Leo Archibald MacDonell
November 27, 1930 – February 24, 2019
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MacDonell, Leo Archibald
Educator, coach, community volunteer, builder, faithful parishioner, and family man – “Leo A.” died on February 24, 2019 at Strait Richmond Hospital, following a brief illness. The son of the late Archibald S. and Mary Fitzgerald, he was born November 27, 1930 and raised on the family farm at Judique Intervale in Inverness County, Nova Scotia. He is survived by his loving wife Yvonne (Bourgeois) MacDonell; Sister Ellen MacDonell, OSF, his sister (Allegany, New York); his brother John Lester (Judique Intervale, N.S.), and was predeceased by his oldest brother Bernard (Theresa Meagher MacDonell) and youngest brother Laughlin (Karen Lawson MacDonell). He is also survived by his children: Kevin (Leslie Smith, Bedford, N.S.), Angela (Liam O’Neill, Surrey, B.C.), Paul (Sylvia Ranson MacDonell, Grande Prairie, Alberta), and Francis (Grande Prairie, Alberta), and by his cherished grandchildren: Reginald, Katelyn, and James.
Leo’s mother Mary bequeathed to him and his siblings the value of reading, learning, and involvement in betterment of the community. Mary was a leading proponent of the founding of a consolidated high school at Judique in 1946, replacing nine inadequate one-room schools – the same school where her son Leo went on to teach for 33 years, and where his four children were educated. From their father, Archie S., they learned the ways of the farm and dignity of physical labour. Leo liked to quote his father on the wisdom of working long but slowly: “Go at your work with an all-day stroke.”
He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from St. Francis Xavier University in 1954, and immediately began teaching in Judique. He was not much older than his students. In later years, he sometimes called students by their parents’ names, having taught multiple generations of the same family. He took breaks in his career to obtain his B.Ed. (1956) and Masters degree (1974), also from St.F.X. His worn X-ring never left his finger.
Leo held the post of Vice-Principal for the majority of his career at Judique-Creignish Consolidated School, while continuing to teach high school English and history. For sixteen years (from 1973 till his retirement in 1988, when his daughter Angela graduated) his Grade 12 English class devoted a sizable portion of the school year to a senior class drama production.
Most former students will recall the way he would strike the desk with his powerful, thick-fingered fist. This was more for effect than out of genuine anger – the same gesture accompanied many a winning trump when he would “grace the mahogany with a card.” He took a genuine interest in all his students and although he would be firm he was, like all great teachers, motivated by sympathy for their individual struggles.
“To work with young people is at once an exhilarating experience and a grave responsibility,” he said in a speech given at his retirement banquet in 1988. “The complex beings called ‘children’ come to school with Body, Mind, and Soul – and the truly successful teacher must nurture all three.” A member of the class of 1978 described him as “a man who used to push us if we were getting slack, a man who used to ‘hang a carrot’ in front of us if we needed motivation, and a man who knew how to keep you in line when you needed discipline.”
He advised students in a wide variety of extracurricular activities, but nothing was closer to his heart than school sport. He was involved in some capacity with all sports at the school, and once remarked that coaching helped him to better understand his students. He helped coach and manage the men’s hockey team during his entire teaching career; a highlight was winning the provincial championship in 1978.
When he began coaching high school hockey in the mid-1950s, there were no arenas in the county. Later on, when he and a fellow teacher started a school track team, again there were no facilities. What else to do but build them? He worked tirelessly to set up at least three outdoor rinks in the community. He volunteered for the Judique Recreation Association almost 20 years, not only writing letters and making phone calls to raise money for developing the facilities, but spending many days working on the grounds himself – a fixture in his long raincoat and rubber boots. Several acres of land adjacent to the school were transformed into a ball field, a soccer/football field with track, and tennis courts. Leo served as president of the JRA for seven years during the 1970s, and was a tireless promoter of school track and field.
In 1992 he was a recipient of the Hugh Noble Award, given to him by the Nova Scotia School Athletic Federation in recognition for outstanding contributions to interscholastic sport. In accepting the award he said: “Over the years my approach to accomplishing tasks was to lead by example, and I want to tell you that it is a damn tiring approach to leadership – but it works.” He recalled that at the start of the development of the community’s recreational grounds, he took a power saw to the site to attack the forest. He started work at 9 a.m. and by 10, three more people with saws had joined him.
His wife Yvonne aided him in his community activities, although sometimes it became a bit much. One morning as he was leaving home at 5 a.m., lantern in hand, to put up boards around an outdoor rink, she said to him, “Why don’t you take your bed with you?”
He was a 25-year member and captain of the Judique Volunteer Fire Department, an active lifelong member of St. Andrew’s Catholic parish, and a recipient of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal, awarded to contributors to public life.
Leo sometimes regretted being an “absentee parent” while pursuing his various projects, but he was a devoted husband, father, and grandfather. He fell in love with a girl from Cheticamp, then working in Port Hawkesbury. Yvonne and Leo were married in 1968 and raised their four children in the house Leo had built several years earlier as a member of a cooperative house-building group, on a small parcel of land carved out of his family’s farm. Yvonne and Leo, inseparable partners throughout life and involvement in community, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2018.
With about a dozen other members of the Judique community, Leo and Yvonne participated in the illegal occupation, in March 1999, of Judique-Creignish Consolidated School, to protest a school board decision to shut it down. The protestors attracted national media attention when they chained the doors and barricaded themselves inside for ten days, keeping students and teachers out and demanding meetings with provincial leaders.
Ultimately unable to save the school they themselves had built, local residents forged ahead with planning and fundraising for a new project, the Celtic Music Interpretive Centre. Leo was a driving force behind the project and a perennial organizer and fixture at the very successful annual fundraiser, the Celtic Music Golf Tournament. The Interpretive Centre, one of the most important facilities for the promotion and preservation of the Cape Breton music tradition, opened officially in 2007.
Leo left the governing society’s board of directors that same year, and began enjoying some leisure time. For many years, Leo and Yvonne would rise early, drive more than an hour to the golf course in Antigonish, and tee off in the pre-dawn darkness. They never rented a cart; occasional partners would find themselves huffing and puffing to keep up.
As he advanced in years, Leo spent more time in the garage he had built, crafting birdhouses, benches, and chairs. When his mobility declined, he switched to making jewelry from local beach glass and polished stones, which were sold in Yvonne’s craft shop in their home. Always a reader, he was especially voracious in his final years, right up to his hospitalization, and left behind a sizeable stack of books yet to be read.
In a speech he gave at his retirement dinner in 1988, he said he felt “haunted” by these words of Tennyson, from the poem Ulysses: “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!” but was heartened by these lines, further on: “but something ere the end / Some work of noble note, may yet be done.”
Resting in the Community Room of the Judique Fire Department with Wednesday from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. Funeral mass will be offered Thursday in St. Andrew’s Parish Church, Judique, with Rev. Allan MacMillan officiating. Reception to follow. To protect the health of family members with chemical sensitivities, attendees must avoid wearing scents. Artificial flowers only, or in lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Celtic Music Interpretive Centre or a cause of your choice.
SERVICES
Visitation
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
2:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Community Room of the Judique Fire Department
30 River Denys Road
Judique, Nova Scotia B0E1P0
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Visitation
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Community Room of the Judique Fire Department
30 River Denys Road
Judique, Nova Scotia B0E1P0
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Funeral Service
Thursday, February 28, 2019
11:00 AM
St. Andrew Roman Catholic Church
5486 Highway 19
Judique, Nova Scotia B0E1P0
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Nos plus sincères sympathies à la famille et aux amis de Leo Archibald MacDonell November 27 1930 February 24 2019..
Décès pour la Ville: Port-Hawkesbury, Province: Nova Scotia