(1 Dec. 1894-16 Oct. 1984), high school principal. (J.T. Smith, James T. Smith, Jim Smith, “J.T.”) Born near Winchester, in Mountain Township, Dundas County. Parents: Thomas Smith (d. 1953, aged 95), a dairy farmer whose parents were “pioneer settlers from Ireland,” and his wife Hanna (or Hannah) McConkey (d. 1932), of Williamsburg. J.T. Smith grew up on the family farm, attended continuation school at Winchester and high school at Kemptville, and was a student in the faculty of education at Queen’s University. At some stage in his professional career, perhaps at the very beginning, he taught at Chesterville. He taught at Alexandria High School, GC, in 1917-1918, then left for war service, and afterwards taught at South Mountain, before returning to Alexandria High School in 1921. The whole of his remaining teaching career was to be at Alexandria High School. On 27 Dec. 1924 he married Dorothy Dumbrille who, writing under her maiden name, became widely known as an author in the 1940s and 1950s. There were no surviving children of the marriage, though local tradition recorded a stillbirth or a difficult pregnancy.

     J. T. Smith obtained a B.A. degree from Queen’s University in 1932, then two years later he became principal of Alexandria High School, succeeding Donald MacKay, who had retired. (Glengarry News 6 May 1932 & 20 July 1934) At this time the entire teaching staff of the school, including the principal, numbered five. (20 years earlier, it had been ) In the two years before J. T. Smith became principal, the principal’s salary had been cut sharply because of the Depression. (Standard Freeholder 9 May 1934) J.T. Smith was principal during the difficult years of the Depression. Always anxious to expand the secondary education system in GC, he pressed tirelessly to obtain for GC a proper share of the funding being made available by the growing national wealth in the years after WWII, and by the greater willingness of governments in these years to spend money on education. In the years after the war, the school bus system was established to bring students from the countryside to Alexandria. This marked the end of the old system by which country students boarded in town during the week and returned to their families on the weekend. He pressed for the building of a new high school in Alexandria, which was opened in 1954. At this time, the school had a teaching staff of about 20 and the old name of Alexandria High School (“AHS”) was replaced with Glengarry District High School. J. T. Smith retired in June 1960. (GN 14 April & 23 June 1960). He was succeeded as principal by C.C. Fraser.

     J. T. Smith’s hobbies were curling, flowers and gardening. He outlived his wife by nearly three years. He died at Cornwall General Hospital. Burial, after cremation, was in the Protestant cemetery, Alexandria. By family an Anglican, he attended the United Church in Alexandria, as did his wife. He was a Mason, and near the end of his life he was given a 60-year jewel by the Masonic order for his 60 years’ of service. There was also an earlier principal of the high school called James Smith. See also the entries for Ethel Ostrom and Angus R. Macdonell, teachers in J.T. Smith’s high school.

     As high school principal, J.T. Smith faced the problem of being a unilingual anglophone in an area with a large French-Canadian population. Some of the tensions of this situation are expressed in his wife’s 1945 novel, All This Difference. But in truth, whatever private apprehensions the Smiths had, matters outwardly went well enough. Dorothy Dumbrille did remember, however, one difficult incident when a French-Canadian teacher, Miss Simard, and a local physician, Dr Primeau, combined to raise complaints about J.T. Smith and other teachers. There seem to be no recorded difficulties with regard to J.T. Smith being a Protestant school principal in a town where there was a large Roman Catholic majority and no Roman Catholic secondary school. In GC as a whole, there was also a Roman Catholic majority, though not in so marked a degree .

     J.T. Smith was a severe disciplinarian, with a ready hand for the application of corporal punishment with the “metre stick.” (Already in Canadian pre-metric days, the stout, government-issue yardstick was known in high school language as the metre stick). He was also given to extraordinary outbursts of rage in speaking to classes. Older adults often commented how his conduct contrasted with the mildness of his much-liked predecessor, “Old MacKay.” All the same, public opinion quibbled only privately and restrainedly at his severity. It was seen as belonging to the parcel of good old customs, and anyway, as being something that had to be accepted like the weather. It had the effect of making certain that in an area of very modest educational qualifications and a marked reluctance to spend local tax money on education, the public saw their local high school not as a place where foolishness, ignorance, idleness and bad conduct were deeply and arrogantly entrenched, but as a very serious place of learning–as indeed it was. He was neither a scholar nor an intellectual, and it is a good guess that he read little (though he was, most certainly, a thoughtful man), but he maintained the highest academic standards in his high school. In the 1940s and 1950s, when so many things, including the old agricultural system, were going badly in GC, the high school at Alexandria was one of the places where things were being done well.

     The obituary of Albert S. Lauzon reported that “Some will remember fondly their time spent at his well run pool room, of which even Mr Smith, the principal of the high school, approved.” (Glengarry News 16 March 1994) In truth, it is unlikely that his necessary tolerance went as far as approval, but a Glengarrian is getting old who can view the claim with knowledge and delight!

     A name by which the high school students liked to refer to him among themselves, never in his hearing, of course, was “J.T.”

Glengarry News 17 Oct. 1984 (with portrait), QAR (Jan.-Feb. 1985) * Alexandria High School 1894-1954: 1981 Reunion (1981): various information; the portraits of J.T. Smith and Dorothy Dumbrille on pp. 7, 9 are exceptionally fine and capture them to the very life * MacGillivray & Ross 256-259 (portrait) * personal information * obituaries of his mother (believed to have been Dr Mahlon Locke’s first patient), Standard Freeholder 10 Dec. 1932, and of his father, Ottawa Citizen (ND, c. Sept. 1953, QF) * interview with Dorothy Dumbrille taped 3 May 1978 for Multicultural History Society of Ontario * letter from Dorothy Dumbrille to Royce MacGillivray, 17 Sept. 1975 * Russ Dewar, “J.T. Smith Nearing Windup of 44-Year Teaching Career,” undated clipping (evidently SFH), interview, with valuable statements of his views about education (portrait) * Dorothy Dumbrille, U 62-64 * Royce MacGillivray, The Slopes of the Andes: Four Essays on the Rural Myth in Ontario (1990) 154-155: recollections, character sketch * Gerald O. Saxton [see J. G. Sabourin], “Reminiscing of Old Times in Alexandria,” letter to editor, GN 5 May 1993: recollections, character sketch (fondness for blonde teachers with good legs) * military service, GN 21 June & 26 July 1918 * views on position, needs of high school, expressed at Alexandria meeting, GN 28 Oct. 1938 * promoted to military rank of captain, GN 22 Jan. 1943