(4 Jan. 1857-17 March 1933), photographer. Born on East 1/2 Lot 29, 9th Concession of Lochiel Township, GC. Parents: Richard Donovan, a native of Ireland, weaver, farmer and schoolteacher, and his wife Sarah MacMillan. Duncan himself owned this half lot from 1890 to 1895. For a time Donovan was one of the travelling tintype photographers who were familiarly seen at fairs and other public events. The Glengarrian newspaper of 2 May 1890 reported that “Mr. D. Donovan, of McCrimmon, starts out on Monday with his photographic apparatus for the season’s operations. We hope Mr. Donovan will be very successful– he should be, as he understands the business thoroughly.” He was associated in business in his earlier years with two other photographers, A.G.A. Robinson, of Alexandria and Duncan McMillan, of Maxville. Robinson, who had experience of mining in South Africa, left for the Klondike gold fields in Aug. 1897, and it was perhaps at this time that Donovan assumed sole control of the business in which they had been partners in Alexandria. In an accident at the Orange Walk at Riceville, Ont., 12 July 1898, Donovan and McMillan lost by fire a tent and the “cineograph” with which they were giving demonstrations. (Glengarry News 15 July 1898)

     Donovan’s obituary in the Glengarry News in 1933 noted that he had been “a familiar figure in Alexandria for some forty years, conducting with marked success, a photographer’s studio.” Donovan did studio photographs for a clientele drawn from the Scottish and French families of GC, the southern fringe of Prescott, and the part of Quebec next to GC. In 1898 Donovan (“our genial photographer”) was reported to have arranged to have a photographic gallery built on an Alexandria lot he had newly purchased, and it was expected that he would “shortly be in his new and more extensive quarters.” (Glengarrian 3 June 1898) In 1902 Alexander Cameron had the contract for building Donovan a house in Alexandria. (Glengarry News 21 Feb. & 18 April 1902 ) The date 1902 has also been given (obituary) for the building of Donovan’s studio premises in Alexandria.

     When Donovan retired in 1924, Peter Charlebois took over his photographic business. Charlebois preserved Dunovan’s glass plates of photographs. These plates, which were purchased on behalf of the Archives of Ontario by a well-known Glengarrian, Hugh P. MacMillan, are now divided between the Archives of Ontario and the Glengarry Historical Society. The fading memory of Dunovan’s life and achievement was immediately and strikingly revived in 1977 when the Oxford University Press published a collection of his photographs under the title of City Work at Country Prices: the Portrait Photographs of Duncan Donovan, edited by Jennifer Harper. Jennifer Harper also prepared an exhibition called “The Portrait Studio of Duncan Donovan,” which was held at the Galerie Optica in Montreal in the spring of 1975, and likewise an exhibition for the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1977. The Glengarry Historical Society hosted a Galerie Optica display of Donovan’s photographs at Williamstown in 1975 (Glengarry News 21 Aug. 1975 & Standard Freeholder 23 Aug. 1975). Today photographs by Donovan are collector’s items. The Dunvegan Pioneer Museum has a collection of them, most of them donated to the museum from GC homes. The outstanding feature of Donovan portraits is the vividness and immediacy with which the subjects look out from the cardboard; they seem alive. Presumably some of Donovan’s portraits were used in Gareau’s Canada’s Heroes volume of 1921. It would be interesting to know how many, and which ones. Since the revival of Donovan’s reputation, the GC-area press has sometimes reproduced his photographic work, drawing especial attention to his name (e.g. GN 18 Sept. 2002, 5 March 2003, VKHR 12 June 2002).

     Donovan was married on 23 Oct. 1899 at Montreal to Catherine A. Campbell (1870-1943), of Peveril, Que. (Glengarry News 27 Oct. 1899)

     See also Mrs Hugh H. Grace.

Glengarry News 24 March 1933 * Lochinvar to Skye 204-206 * Donovan and his wife themselves shown in photographs, GN 5 Feb. 2003, 2 Nov. 2005 * Jennifer Harper, “The Portraits of Duncan Donovan: ‘City Work at Country Prices’,” Artscanada (Dec. 1974) pp. 90-96 * Jennifer Harper, “Cradle to Grave: Intimations of Mortality through a Turn-of-the-Century Lens,” The Canadian, 21 May 1977 * A.G.A. Robinson, Donovan’s early business associate, and the Klondike: Glengarrian & GN 6 Aug. 1897, GN 24 Dec. 1897 (writing as “A.G.A.R.”), GN 4 March & 26 Aug. 1898; see also Vankleek Hill Review 27 Nov. 1896 * MacGillivray & Ross 613, 674 * gravestone of Duncan Donovan and his wife in St. Finnan’s cemetery, Alexandria * Ostrom 270 * Donovan,who has been ill, is visited by his brother Patrick from Two Harbors, Minn., Glengarrian & Glengarry News 20 May 1898 *a McMillan family of Kirk Hill have group portrait taken by Donovan before emigrating to Sask., GN 23 Feb. 1906 * picture of Donovan’s building, Glengarrian 29 June 1906