(10 Jan. 1885-2 Nov. 1961), farmer, magazine columnist. (C. G. McKillican, Gordon McKillican, C. Gordon McKillican, “Mac”) Born on his parents’ farm at Breadalbane, GC. Parents: William E. McKillican (d. 1929), and his wife Emma May Christie (d. 1926), who was from the Martintown area. William E. farmed first at Breadalbane, in the neighbourhood where his grandfather the Rev. William McKillican, the pioneer farmer-minister, had settled after his emigration from Scotland, and then in the Lochinvar area, before moving in 1910 to a farm at St. Elmo, close to the Congregationalist log church built by the congregation the Rev. William had founded there.
Gordon McKillican attended primary school but not high school; he attended the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) with the class of 1911, but was allowed to take only a two-year associate course, not the full academic course, because of his not having high school training. He settled at St. Elmo with the rest of the family. On 9 Aug. 1911, he married Katie Florence Cass (born 3 June 1888), of L’Orignal. They farmed at St. Elmo till an injury sustained in the runaway of a team of horses in 1918 made him give up farming. Consequently, he joined the staff of the farm periodical Farm and Dairy of Peterborough, Ont., as associate editor. A period in sales in Toronto followed, then he returned to farming, buying a farm in 1924 on Lots 9 & 10, of the 17th Concession of Indian Lands, on the southwest edge of Maxville, in 1924. (Later, during World War II he also acquired the adjoining Lots 11 & 12 ) His farm buildings were on the “height of land” and he is remembered as having made the joke that rain falling on the north side of his barn ran into the Ottawa River, and the rain falling on the south side ran into the St. Lawrence.
At that location he built up a high quality herd of purebred Holstein cattle. In 1931, he became the founding president of the St. Lawrence Valley Holstein Breeders’ Club, the organization known since 1945 as the Glengarry Holstein Club. In 1925, he began writing his column “Mac’s Meanderings” for the Canadian Countryman. He had been known to his fellow students by the nickname Mac at OAC, and it served as his pen name for the column, though people never called him Mac in the Maxville area. Beginning in 1926, and continuing throughout the next quarter century, he supplied the village of Maxville with bottled milk. Formerly, Maxville people acquired milk in various ways, which including their keeping their own cows–a custom that now began, if cautiously, to be phased out. An advanced and progressive farmer, operating a dairy required of him techniques different from those of most GC farmers, including the use of large amounts of ice (collected in winter and and stored in ice houses) for cooling the milk. In 1941, he began pasteurizing the milk. (Glengarry News 19 Dec. 1941)
On 30 Jan. 1930, his wife died, leaving him with six children including twins a month old. He never remarried, but his wife’s unmarried elder sister, Ada Cass, helped to raise the family. He retired from farming in 1955. By this time, his five sons had sought occupations other than farming. In 1961 he attended the 50th anniversary of his OAC class. His place of death was the Cornwall General Hospital. He and his wife are buried in the Maxville Cemetery. He was a Sunday School teacher and hard worker for the United Church, and, sharing the musical talent of this family, a singer in the choir. The very model of a good citizen, he was active besides in a wide range of community affairs, including membership on the Maxville council.
His “Mac’s Meanderings” column was published weekly in the Canadian Countryman from 1925 to 1940, every two weeks in the Canadian Countryman from 1940 to 1951, and every two weeks in the Farmer’s Advocate and Canadian Countryman from 1951 till his death. During much the same period, John E. McIntosh was publishing his “Sandy Fraser” column. Thus not just one, but two GC farmers, both of them of Breadalbane origins, kept the Ontario farm public well informed of GC farming. He and McIntosh had known each other since their Breadalbane days, and McKillican’s son (Charles) Herbert McKillican recalled that these two men “used to compare notes any time they could get together.” Gordon McKillican was president of the Holstein Breeders’ Club when the Holstein Breeders held their field day at McIntosh’s farm on 18 June 1935. (Standard Freeholder 21 June 1935) Gordon McKillican’s columns are of the diary type, reporting on the daily and yearly round of farming, and are a historical record of permanent value, not just for GC farming, but for Ontario farming at large. Gordon McKillican’s son Herbert has also stated that Gordon McKillican kept his authorship of the column as private a matter as possible, never mentioning his authorship of it to anyone who did not already know of the connection. At least for a short period in the early 1920s, Gordon McKillican published articles in various journals of the farm press under a wide variety of pen names. In the last summer of his life he was working on a manuscript, which has never been published, recalling the farm life of 50 years before.
Besides the other family linkages mentioned in this article, Gordon McKillican was the brother of William Christie McKillican, the nephew of Janet McKillican, and the greatnephew of Daniel McKillican and the Rev. John McKillican.
Glengarry News 9 Nov. 1961 * obituary sketch of his life by his son Herbert, Farmer's Advocate 25 Nov. 1961 (with portrait), repr. (without portrait) Mackilligin 64-66 * Mackilligin 53-70 * Campbell (1986), 272, 324-330 * Maxville (1991) 33-34, 135-137, 218, 299, 307, 319, 628, 702-707, 769 * biog. , with line portrait, prepared for his induction into Glengarry Agricultural Wall of Fame, GN 22 Sept. 1993 * Holstein 2, 29-30 (with portrait) * Bibliography of Glengarry: index; includes a summary of his Mac columns for the year 1939 * present author’s file of letters from C. Herbert McKillican * “A Visit to Mac of ‘Mac’s Meanderings,’” Canadian Countryman 22 Sept. 1928 (description of his farm; illustr.)