page_title: Alexander Macdonell (bishop)
section_title: Canada
hierarchical_section_title: Alexander Macdonell (bishop) / Canada
caption_attribution_description: English: Alexander Macdonell, first bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kingston, in a letter to Sir Francis Bond Head, Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, rejects several allegations uttered against him in the House of Assembly in 1836, and retrospectively describes his life as vicar for the whole of Upper Canada.
context_page_description: Bishop Alexander Macdonell was the first Roman Catholic bishop of Kingston, Upper Canada.
  He served a chaplain with the Glengarry Fencibles during the Irish Rebellion of 1798. His presence insured that the regiment "distinguished itself by its humanity". When the regiment was demobilized, most of the soldiers found themselves unemployed and destitute. He led them to Canada, where they received a grant of land for their service.
  When Macdonell arrived in 1804, he found three priests and three churches in Upper Canada. By his energy and perseverance he induced a considerable immigration to the province, and left at his death forty-eight churches attended by thirty priests, plus a seminary and a college.
context_section_description: When the regiment was disbanded in Glasgow in 1802, Rev. Macdonell appealed to the government to grant its members land in Canada. The government countered with a proposal for the recently acquired island of Trinidad, but Macdonell held fast. Influential lairds and landholders raised objections to "depopulating" the land, and the Emigration Act rigidly enforced. With all the obstacles placed in his way, Bernard Kelly says, "he may be literally said 'to have smuggled his friends away'" 
  Father Macdonell arrived at York, Upper Canada (now Toronto), 1 November, 1804, and proceeded to settle the people on the lands granted by the British government. The area was part of the Diocese of Quebec. Macdonell, was assigned to the mission of St. Raphael's in Glengarry, which he made his headquarters for twenty-five years. On his arrival he found three priests in the province, the Rev. Roderick Macdonell at St. Andrews and St. Regis, the Rev. Francis Fitzimmons in Glengarry, and the Rev. Father Richard at Sandwich. 
  The Rev. Roderick Macdonell died in 1806 and Father Fitzimmons removed shortly afterwards to New Brunswick; this left Father Macdonell in charge of the whole province for the next ten years with limited assistance.
  He was obliged to travel over through the province, carrying the requisites for Mass, and the administration of the sacraments, sometimes on horseback, sometimes in birch canoes, and sometimes on foot. In 1812, he raised another regiment, the Glengarry Light Infantry Fencibles, which came to the defence of Upper Canada in the War of 1812. William Foster Coffin would later liken McDonell to “a medieval churchman, half bishop, half baron, [who] fought and prayed, with equal zeal, by the side of men he had come to regard as his hereditary followers.”
  St. Raphael's Catholic Church was built around 1821. It was one of the oldest churches in what was then Upper Canada. In late 1970, the church interiors, roof and tower were destroyed by fire. In 1973, a smaller church with the same name was built, attached to the ruins.
caption: Bishop Alexander Macdonell - Letter to Lieutenant Governor Francis Bond Head (1836)
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