Raghnall Ailein Raghnaill Mhóir

Ronald MacLellan was born in Strathlorne, Inverness County, Nova Scotia on December 8, 1904. He was the first born of three children to Allan MacLellan and Elizabeth MacLellan (née Kennedy).

He lived his entire life in the house in Strathlorne that was built around 1870 by his grandfather, also named Ronald MacLellan, and his grandmother, Jessie MacLellan (née MacLennan).

He married Jessie Gillies, a school teacher from Port Hood and Inverness on July 21,1942 in Inverness and had seven children.

Ronald’s first language was Gaelic even though he was a fourth generation Canadian on his father’s side and fifth generation on his mother’s. He could not speak English when he went to school and was punished whenever he spoke Gaelic there.

During the years of the First World War, Ronald left school after Grade 8 to help his father with the farm. Despite leaving school at an early age, Ronald retained a lifelong interest in learning and reading.

Gaelic remained an important part of this life, particularly when telling jokes to friends or expressing his frustration with the cows through Gaelic expletives! He and his wife Jessie used Gaelic as a language of privacy in their small farmhouse with seven children. When their friends came to visit, stories and jokeswere primarily told in English, but the endings and punchlines were often in Gaelic, much to the frustration of the children. None of Ronald and Jessie’s children learned to speak Gaelic, other than a few words and phrases.

Throughout his life, Ronald worked as a farmer, a general store owner, and clerk for the Strathlorne post-office. Later in life, Ronald picked up a woodworking hobby. His California lawn chairs were sold throughout the province. He often used the handles of broken hockey sticks (collected from the Inverness Arena) to make the slats of the seats and backs of the chairs. Definitely a case of up-cycling for those hockey sticks!

Ronald died on February 6, 1985 from a heart attack and is buried in the Stella Maris Parish Cemetery in Inverness. Ronald’s last words, like his first words, were in Gaelic, “Iosa, cuidich mi.”, translated as “Jesus, help me”.