Robert Tyne Ernest MacDonald was born in Ellerslie, Alberta, in 1849. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of McGill University in 1881 and practiced medicine the Eastern Townships, residing in Sutton, Sutton, Quebec. During WWI, he served as a medical doctor in Quebec City, where he was honorary colonel. He was also the chief doctor of the Eastern Division of the Canadian Pacific, retiring around 1922. He lost two sons in France during WWI.

He was well known in Newport, Vermont, where he consulted with local doctors. He died in 1932.

Born in Ontario in 1948, Roderick A. Macdonald began his teaching career after graduating from the University of Toronto's law school. After teaching at the University of Windsor in the 1970s, Professor Macdonald came to McGill University in 1979 and served as Dean of the Faculty of Law from 1984 to 1989. His term as Dean was a leap forward for McGill. His vision of legal education, his energy as a scholar, his ability to redefine and re-imagine the boundaries of law, his deep commitment to justice, his unfailing integrity, and his unique dedication to his students and colleagues - all of these continue to this day to define the mission and aspirations of McGill's Faculty of Law.

Macdonald's resaerch and teaching interests were in civil law, commercial law, administrative law, constitutional law, jurisprudence, and access to justice. From 1989 to 1995, he was Director of the Law in Society program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and from 1997 to 2000 he was president of the Law Commission of Canada. He chaired a Task Force on Access to Justice of the Ministère de la justice du Québec (1989-91), and had been a consultant to the Bouchard-Taylor Commission (2007-2008), the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1991-1992), to the Ontario Civil Justice Review and to the Federal Department of Justice on the interaction of federal law and the Civil Code of Québec.

Between 2002 and 2004, he was a consultant to the World Bank in Ukraine and drafted that country's current law on secured transactions. In 2003 and 2004 he was a consultant on civil judgement execution with the CIDA-sponsored Legal Reform Project in the Republic of Vietnam. In 2002, he became a member of the Canadian delegation to UNCITRAL and was on the team drafting the legislative guide to secured transactions law. On October 6, 2006, Justice Minister Yvon Marcoux announced the creation of an expert panel to examine if any measures to prevent Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) should be adopted, to be headed by Macdonald.
In April 2007, Macdonald was awarded a Killam Prize, Canada's most distinguished annual award for outstanding career achievement in research. In the fall of that year, he was honoured with the University of Ottawa Section de droit civil's Ordre du mérite, and, in November 2007, he received the Sir William Dawson Medal for the Social Sciences by the Royal Society of Canada. In November 2008, Macdonald was elected the 111th president of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC). He was the first law professor ever to have been elected president of the RSC and served from November 2009 to November 2011.

Macdonald received the Canadian Bar Association's (CBA) 2010 Ramon John Hnatyshyn Award for Law in recognition of his contributions to the law. In October 2010, he was awarded an LL.D. (honoris causa) by the University of Montreal, and, in June 2011, he was awarded an LL.D. (honoris causa) by Osgoode Hall Law School of York University.

In November 2011, Macdonald was named to the Charbonneau Commission, which has been charged with examining allegations of corruption in the construction industry. That same month, during the Fall convocation ceremonies, he received McGill's Lifetime Achievement Award for Leadership in Learning. In June 2012, the McGill Law Students Association awarded him the 2012 John W. Durnford Teaching Excellence prize.

Macdonald lectured widely across Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia and held visiting positions at Osgoode Hall Law School, the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia, the Australian National University, the University Blaise Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand, the University of Aix-Marseilles, and the London School of Economics.

In 2012 Macdonald retired from McGill. In November of that year, Governor General David Johnston announced that the new reading room in Walter House, the Royal Society of Canada's headquarters in Ottawa, would be named the Macdonald Room in Roderick Macdonald's honour. In December 2012, he was named Officer of the Order of Canada, and in February 2013, he was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal recognizing individuals who have made a significant contribution to Canadian society. On May 28, 2014, at Law's Spring Convocation, he was awarded, in absentia, the McGill University Medal for Exceptional Academic Achievement, one of the University’s highest honours.

Roderick Macdonald passed away on June 13, 2014.

Sir William Christopher Macdonald was born on February 10, 1831, in Glenaladale, Prince Edward Island.

He was a Canadian tobacco manufacturer and major education philanthropist. He was educated at Central Academy in Charlottetown. As a youth, he rebelled against the authoritarian rule of his father and his Roman Catholic upbringing. At the age of 16, he renounced the church, choosing to become a non-practising Christian. At 18 he left home, making his way to the United States, where he found clerical work in Boston. Although he had limited education, Macdonald quickly showed an entrepreneurial spirit, and, joined by his brother Augustine, he organized himself as a broker to handle the shipping of American-made goods to merchants in his native Prince Edward Island. The brothers moved to the Province of Canada and settled in Montreal wherein 1858, they started McDonald Brothers and Co., a company that made tobacco products. The American Civil War opened up opportunities for export and brought them enormous financial success. About 1866 McDonald Brothers and Co. was dissolved and Macdonald was operating under his own name. He soon began using the great wealth he had earned to undertake philanthropic endeavors. He had a close relationship with John William Dawson, the principal of McGill University, and he found his life’s mission in McGill University. He practically re-founded the institution, transforming it from a medical school attached to an arts college into a full-scale university with particular strength in science. Macdonald’s gifts and bequests to McGill exceeded $13,000,000 – a sum unparalleled in Canada and other countries. A lifelong bachelor, Macdonald bequeathed his tobacco company to Walter and Howard Stewart, the two sons of company manager David Stewart. Macdonald and/or the Macdonald Stewart Foundation funded several McGill University facilities, e.g., Macdonald Campus, Macdonald Engineering Building, Macdonald-Harrington Building, and Macdonald-Stewart Library Building.

He died on June 9, 1917, in Montreal, Quebec.

It is unknown where and when Aeneas MacDonell (also spelled McDonell) was born, he was killed in 1809 at the fight at Eagle Lake. MacDonell was the brother of Alexander McDonell, who was the brother-in-law of William McGillivray. In 1809, the Hudson’s Bay Company was in Eagle Lake and in mid-September, a party of workers for the North West Company commanded by MacDonell camped close to the post. An Indigenous man who sold his furs to the Hudson’s Bay Company was about to leave for his camp with the goods he had purchased from the company, when MacDonell stole the man’s canoe and goods because of a prior debt contracted with the North West Company. When two men went to assist the Indigenous man, MacDonell wounded one of them with a sword and the other man threatened to shoot MacDonell. Men from both camps intervened and MacDonell had continued to attack those opposed to him, injuring another person with his sword. A man named John Mowat shot and killed MacDonell and agreed to surrender and was sent to Montreal for trial.

John Macdonell (spelled McDonell prior to 1830s) was born on November 30, 1768, in Scotland, and died on April 17, 1850, in Pointe-Fortune, Upper Canada. He was the son of John McDonell of Scothouse. Macdonell, his family, and six-hundred members of the Macdonell clan of Glengarry immigrated to the Mohawk Valley of New York in 1773. In May of 1788 Macdonell entered the service of the North West Company as a clerk and was sent to Qu’Appelle valley (Saskatchewan) to work. Here, he earned the name Le Prêtre, for his piety and his insistence that his men observe the feasts of the Roman Catholic Church. Around 1797, Macdonell married a Metis woman named Magdeleine Poitras, “a la façon du pays,” and they had four sons and two daughters. Despite signing a marriage contract in 1813, they were never seen as legally married, and Magdeleine went through an act of posthumous marriage in 1853 to ensure that she and her children would be seen as Macdonell’s legal heirs. Later in 1788, Macdonell moved to Quebec and settled in present-day Cornwall, and was ensigned in the Cornwall and Osnabruck battalion of militia. In 1796, he became a wintering partner in the North West Company, and three years later, oversaw the Upper Red River department. Macdonell retired from the North West Company in 1812, and after hearing news of the war in the United States, he became commissioned captain in the Corps of Canadian Voyageurs where he was taken prisoner at the battle of Saint-Regis three weeks later. In 1813, Macdonell established himself in the lower Ottawa valley and purchased one-thousand acres of land in the Hawkesbury Township near Pointe-Fortune. Four years later, he was established in the Upper Canadian side of Pointe-Fortune where he became a businessman. Macdonell was appointed a judge of the Ottawa District Court in 1816 and held this post for nine years while serving as a district roads commissioner. From 1817 to 1820, Macdonell represented Prescott in the Upper Canadian House of Assembly and in 1822, was made a colonel in the Prescott Reserve Militia. Macdonell’s diary of his time as a fur trader can be found in the book titled Five Fur Traders of the Northwest: Being the Narrative of Peter Pond and the Diaries of John Macdonell, Archibald N. McLeod, Hugh Faries, and Thomas Connor.