(13 April 1871-15 May 1949), novelist. (C. H. MacGillivray, Carrie H. MacGillivray; known to her father as “Birdie”; her name appears on title page of both editions of her novel as C. Holmes MacGillivray) Born presumably at the family home, Dalcrombie, near Williamstown, GC. Parents: George Hopper McGillivray and his wife Eugenia Caroline Holmes. Carrie Holmes MacGillivray’s mother died in giving birth to her. George Hopper McGillivray never remarried, and the young daughter grew up in the care of her father (the grandmother, Mrs John McGillivray, died in 1876), in the family home of Dalcrombie. She attended, in order, Miss Harmon’s Young Ladies’ Boarding School in Ottawa (operated by one of the daughters of the Nor’Wester Daniel W. Harmon), Williamstown High School, and Rollston House (Mrs Neill’s Finishing School for Young Ladies) in Toronto. It has been suggested that during her high school years she took music and painting lessons at the Williamstown convent. She visited Britain with her father about 1892. She is said (not entirely convincingly) to have had as fiancé an Englishman, Charles Wynne Williams, a Cambridge University graduate who taught at Williamstown and was a friend of the McGillivray family. When he died during a hunting trip in 1897, he was buried in the McGillivray plot in St. Andrew’s cemetery, Willliamstown.

     Her father died in 1912, when she was 41 years old. She then sold the Dalcrombie property and settled in Toronto. There she held a a civil service position as clerk-typist in the Ontario Archives from 1913 till her retirement in 1926 or 1929. The papers of Alexander Fraser, provincial archivist, show that John A. Macdonell (Jack Greenfield), who was her relative, and Donald M. Robertson pulled strings to get her the archives job, and that it helped that Premier Sir James Whitney was an old friend of her father. With some aristocratic self confidence, in 1919, Jack Greenfield borrowed her back from the archives for some considerable period of time to act as his housekeeper and hostess when he was staging his 1919 soldiers’ day celebrations, which he expected would include the visit of General A. C. Macdonell. Later that year, Jack Greenfield wrote to Fraser saying that Miss MacGillivray, while with him, “has been busy getting into shape” material she had collected on the early history of GC. Greenfield wanted Fraser to encourage her in this project, and believed that the material should be published in some form. “I am leaving for Scotland on Friday morning and she goes up on Monday (Labor Day) so as to be able to report for duty on Tuesday morning.” A 1923 document said she had the rank of Senior Clerk Typist and was “Engaged chiefly in grouping, sorting, and entering papers and documents received from the various departments of the Government. She furnishes typed copies when required.”

     During the First World War, she was active (and served as president) in a Toronto war-support organization called the Glengarry Women’s Auxiliary, which is mentioned a number of times in the GC-area press. She is said to have made her last visit to GC about 1926. The purpose of the visit was to gather infomation for her forthcoming novel. On this occasion, she was shown around the grounds of Iona Academy by Sister Mary Clair Macdonald. If rumour is of any value, it is worth reporting that she is said to have lost money in the 1929 crash, but to have done well in operating her Bloor Street East home as a rooming house in Toronto during the economic boom created by the Second World War. She died in Western Hospital, Toronto, and was buried in the McGillivray plot (which up to this time, surprisingly, had no gravestone to mark the resting place of a distinguished family) at St. Andrew’s cemetery, Williamstown. A gravestone was placed there in 1972 (see life of her grandfather, the Hon. John McGillivray). Carrie Holmes MacGillivray did, however, create a fitting memorial to the family by putting a large and valuable collection of the family papers in the National Archives, Ottawa, after her father’s death. These papers are referred to by the abbreviation NAC-MD in the source notes to the present dictionary. Her novel was dedicated to the memory of her father, and by her will she founded a Queen’s University scholarship fund in memory of her parents but to be known as the George Hopper MacGillivray Scholarship Fund.

     She was the author of a well-informed historical novel set in pioneer GC, The Shadow of Tradition: a Tale of Old Glengarry. First published by The Graphic Publishers, of Ottawa, in 1927, it was reprinted by McClelland and Stewart, of Toronto, in 1945, with the Scottish dialect of the original edition mostly modernized. An early version of this novel, or at least contributory to it, must have been the historical collections of 1919 mentioned by J. A. Macdonell. She also wrote a novel on the Métis and the 1885 North-West Rebellion called The Prairie Star. It has remained unpublished, but there are MS copies at McGill and Queen’s, and in private ownership. The papers of archivist Fraser contain carbons of three letters of 12 March 1930, presumably from Fraser, introducing Miss MacGillivray, for many years an employee of the archives staff, and now going to London, Eng. with a view to publishing “a story of early life in the western Provinces.” For her novels, see also Judge Ian Macdonell.

Glengarry News 20 May 1949, Standard Freeholder 26 May 1949 (with separate article by Dorothy Dumbrille on the funeral); also Dorothy Dumbrille, “Breath of Yesterday,” The Canadian Author and Bookman, 25:2 (Summer 1949) 19-20 on the funeral * Mrs van Beek’s research (see notes to life of Hon. John McGillivray); much valuable material, amounting to a good short life of Carrie Holmes MacGillivray * Archives of Ontario-Fraser: Donald M. Robertson to Fraser, 14 Feb. 1913, Fraser to John A. Macdonell (Greenfield) 18 Feb. 1913, Macdonell to Fraser, 24 Feb. 1914, 30 April & 26 Aug. 1919, Carrie Holmes MacGillivray to Fraser, 2 July [1919], statement dated 23 July 1923, carbons 12 March 1930 as cited * NAC-MD (i. e., MacGillivray of Dalcrombie Papers); the lack of material on her in this collection suggests that she weeded out material relating to herself, but it does have material on Charles Wynne Williams * MDict 510-511 * Harkness 387, 389, with portrait * MacGillivray & Ross 9, 582, 666 * Bibliography of Glengarry: index * essays on GC novelists by Edward St. John and Royce MacGillivray, Ontario History 65:2 (1973) 61-80 * Alex Mullin, “Discover Prized Memento of Noted Glengarry Author,” (SFH, undated clipping, illustr.) on water colour by Carrie Holmes MacGillivray * returns from 6-month visit to West, SFH 10 June 1904 * Sue Harrington, Glengarry Life No. 38 (2005) with fine cover portrait