Isabella "Daisy" Mary 

Born in 1877, Isabella Macdonald was Sir Hugh John and Lady Agnes’ only daughter. She went by a few different nicknames. Her father called her his "little brick" and her grandfather called her "Puss", but others referred to her as Daisy. 

“The nickname Daisy came from someone who saw me playing in a field of daisies”, said Daisy in a 1959 interview. 

Daisy's mother was Hugh John’s first wife, Jean Macdonald, who died when Daisy was about four-years-old. 

When she was a young lady, she attended Miss Harmon’s School for Girls, a boarding school in Ottawa. During that time, she spent many of her weekends with her grandfather, Sir John A. Macdonald, in Earnscliffe.  

“We never talked about politics. He’d leave that outside of the house,” Daisy said in a broadcast interview. “I spent most holidays with him.”

After living in Ontario, Daisy moved to Winnipeg with her father and briefly attended St. Mary's Academy.

By 1890, she lived in Montreal and attended the Sacred Heart Convent, Sault au Récollet, which was a girls school led by nuns. 

Daisy, who spent much of her time with her grandmother, Baroness Agnes Macdonald,  formed a close bond, so much so, the baroness convinced Daisy’s parents to enroll her in a school in England. While living in Europe, her grandmother and Daisy traveled often.

Daisy was 17 when she moved with her family into Dalnavert, and she would stay until she was 37.

“One time we rode donkeys up a mountain in Italy and my grandmother said we’d walk down,” Daisy said in a news article about her grandparents. “We did everything but walk. We rolled, stumbled, tumbled, and fell”.

The well-trained pet

 While living at Dalnavert, Daisy had a parrot.

 “There was one time she was sitting on the veranda and a couple was walking by the house,” said Daisy’s son Hugh Gainsford in a 1995 interview.  “The parrot yelled at them, “c’mon gimme a kiss”.

"My mom said she had to show where the parrot was since the couple thought it was her bugging them. She was so embarrassed,” he added.

hobbies and interests

As an unconventional Victorian woman, Daisy loved fencing and pistol shooting.

Her instructor, Sergeant Major Page, taught her how to do both activities.

One a rainy day, he told her to shoot inside, but Daisy got distracted, according to DMVC archives.

“He told me it was safe to fire, so I did. Unfortunately, I was looking out the window at some soldiers when he said to shoot,” she said. “The shot was wide and the bullet went through the window. I fled in terror. No one was hit and the only damage done was to my pride and the window.”

Daisy also played the piano and harp, and dabbled in acting. In 1900, she performed in the play Home Sweet Home, playing the role of a woman distanced from her sweet heart by war. 

Her later years

On February 10, 1915, Daisy married George Gainsford.  The couple had two children, Lionel and Hugh Gainsford. In 1959, she passed away. She is buried alongside her father, half-brother, and stepmother at St. John’s Cemetery.