John A.’s Surprising Personal Life

As Canadians, we think we know John A. Macdonald. He was the mastermind behind Canadian Confederation, he pushed through the construction of a transcontinental railway, he wrote much of our Constitution. And, yes, he had his problematic side: He drank too much, he accepted bribes and he hanged Louis Riel. But what about his personal life? Here are some things you might not know about John A.:

He was devoted to his daughter

Macdonald’s only daughter — Margaret Mary Theodora Macdonald — was born with brain damage. She was unable to walk, had limited use of her hands, and did not speak clearly. Yet she was bright and had a keen interest in what was going on around her. John A. was very fond of her and called her Baboo. He read to her and involved her in many aspects of his life, even making sure she went to Parliament so that she could hear him debate. At one point John A. gave her a typewriter, which allowed her to peck out short notes to her father. Longer letters were dictated. The two exchanged mountains of charming correspondence.

He was distant to his son

John A. Macdonald’s only surviving son — Hugh John Macdonald — was successful in his own right, earning a law degree, becoming a federal cabinet minister and being elected the eighth premier of Manitoba. Yet father and son were never close. Hugh was born to John A.’s first wife — Isabella Clark. John A. was frequently absent and had little to do with the raising of his son. When he first wife died, seven-year-old Hugh was sent to live with John A.’s his sister and her husband. When Hugh began working at his father’s law office, the two got into a row over Hugh’s choice of a wife. Letters between them showed John A. to be gruff and unforgiving.

He was traumatized as a child

When John A. was seven years old, he witnessed the violent murder of his five-year-old brother, James Shaw Macdonald, by a drunken male babysitter. A man named Kennedy had dragged both children from their home to a nearby tavern in Kingston, Ontario. There Kennedy amused himself by forcing gin down the boys’ throats. Young John A. took his brother’s hand and fled from the tavern, with Kennedy in hot pursuit. James tripped and fell, allowing Kennedy to catch up and strike James so hard with his cane that the boy died. The child minder disappeared and was never prosecuted. John A. did not speak of this horrific event until his twilight years, when he revealed it to his private secretary, Joseph Pope.

He was flirtatious around women

John A. was a notorious ladies’ man. Mercy Coles, the unmarried daughter of Prince Edward Island’s premier, wrote in her diary of Macdonald’s obvious attempts to charm her during the Quebec Conference of 1864. Princess Louisa, the dazzling wife of the governor general, was another object of his attention, much to the chagrin of his plainer-looking wife Agnes. And he was very fond of Eliza Grimason, a widowed tavern keeper in Kingston who helped him in his early campaigns. He kept a picture of Grimason on the mantle of his library. Interestingly, no letters survive of correspondence between Agnes and John A. — it’s suspected that Agnes destroyed them.

He eventually stopped binge drinking

Stories of Macdonald’s public drunkenness are legendary. During one campaign speech he threw up but recovered quite nicely when he told his audience the reason for it was that his opponent made him sick. His drinking binges usually followed a crisis — the first notable one happened after his first wife became seriously ill in 1856 — and resulted in him neglecting his duties for days at a time. By his sixtieth birthday, however, his drinking was under control. Lord Dufferein noted in 1877 that Macdonald could “drink wine at dinner without being tempted to excess, which hitherto he has never been able to do, and during the present session he has never given way as in former times.” The last reported lapse into public drunkenness took place in 1878, thirteen years before his death.