Author: Macqueen, Thomas
Biography:
MACQUEEN, Thomas (1803-61: DCB)
The son of a farm labourer, Osborne Macqueen (or McQueen), and his wife, Elizabeth (Copeland), he was born at Kilbirnie, Ayrshire. He had limited education and became lame at about the age of ten because of an accident. He worked as a stonemason but was determined to make a living by writing. In 1829 he married Mary Mitchell; they were to have at least six children. His books were popular and he began to make a name for himself particularly as a poet; in addition to the two listed in the database, his works include The Village Pestilence (1835: 8 pages), A Few Friendly Observations on Morals and Politics (1838), and The Moorland Minstrel (1840). In 1842 the family, with Macqueen’s sister and her family, emigrated to Upper Canada where they settled first near Pakenham. There he worked as a mason while also contributing to the Bathurst Courier. In 1848 they moved to Goderich where he was the inaugural editor of the Huron Signal, a reformist newspaper. They spent two years (1852-54) in Hamilton where he edited the Hamilton Canadian before returning to Goderich and the Signal. He became known for his vigorous prose style but, aside from a very few poems, he gave up writing verse—despite asking, in one editorial, “Will nobody write a few songs for Canada?” In the 1854 election he ran for the Liberal party but was defeated. During his final years he advocated reform of agricultural methods. He died at Goderich and is buried in Maitland Cemetery there. (DCB 30 Apr 2020; ancestry.co.uk 30 Apr 2020; James L. Talman, “Three Scottish-Canadian Editor Poets,” Canadian Historical Review 28 (1947): 166-77) SR