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  (12 Feb. 1849-5 March 1924), author. (E. W. Thomson) Born in Peel County, Ont. After being a soldier in the American Civil War, he was a civil engineer and surveyor in Canada before turning to a career as journalist in Canada and the United States. During much of 1878-1891, he was a writer (eventually chief editorial writer) for the Toronto //Globe//. In 1891-1901, he worked as a journalist in Boston, then resettled in Canada. He died in Boston, Mass., where in his final months he had lived in his grandson’s home. He was one of the important Canadian authors of his time, and is remembered today especially as a gifted writer of short stories. He was not a Glengarrian, and no evidence has come to light that he ever visited GC, though we may assume on grounds of geography and general probability that he did so (see the remarks that follow on the Carillon Canal and Pointe-Fortune). He did, however, write the best-known short story ever based on a GC theme.
-<tab>Entitled “Privilege of the Limits,” it celebrates the stubbornness of a GC farmer who in the days of debtors’ prisons was imprisoned in Cornwall for debt, and found an ingenious way to escape from his obligation to remain in an area of Cornwall close to the prison. Judge Pringle has the anecdote of what is evidently the same farmer in his //Lunenburgh// (1890); he describes it as a story that “used to be told.” (p. 310) Thomson’s “Privilege of the Limits” was published in //Harper’s Weekly//, 25 July 1891 (no illustrations). This must have been the first American publication, and it was perhaps the first anywhere. Quite possibly Thomson based his story on Pringle’s passage. The story is set in the times of Judge David Jones, a real person who was county court judge 1826-1841. The story appears to contain references to Duncan Macdonell (1781?-1864) of Greenfield, who appears in the present dictionary. Another character, Aeneas Macdonald of the Sandfields, arguably verges on reality. There seems never , true enough, to have been an Aeneas among the Sandfields. It is possible, however, that Thomson chose the name mischievously, on the basis of a young man called Aeneas McDonald belonging to a considerably later period and not one of the Sandfields, who was counties treasurer of SDG 1885-1887 and who in the spring of 1888 was reported to have been arrested in Minnesota on charges of discrepancies in the SDG public funds and forgery. An attempt was made in 1888 to extradite him from the U. S. A., but if his case ever came to trial no record of it has been found. The reference to the Sandfields may touch on the combative desire in the free-for-all political warfare of the Confederation era to link various lawbreakers currently newsworthy with prominent political groups. (See also a note on this practice in the entry for MacIntosh GANG)
+<tab>Entitled “Privilege of the Limits,” it celebrates the stubbornness of a GC farmer who in the days of debtors’ prisons was imprisoned in Cornwall for debt, and found an ingenious way to escape from his obligation to remain in an area of Cornwall close to the prison. Judge Pringle has the anecdote of what is evidently the same farmer in his //Lunenburgh// (1890); he describes it as a story that “used to be told.” (p. 310) Thomson’s “Privilege of the Limits” was published in //Harper’s Weekly//, 25 July 1891 (no illustrations). This must have been the first American publication, and it was perhaps the first anywhere. Quite possibly Thomson based his story on Pringle’s passage. The story is set in the times of Judge David Jones, a real person who was county court judge 1826-1841. The story appears to contain references to Duncan Macdonell (1781?-1864) of Greenfield, who appears in the present dictionary. Another character, Aeneas Macdonald of the Sandfields, arguably verges on reality. There seems never , true enough, to have been an Aeneas among the Sandfields. It is possible, however, that Thomson chose the name mischievously, on the basis of a young man called Aeneas McDonald belonging to a considerably later period and not one of the Sandfields, who was counties treasurer of SDG 1885-1887 and who in the spring of 1888 was reported to have been arrested in Minnesota on charges of discrepancies in the SDG public funds and forgery. An attempt was made in 1888 to extradite him from the U. S. A., but if his case ever came to trial no record of it has been found. The reference to the Sandfields may touch on the combative desire in the free-for-all political warfare of the Confederation era to link various lawbreakers currently newsworthy with prominent political groups. (See also a note on this practice in the entry for [[macintosh_gang|MacIntosh GANG]])
 <tab>The //Cornwall Observer// , 30 Oct. 1845, named a farmer of Lochiel Township, Duncan M’Millan, who had been for almost two weeks in the jail of the Eastern District (i.e., the Cornwall jail) “for debt.” This was not Thomson’s hero, presumably, but someone in a like plight.