John Francis Dunn

"He was born May 19, 1871, and by the time of the new elections of 1891 he was in early manhood and had develped a passionate interest in both cheese-making and politics.
     Sir John A Macdonald's administration had suffered two damaging blows, from the Riel crisis of 1885 and from the Pacific Scandal. However, his National Policy of protection of some industry vexed the County of Leeds . . . Here, in South Crosby, where cheese-making had become a profession, the natural market for cheese from the factories that dotted the countryside every four miles was the United States . . . to the cheese-makers and dairy farmers of the township the National Policy was close to being a national disaster.
     In order to have a voice in the affairs of South Crosby, my father [John Francis] purchased an additional piece of land alongside the homestead on Indian Lake in order to get his name of the voter's list, for only men of substance could exercise the franchise . . .
     Later he taught school at Sweets' Corners, Brockville, and then became principal of St Mary's School near the cathedral in Kingston. From there he went to McGill University in Montreal to study medicine . . . On graduation he found himself with his mother's heritage of the Irish complaint; he too had evidence of pulmonary tuberculosis . . . However, he worked as a ship's doctor on the North Atlantic run from St John's, Newfoundland to Liverpool and made a complete recovery . . . He returned to Elgin and practiced medicine there for some years until his brother James, the youngest of the family, had also succeeded in medicine at Queen's University in Kingston.
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     John Francis moved to Almonte in 1911 to take over the practice of the late Dr Denis Patrick Lynch. . . He married Mary Helena Moynihan in Almonte in 1917. They had a family of 13 children: James, John, William, Martin, Mary, Philip, Arthur, Declan, Frances, Eleanor, Margaret, Martha, Elizabeth, and Helen. Billy and Mary died in infancy."²