(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.

     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)

     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.

     Rather surprisingly, it has been said of Thomson that “Today,… his reputation rests largely on one story, ‘The Privilege of the Limits’.” (Lucas, 1971)

     Thomson’s short story “Dour Davie’s Drive” tells the strange and horrifying story of how a young shantyman with a freshly broken leg drove himself back to his home in the “Scotch settlement ” over winter roads in a journey of several days. This has been seen as a story about GC (Sheshko p. xxvi), and perhaps GC is indeed the place meant, though the GC name is absent from the story. The GC writer “Sandy Fraser” (John E. McIntosh) retold the Dour Davie story in 1944 as an incident that happened to a man from Sandy’s neighbourhood, and gives Davie’s name as Archie Grant. (Farmer's Advocate 13 April 1944) If Davie was based on an actual Glengarrian, it was probably Duncan H. B. MacMillan, who about 1871 drove home from shanty in the Upper Ottawa Valley in conditions similar to Davie’s. Other possibilities, of course, are that the “Scotch settlement” where Davie lived was the McNab settlement in Renfrew County or was in the Eastern Townships. A thin thread that could connect the story with the Baptist neighbourhood of Breadalbane where John E. McIntosh lived is that Thomson thanks the American Baptist Publication Society of Philadelphia for permission to reprint “Dour Davie’s Drive.” “Dour Davie’s Drive” (with illustr. by F. Finley) introduced a new generation to the then disappearing traditions of the shantymen when it was included in the Ontario school reader Life and Literature, Book Two (1937), which was still used in Ontario schools as late as 1949.

     Thomson’s story “Great Godfrey’s Lament” is set in a town on the Ottawa River, and in a house which, it has been noted (Wales 1957), closely resembles and is evidently based on the Macdonell-Williamson mansion at Pointe-Fortune, which was built by John Macdonell, who had GC connections. The story deals with the difficult role in life of the part-Indian children of the NWC partners. John Macdonell, who had been a NWC partner, had part-Indian children, and one of them was called Godfrey. There is possibly some echo of David Thompson’s disappointments with his family. There are no specific GC passages, but the dilemma it depicts was Glengarrian.

     All three of the stories named have illustrations by C.W. Jefferys. Thomson was also the author of a story (not illustrated by Jefferys) called “Shining Cross of Rigaud,” set at Rigaud, Que., near Pointe-Fortune.

     Let us return now to the narrative of Thomson’s life, and see how it relates to the settings of the stories named. For some years early in his career, Thomson worked as a civil engineer on the Carillon Canal, across the river from Pointe-Fortune and not far from GC and Rigaud. Thomson was married in March 1873 to Adelaide St. Denis (d. 26 Dec. 1921), who is described as being, like her husband, a writer. Her father Alexander St. Denis (d. 1891) was a merchant for many years at Pointe-Fortune, and her brother was a merchant at Pointe Fortune and nearby Vankleek Hill. The well-to-do St. Denis family is believed to have disapproved of the marriage, which was an elopement. But luckily the estrangement was not lasting, and “In later years the Thomsons [presumably including Edward William] spent many of their summers” (Wales) in the St. Denis house at Pointe-Fortune.

E. W. Thomson, Old Man Savarin Stories (1917) has all four stories named above and the illustr. The University of Toronto Press reprint of 1974 has a useful introduction by Linda Sheshko but lacks the illustr. and Thomson’s note on permissions. Of the four stories, only “Dour Davie’s Drive” was not in Thomson’s original 1895 vol. of the Savarin stories * review of his 1895 Savarin vol., with summary of “Privilege of the Limits,” Cornwall Freeholder 6 Dec. 1895 * “Privilege of the Limits” reprinted Glengarry News 7 Feb. 1913 (the editor gives the credit to Harper’s Weekly, a clue to the text from which he worked); repr. also Great Canadian Short Stories, ed. Alec Lucas (1971) and, ed. Dane Lanken, Glengarry Life No. 37 (2003) * Thomson’s life in Morgan (1898, 1912) includes a note on his wife * Thomas, 499-500 (Pointe-Fortune and St. Denis family) * I am grateful to Lorraine Auerbach Chevrier for information on Thomson and his wife Adelaide * Julia Grace Wales, “An Experience Rich in Color and Character of Carillon-Point Fortune Neighborhood,” The Lachute Watchman, 24 Jan. 1957 (important for Thomson) * Bibliography of Glengarry: index * Judge David Jones: Pringle 314; Harkness 410 * Aeneas McDonald: Pringle 212, 316, cf. 45; arrest, The Sentinel and Orange and Protestant Advocate (Toronto), 31 May 1888; federal extradition file for Aeneas McDonald, NAC, RG 13-6 (Justice) volume 988 file 462; cf Dr Roderick Mcdonald