- DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Ben Forster, “MACDONELL (Greenfield), JOHN ALEXANDER,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 15, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/macdonell_john_alexander_15E.html
- DCB profile notes:
- Lawyer, political organizer, militia officer, and author; b. 23 June 1851 in Kingston, Upper Canada, son of Archibald John Macdonell (Greenfield), a barrister, and Mary Ann Catherine Innes; m. 3 Sept. 1879 Isabel Sophie Crawford in Toronto; they had no surviving children; d. 11 April 1930 in Alexandria, Ont.
- A native of Glengarry County in eastern Upper Canada, John Alexander Macdonell’s father practised law in Kingston and was John A. Macdonald’s partner from 1855. After he died in 1864, Macdonald mentored the lad, giving him a clerkship in his office. Macdonell’s work in the 1870s for the provincial chief justice and chancellor brought experience in electoral cases. He received further training under Christopher Robinson in Toronto; called to the bar in 1875, he would practise there until 1888. In 1879 he confirmed his affiliation with eastern Ontario by marrying a daughter of John Willoughby Crawford, a former lieutenant governor with ties to Brockville.
- His fierce loyalty to Macdonald, who had become prime minister in 1867, and close understanding of the politics of eastern Ontario, where Scottish names abounded, made him a natural organizer, a fitting partner for such regional leaders in parliament as Alexander Campbell and John Graham Haggart. Macdonell helped work the Tory convention of 1874 in Toronto, which was intended to reconstitute the party after the Pacific Scandal and its turnover of power to the Liberals. In 1877 he organized party associations in the St Lawrence River constituencies and became secretary of the Toronto Liberal-Conservative Association. Early the following year Macdonald asked the 26-year-old Jack Macdonell – he was also commonly called Jack Greenfield – to become political secretary of the Toronto-based United Empire Club, the core political/social organization of the reviving Conservatives. As Macdonald’s back-room man in Ontario, he was promised a war chest of $10,000, though fund-raiser Charles Tupper pulled together only about half that. In the election campaign of 1878 Macdonell arranged itineraries for leading politicians, including speakers for the Conservatives’ front group, the Dominion National League. In addition, he dispensed organizational advice to candidates and oversaw the distribution of more than 400,000 campaign documents through the club. The Conservatives returned to power and virtually swept eastern Ontario.
- Macdonell’s interests were largely bounded by his regional and Highland background. He collected and in his will left to a family representative, for keeping and distribution, historical and military items stretching back to the battle of Culloden in 1746 and including a treasured correspondence with Macdonald. His fascination with the military was displayed as well in his captaincy in the 59th (Stormont and Glengarry) Battalion of Infantry between 1888 and 1897, in an article on General Sir Isaac Brock, and in his history of Glengarry, where care was lavished on the military exploits of eastern Ontario Highlanders. He wanted battleground cairns erected to mark the War of 1812, in which his great-grandfather Alexander Macdonell of Greenfield and two great-uncles, John Macdonell (Greenfield) (an aide-de-camp to Brock) and Donald Macdonell (Greenfield), had served. His strong Catholic faith was exhibited in his memoir of Bishop Alexander McDonell, a one-time chaplain of the Glengarry Light Infantry Fencibles. Deeply conservative, Macdonell believed strongly in hierarchy: in 1904 he attempted to form a second Glengarry regiment in which the officers were to be only landed gentry and professional men
- His tenure as editor (1903–15) was a period of intense activity and public engagement. He seemed to be constantly writing, speaking, and taking on new responsibilities. In journalism, he served as a director of the Canadian Associated Press and in 1909 he attended the Imperial Press Conference in Britain, where he was most struck by the unemployed and the destitute – the “human sediment” – of the large cities. Appointed in 1906 to the University of Toronto’s newly reorganized board of governors, he helped bring in Falconer as president in 1907; he received honorary doctorates from the universities of Glasgow (1909) and Edinburgh (1911), as well as Oberlin College in Ohio (1915).
- Materialism and militarism, in Macdonald’s analysis, were the primary forces impeding the triumph of righteousness in public affairs. His sense of vocation in promoting this goal was shaped by a prophetic moral imagination and a Celtic spirituality. These influences led to his advocacy of a progressive Christianity as the solution to the world’s problems, but the war destroyed the underpinnings and credibility of his ideas. Macdonald’s breakdowns in 1917, which led to his death in 1923, resulted in part from the toll of his travels but also from his despair at the return of barbarism and the failure of his beloved vision of Christianizing civilization through liberty, democracy, and internationalism.
- Great Grandson of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=4919
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