In Memory of Donald Crandall

Donald Rayworth Crandall ('51) was born on Oct. 19, 1926, in Moncton, N.B.

Donald served in the navy during the Second World War, and then attended Mount Allison. In 1949, he took a job with Air Canada, working in market research and training. The position suited his outgoing personality and love of travel, since it sent him across Canada and to the Caribbean.

In 1950, he married Frances (Dayton) Crandall ('50), a kindred spirit: like Donald, she’d grown up in Moncton, served in the navy, and attended Mount Allison. After their children Louise and Hugh were born, the family settled in Montreal. Donald and Frances were “absolutely devoted” to each other, says daughter Louise.

When Frances was in her fifties, she started developing symptoms of Alzheimer’s. At 57, Donald retired from his job at Air Canada and they moved back to Moncton.

The couple continued to travel; on one Caribbean trip, Donald and Frances—then in their sixties—discovered Montserrat, an island near Antigua with black sand beaches, and built a house there.

Donald began devoting time to his growing interest in military history. He’d travel around the island, hunting for buried military cannons. He rebuilt a powder house above the capital of Plymouth, and set up a military park with cannons he’d dug up.

He wrote a book on the island’s military history, working from home to be close to his wife, who was increasingly housebound.

He nursed his wife through the tragedy of Alzheimer’s, but ‘he never complained that it was hard, and never asked for help’. As Frances’s condition deteriorated, they moved permanently back to Canada where she died at age 76.

Following Frances’s death, friends introduced Donald to Eleanor Jonah, whose husband had died of a heart attack several years before. They became companions. He rented a condo on the inner harbour and they split the year between Victoria and Burlington, Ont., where they had previously settled.

In 2005, on Christmas Eve, Eleanor and Donald were going to get groceries when another car crashed into them. Donald was hospitalized, and nearly died. While his body slowly recovered, his brain—which had been injured in the crash—never did. The couple moved to Burlington full-time.

In February 2010, the family put Donald into a retirement home in Oshawa where he passed away on April 20, due to complications from dementia. Donald was 84.

Read the full story: Donald Rayworth Crandall
(Maclean's Magazine)