(6 Feb. 1847-9 Oct. 1926), lawyer. Born at Bytown. Parents: William Stewart and his wife Catherine Stewart. He was educated at the Ottawa Grammar School and the University of Toronto (B.A., 1867, M.A., 1870). Called to the bar of Ontario, 1870, he practised law in Ottawa, and he was mayor of Ottawa 1887-1888. The year before he became mayor, Rose’s biographical dictionary stated that “It has been the good fortune of few Canadians to achieve so early in life so much either in the general business of the community, or in the legal profession, as Mr. Stewart has accomplished.” He was associated in the legal profession at various times with W.A. Ross and R.W. (later Sir William) Scott. A man of many enterprises, he was highly active in business and charitable organizations. He was involved especially in his earlier years with coal mining in Western Canada, and he was chairman of the Canada Atlantic Railway–the railway of such strong GC connections. For many years he vigorously promoted the project, in which his father had earlier been interested, of establishing canal connections between Georgian Bay and the Ottawa River via Lake Nipissing, with the intention of thereby connecting Georgian Bay with ocean shipping at Montreal. He was head of a company formed to promote the project.

     He was the author of several small books, and he wrote, at least occasionally, for the British press on Canadian topics. A public dinner he and Donald (later Sir Donald) MacMaster arranged in London, Eng., to mark the anniversary of Confederation led to the establishment of the Dominion Day Dinner, described in Macmaster’s London Times obituary in 1922 as “the greatest Canadian annual function in London,” and “now one of the largest and most famous annual functions of its kind.” Place of death: Ottawa. He was married in Dec. 1874 to Linnie Emma Powell (1854-1937) . (six children) McLeod Stewart was not a Glengarrian, but he was a prominent public figure of the “next generation,” and thereby of the GC connection. McLeod Street in Ottawa is named after him. He was under consideration to have a life in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, but was passed over. His immediate predecessor as mayor of Ottawa, Francis McDougal, was a Glengarrian, as was an earlier mayor of Ottawa, Edward McGillivray.

Campbell (1990), 164-217 (a detailed geneal. history of the Lancaster Stewarts) (portrait) * MDict 798-799 * Rose, i, 759 * Morgan (1898) 971 (he is not in Morgan 1912) * Daryl White, “Killing Premiers to Build a Canal: McLeod Stewart and the Montreal, Ottawa and Georgian Bay Canal,” Ontario History (Autumn 2007) (portraits)