JOHN ALLAN MACDONALD – 2025 HALL OF FAME INDUCTEE

JOHN ALLAN MACDONALD

THE RESILENCE OF A PIONEER

Legendary coach Frank McGibbon was always on the lookout for athletic talent in the kids who came to Columbus Field. He saw plenty in a strongly built boy from Brookland Street. and so sent John Allan MacDonald home with a 16-pound iron ball. In the field behind his house John Allan practiced the shot put for hours on his own, perfecting the technique that would win him Highland Games medals.

Tragedy struck in 1963 when John Allan was a passenger in a car involved in a fatal accident. Both of this strong and athletic 17-year old’s legs were shattered in the crash. When one doctor balked at doing an operation, Dr. Tom Gorman stepped in to mend the boys’ legs by inserting permanent plates. John Allan was no longer able to compete in throws that involved spinning, like the discus and hammer, but he wasn’t going to give up on sports.

Watching the men who threw the caber and seeing the muscles and movements it required, John Allan decided to add the big stick to his repertoire. It was the days when the caber toss was measured in distance thrown. No one could heave it further than Hughie MacCarron from Maryvale and Big Jim Sears from Thorburn. John Allan kept working on it, practicing in the woods where he’d cut eight-foot lengths of hardwood and toss them like cabers into a pile to be chunked up for firewood. Leo MacDonald says John Allan was better to have working for you than a horse – except when it came to the dinner table.

John Allan was determined to master the caber. He had many top three finishes, but Hughie MacCarron was a hard man to beat. Hughie won the caber 14 times in 21 years. But John Allan broke through in 1970 and then again in 1972 with an almighty heave like the one you see in the photograph above.

John Allan is a true pioneer in the sport of caber tossing. He worked on keeping it alive in Antigonish after the era of the Thompsons and MacCarrons and inspired people like Marty Gilfoy to continue to develop the sport among young people. He competed after the transition to the Ancient Scottish Heavy Events, often treating the visiting Scottish throwers to Nova Scotia hospitality like a spin on his fishing boat and having them up for lobster at his home overlooking St. George’s Bay.

Now eighty years old and retired from sport, John Allan works on deepening his Gaelic and prodding his friends to have at least a little understanding of the language of their ancestors.