It was on this date, in 1869, that Mary Macdonald, the Father of Confederation’s only daughter, was born.  Everything was fine at first but it soon became apparent that Mary was not your average child. Legendary historian P.B. Waite of Halifax described the situation in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography in his essay about Lady Agnes Macdonald. “Within three months it was clear that Mary had water on the brain, that is, she was hydrocephalic and would never be normal,” he wrote. “She would never run or talk or play as other children did, or even look after herself.  What that condition must have cost Agnes and her husband no one can ever know. Agnes needed the consolations of St Alban the Martyr Anglican Church. ‘Disappointment’ was the word she used in her diary about Mary, but that masked “one of the saddest times in my life.”  She asked God to let her learn cheerfully the lessons of humility and sacrifice that Mary’s birth and life must teach.” Despite her illness and challenges, Sir John A. developed a warm and loving relationship with Mary.  He affectionately called her “Baboo” and had a special typewriter built so she could type letters to him while she was away, despite her infirm hands.  Sir John A. and Lady Macdonald, ahead of their times, successfully integrated their physically and mentally challenged daughter into Ottawa society, 100 years before this was common. Not long after her father’s death in 1891, Mary moved with her mother to far-off England where she remained for the rest of her life.  Upon her mother’s death in 1920, Mary passed into the care of a British family who treated her with the utmost respect and dignity.  She died in 1930 and is buried an ocean away from the nation her father had played the major role in founding. caption id="attachment_538839" align="alignnone" width="475" Lady Susan Agnes Macdonald, wife of Sir John A. Macdonald, with infant daughter Mary, June 1869/caption Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist.  He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy.  A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.