A Brief Summary of the Early Life and Career of John A. Macdonald 1824 – 1838

The Quinte Years 1824 – 1835

John A. Macdonald was only nine years old when his family moved to the Bay of Quinte in 1824.  For the next eleven years, he called this region along the eastern shores of Lake Ontario his home.  He lived with his father and mother, Hugh and Helen, and his sisters, Margaret and Louisa in a modest clapboard house on Hay Bay. For two and possibly three years, he walked three miles to school in Adolphustown with his sisters. The school was a small, one-room log cabin run by an elderly Scotsman who handed out birchings and rebukes generously.

Sometime later, John was sent to the formal Midland District Grammar School in Kingston for one or two years then to the John Cruikshank School for another year. During this time, he boarded for a time with two elderly Scottish ladies and visited his uncle Lieutenant-Colonel Donald Macpherson on the Cluny estate outside of Kingston.  But his heart was always with his family in the Quinte region and he visited as often as he could. John returned home during the long school vacations to help his father in the stores at Hay Bay and Adolphustown. Here John A. met many of the local farmers and local merchants and learned about life in Loyalist Upper Canada.  From his father and adult cousins, he also learned about the politics of Upper Canada and the opportunities for advancement in this colonial society, especially in the field of law.

When most students today are entering grade 10 at the age of 15, John A. travelled by steamboat to York (Toronto) and to take the entrance examination to the Law Society of Upper Canada. He passed that first test and soon began articling with the law firm of George Mackenzie, a prominent Kingston lawyer.

During that same year, Hugh Macdonald saw an opportunity to move up in the world by renting the Van Alstine gristmill at the Stone Mills across the bay from Adolphustown in Prince Edward County. The elder Macdonald was no stranger to mills since he had worked previously in the textiles industry in Glasgow.

For the next two years, John A. excelled in his studies of law and earned the respect of many clients.  When Mackenzie opened a branch law office in the hamlet of Napanee on the Bay of Quinte, the seventeen year old Macdonald was entrusted with the task of providing legal advice and documents to fee paying customers.  Today, he would be referred to as a paralegal.

John A. relished the assignment — especially since he was not far from his parents at Glenora. In Napanee, he visited often with Allan Macpherson, one of his three cousins in the Quinte region. His adult cousin was known locally as the “Laird of Napanee” because of his involvement in many of the town’s activities and commercial enterprises. He provided useful advice to the young teenager on how to advance in society during this period of colonial rule.  John A. accepted his new assignment with enthusiasm and learned from his employer and mentor that legal advice was the stock and trade of those working in the legal profession. He worked there for about a year and continued his studies in his spare time.  He was now able to visit his family in the County more often and felt at home in the Quinte region.

In his eighteenth year, John A. heard that his cousin, Lowther Pennington Macpherson, was suffering from a debilitating lung disease. Lowther approached John about taking over his law practice while he recovered.  John agreed and resigned from the Mackenzie firm to move to the County.  There in this bustling rural town in Upper Canada, he practised for two years as a pro tem lawyer under the guidance of Lowther who was convalescing nearby.  John enjoyed the new job and grew confident in his abilities. He lived for part of the time with his family at Glenora and most of the time with the Macphersons in Hallowell.

By now, he was a promising young lawyer with considerable talents, but he was also known to get into some mischief as teenagers tend to do.  On one occasion, he played a prank on a local doctor, who was known to be quite outspoken on political matters.  Although there are no details of exactly what happened, there was a skirmish of some kind.  Local magistrates apparently witnessed the incident and later charged both Macdonald and his co-assailant with assault. The doctor went to trial first and was found guilty, but fined only a token six pence – perhaps to indicate that the incident was minor. John A. went next and was found not guilty. The court records show little except that he had actually won his first court case before a judge and jury on October 8, 1834 in the Court of Quarterly Sessions.

Four months after winning this case in Picton, Macdonald journeyed to York (Toronto) to receive his first accreditation in the Law Society as an attorney. By now he was ready to begin his own law practice, but he had obligations in Picton.  There, he continued to run his cousin’s law office for several more months, but sometime in the summer of 1835, he handed over the law practice to Lowther’s younger brother John Alexander Macpherson and moved to Kingston, where he opened his own law practice on Quarry Street.

His time in the Bay of Quinte region had come to an end.  The next year, Lowther died suddenly during a sea voyage, still seeking treatment for his chronic lung disease.  The Macdonald family– realizing that John had now become the principal breadwinner for the family – decided to move to join him in Kingston.  John A. Macdonald was now ready to face the challenges of his new profession.  He was about to discover that he had the right knowledge, skills and values to succeed in this new society in British North America.

Macdonald Becomes a Barrister in Kingston       

In those days, death was everywhere and little could be done to change the difficult circumstances of the family.  John A. Macdonald completed additional academic requirements of the Law Society and in the winter of 1836, he was at last called to the bar. He could now practice law before the King’s Bench.  He took on four cases during this period and won two of three winnable cases. His future law partner Alexander Campbell once said of him:

His power before a country jury was always marked chiefly if not wholly owing to his knowledge of the jurymen and his appreciation of their habits of thoughts and ways of speaking. He was in tone of voice and manner as thoroughly a Bay of Quinté boy as if he had been born there. (Archives of Ontario, Campbell Papers)

In fact, from the age of five, when he arrived in Upper Canada, he learned to speak with a North American accent, rather than a Scottish accent as his parents did.  His knowledge of the local idiom, more than classical rhetoric made him a more effective lawyer than his colleagues in the rapidly growing town of Kingston.

Over the course of the next two years, he defended a child molester and eight young men who were on the wrong side of the Rebellion of 1837.  He lost the first and won the second.  He also brought suit against Colonel Dundas, Kingston’s commandant of the Kingston garrison, for the illegal arrest of John Ashley, the gaoler of Fort Henry following the escape of fifteen political prisoners.  John A. Macdonald was successful in that suit and soon became the talk of the town. He also assisted Nils Von Schoultz in a court martial for leading the abortive 1838 Hunter invasion of Upper Canada near Prescott.  Although Von Schoultz pleaded guilty and was subsequently hanged, Macdonald was recognized as a courageous individual willing to take on unpopular and difficult cases. Donald Creighton, the acclaimed Macdonald biographer, summed up his reputation in Kingston in 1838:

Without any question he was the preferred legal advisor of the Scottish community and it might even be argued now that he was one of the most popular lawyers in the town as a whole. He was getting to be known professionally as an ingenious young man, persuasive with juries, adroitly clever in the management of cases—“ a dangerous man to encounter in the courts”, as one of his contemporaries phrased it long afterwards. (The Young Politician)

Thus began the career of Sir John A Macdonald. He was only twenty-three, but by now his talents were clearly evident. He was an exceptional individual who succeeded because of his indomitable work ethic, his exceptional intellect and his likeable nature. He was quickly rising in society as a leader among men. He met every challenge with the full force of his nature and succeeded where others failed.  He was dedicated to bettering the civil society in which he lived.  Upper Canada at that time was a British colony run by a Lieutenant Governor, an Executive Council, and a Legislative Assembly with limited powers.  All this was about to change because of civil unrest over oligarchical rule. Although John A. Macdonald was a Tory and loyal to British authority, he was also a participant in the transition from colonial rule to responsible government after the Rebellions of 1837-1838.  His role in the march toward democracy and independence over the next several decades is written, as Laurier once said, “in the history of Canada.”

David Warrick

The Macdonald Project

Educational Resources

Mac Facts

Test your knowledge of Canada’s first prime minister — Web searches and discussion encouraged.

1. In the nineteenth century, the height of an average Canadian man was 5’ 6.”
How tall was Sir John A Macdonald?
a) 5’ 5″
b) 5’ 7”
c) 5’ 9”
d) 5’ 11”
e) 6’ 5”

2. Sir John A. Macdonald was leader of the
a) Liberal Conservative Party
b) New Democratic Party
c) Liberal Party
d) Green Party
e) Progressive Conservative Party

3. Sir John A. Macdonald first practised law as an attorney in
a) Toronto
b) Kingston
c) Picton
d) Napanee
e) Ottawa

4. Sir John A. Macdonald worked for how many years non-­stop after he left school?
a) 27
b) 61
c) 38
d) 42
e) 15

5. Which quote is Macdonald’s?
a) Ask not what your country can do fo you: ask what you can do for your country.
b) I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.
c) Don’t find fault, find a remedy; anybody can complain.
d) Religion is the opium of the masses.
e) I have never asked the question and never will ask what a man’s religion, race or
ancestry may be; if he is a capable man, ‘the right man for the right place’ that is all I
inquire into.

6. The famous last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway uniting the Maritimes with Vancouver
Island was ceremoniously placed by
a) Financier Donald Smith at Craigellachie in 1885
b) Lieutenant-Colonel Oswald near Jackfish Tunnel in 1885
c) Sir John A. Macdonald at Shawinigan Lake in 1886
d) CEO, John Ross in1856
e) Financier George W. McMullen in Belleville 1884

7. Sir John A. Macdonald was
a) Prime Minister of Canada
b) Premier of Ontario
c) Minister of Justice
d) Attorney General
e) Minister of Militia Affairs
f) None of the above
g) All of the above

8. Sir John A. Macdonald received honorary doctorates from
a) Queen’s and McGill
b) George Washington and Harvard
c) Loyalist and Humber
d) Oxford and Cambridge
e) Sorbonne and Paris

9. Sir John A. Macdonald drafted how much of Canada’s Constitution Act of 1867
a) none
b) 70%
c) 28%
d) 17%
e) 80%

10. Sir John A. Macdonald proposed legislation for the House of Commons that would
extend equal rights to all Canadians. Which of the following was the only one that was
rejected?
a) Vote for women
b) Workers’ rights to form trade unions
c) Vote for Indians
d) Francophone rights
e) Equal rights of every kind—of language, of religion, of property, and of person.