practised medicine in Alexandria from early 1916 till the summer of 1924. He was not the first French Canadian physician in Alexandria, but he was one of the first to stay for a considerable period of time. His office was in Mill Square, over the Ostrom drug store. While he was in Alexandria, he was active in the work of the Association canadienne-française d’éducation de l’Ontario and in the promotion in Alexandria of French-language education. Also, in May 1916, he was married. He was one of the people in Alexandria with whom the turbulent Dr Donald Duncan Macdonald clashed, Dr MacDonald regarding him in 1917 as a “French Nationalist” and his personal enemy. Dr Monfette’s office was damaged in a major Alexandria fire of 1922. (Glengarry News 22 Dec. 1922) Clarence Ostrom recorded it as a curiosity of social history that Dr Monfette was the first person in the Alexandria area to own a “closed automobile”–an innovation which, Ostrom noted, few people thought likely to “come into general use.” When Dr Monfette left Alexandria in 1924, he was planning to study medicine in Paris, specializing in eye, ear and throat.

Centre de recherche en civilisation canadienne-française, Université d’Ottawa: files on Alexandria, and on Association canadienne-française d’éducation de l’Ontario * Dr MacDonald: OA, Provincial Board of Health, Municipalities, SDG * Ostrom 241 * to settle in Alexandria, leaves Alexandria, Glengarry News 21 Jan. 1916, 6 June, 15 Aug. (feted before leaving) and 26 Sept. 1924