Black Mac (by John Dowson)

The most unforgettable character I ever met.
By John Dowson October 23, 2006


The most unforgettable character I ever met was “Black Mac”. His real name was Donald MacDonald and he lived on Burndale Ave. in a part of Willowdale that was once known as Lansing.  Where he got the nick name “Black Mac” from I’ll never know, everyone just called him “Black Mac”. Having a nickname in the 1950’s wasn’t unusual; most of the crowd I hung out with had a nickname. There was Fuzz, Wink, Cookie, Fats, Diamond, Goober, Giggi Boo, The Preacher, Bono, Peanut, Cue Ball and my brother Bill who was called “Bull”. The closest I got to a nickname was “Dowse”.

Black Mac marched to a different drummer, in fact he marched to several different drummers all of his own choosing. One day he chopped down his father’s treasured cherry tree, because his pet monkey had climbed the tree and wouldn’t come down. He worked at an assortment of odd jobs and for a short time he was employed by the Township of North York which we all called the Twp. At one time he and his older brother operated a Septic Tank truck dubbed “the honey wagon”. One Saturday afternoon he and his brother John strode into the Canadian Legion on Spring Garden Ave. They were spattered with mud from head to toe. Black Mac ordered a beer and a bowl of vegetable soup and sat down at a table full of regulars. I made the mistake of asking him where he had been all day.  “We’ve been cleaning out septic tanks”, he said “the pump hose came loose and before we could shut it down it sprayed us with human shit, do you see that mud “he said as he pointed to his sleeve “that’s human shit”. At that I and the regulars slowly got up and left the table, and the customers in Black Mac’s proximity moved to the far end of the room. Black Mac just looked at us all and smiled as he ate his soup and finished off his beer at the empty table in the now vacant side of the room. I never did find if that was really human excrement, I didn’t want to ask. 

Another time Black Mac was involved in a punch up at the Prince Nova restaurant. The fight got out of hand and the big plate glass window in the restaurant was broken. The police were called and when they arrived Black Mac was no where to be found, he had slipped away. Later that night someone saw him and told him the police were looking for him. Knowing the police would just show up at his door, as they had in the past, he decided he would confront the issue head on. He drove to the police station walked in, hoisted himself up to and sat on the counter top; and to the two police officers sitting there he said, “I’m Black Mac and I understand you’re looking for me?” “Yes” said one of the  officers “we want to talk to you about the broken plate glass window in the Prince Nova Restaurant”  “Oh that” he said “let me explain, I went into the restaurant for a quiet cup of coffee and when I got inside three huge guys jumped me, I was so scared that I turned around and ran, I was going so fast that I missed the front door and ran right through the plate glass window and that’s how it got broken”  The two police officers sat there dumbfounded for what must have been a minute with their mouths agape. Then suddenly one of them got up and said “get out of here and don’t let me see you around here anymore” and with that Black Mac hopped down and sauntered out the door.  That’s just one of a thousand stories one can hear about “Black Mac”. Sadly he’s not with us anymore. On his passing the Toronto Sun newspaper columnist Paul Rimstad wrote an obituary about Black Mac, but to those who lived in Willowdale in the 1950’s Black Mac was and is a legend.