Donald Cameron MacDonald (December 7, 1913 – March 8, 2008) was a Canadian politician. Referred to in the media as the "best premier Ontario never had,"
Early life and career
MacDonald was born in Cranbrook, British Columbia, and moved with his family to Tullochgorum, Quebec in 1923 and then earned a bachelor's and master's degree from Queen's University.
He supported the Conservative Party of Canada in his youth, but became a democratic socialist after witnessing the social problems of the Great Depression. He worked for several years as a teacher and journalist, and was employed by the Montreal Gazette in the mid-1930s.
Leading the party
MacDonald took over the party in the middle of the Cold War and at the height of McCarthyism, when socialism was viewed with suspicion. The 1960s youth-quake was moving into federal politics, and a group of New Left academics and activists called The Waffle presented the fiercest opposition to MacDonald and other "establishment" members.
Paul Ferreira
By the early 2000s, the NDP was near the bottom of their decline in MacDonald's home riding. Rae had held the riding for 14 years before it fell to the Liberals in 1996. The riding's name was changed to York South—Weston for the 1999 provincial election and it became a much larger riding than it was when he represented it.
In 2004, MacDonald supported a young NDP Provincial Executive member named Paul Ferreira in his campaign to be the area's MPP. Ferreira would raise the NDP's vote substantially from 3.7% to over 21%. While not good enough for a win, it allowed him to eventually, after four elections in two and half years, win the seat February 8, 2007. Donald MacDonald supported him through all these campaigns and was there to publicly congratulate Ferreira and pass on the generational torch at the victory party.
Death
MacDonald died in 2008 of heart failure at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. He was 94.