Before he came to Canada, Alexander Macdonell raised a Catholic regiment to defend British interests during the Irish Rebellion in 1798. The regiment would be disbanded and its men left destitute, but Macdonell persuaded the Crown to give them land in Upper Canada in return for their loyalty.
Macdonell first settled in Glengarry near Kingston. He went to the Upper Canada capital in York in 1806 and found that Catholics were few and far between. The town had a population of 200 of whom less than a quarter were Catholic. In all of Upper Canada, there were only three Catholic churches and three Catholic priests.
Macdonell reported to his superiors on what he had seen at York and was given the task of acquiring more land for churches in the town. (Of course, York eventually became Toronto.)
A plot on George on present-day Adelaide would be set aside "for the purpose of erecting a chapel for public worship." But, it was destroyed by fire during the War of 1812. (Likely burned by American troops when they torched the town.)
--Brock-Perry
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