McGill Libraries
McLennan Library Building3459 rue McTavish
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 0C9
Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Macdonell, Miles
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
c. 1767-1828
History
Miles Macdonell was born about 1767 in Inverness, Scotland.
Miles Macdonell was the first governor of the Red River Colony (also known as Assiniboia), a 19th-century Scottish settlement located in what is now Manitoba and North Dakota. In 1773, his father, Colonel John Macdonell of Scothouse in Inverness-shire, along with three of his cousins, chartered the H.M.S. Pearl. They brought over five hundred family members and friends at the invitation of Sir William Johnson and settled at Caughnawaga on the Mohawk River in the Province of New York.
Miles displayed military tendencies from an early age, being appointed ensign in the King's Royal Regiment of New York in 1792, lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Volunteers in 1794, and captain in the same corps in 1796. In 1803, he became the governor of Lord Selkirk's planned colony in the Red River area of the Northwest Territory. Selkirk, who was a shareholder in the Hudson's Bay Company, purchased 300,000 km² (116,000 mi²) of land in the Red River Valley from the company to create a new home in the New World for destitute Scots and to deny land to the Hudson's Bay Company's commercial rival, the North West Company.
In 1812, Macdonell gathered the first group of colonists, primarily consisting of evicted Scottish Highlanders from the Sutherland estates. He faced opposition from the North West Company, whose headquarters were in Montreal. In 1815, representatives of the North West Company attacked the colonists and demanded the surrender of Governor Macdonell. To prevent bloodshed, he voluntarily surrendered and was taken to Montreal as a prisoner. Although charges were filed against him by his adversaries, his case was never tried.
In later years, Macdonell lived at the residence of his brother John in Pointe-Fortune on the Ottawa River, where he died on June 28, 1828.
In 1798, he married Catherine "Kitty" Macdonell of Collachie (1763–1799). After her death, he remarried in 1802 to Nancy Ann Macdonell of Greenfield (1791–1864). In his honour, Miles Macdonell Collegiate opened in 1952 in Winnipeg, Manitoba.