Andrew Macphail Foundation gifted 40 hectares of land

The Sir Andrew MacphailFoundation has been gifted an additional 40 hectares of land.

The donation comes from the descendants of Sir Andrew Macphailand adds to the 56 hectares of land already owned by the foundation.

The foundation is a non-profit organization that works to preserve Macphail's legacy. It operates a homestead on the neighbouring property to the donated land.

Macphail was a physician, author, professor of medicine and soldier.

DoreenHuestis is the president of the foundation. She was one of the driving forces behind the donation and worked to sort out all of the legal and technical challenges associated with the gift.

Included in that work was hunting down and getting approval from every living Macphail descendant.But Huestis said the woods are special, and worth it.

"There's very few places on the Island that have native growth and old forest growth," she said. "It's great to see that they'll be maintained and we'll also be planting a lot of new species."

As those new species are planted and the current ones maintained by the local ecological group, Huestis saidit will bring the area back to the true Acadian forest it once was, before it was cleared for farmland in the early 1900s.

"We're really excited about that. For us it's really it just seems like a small moment in time now. It will be exciting to see what this will look like in 50 years," she said.

The next step for Huestis, is to get the land protected by the province under the Natural Areas Protection Act, so that her group, or any other group, won't be able to develop the land in the future, she said.

Personal Connection

One of the descendants of Macphailthat Huestis reached out to was Andrew Lindsay.

Lindsay is the great grandchild of Macphail. He said his grandmother had held on to the land for many years and when she died, his father took up the mantle. Both wanted to see the land preserved.

Lindsay said his father was working on getting the land donated when he died suddenly last year. And now that it hasbeen made official, he said his father would be proud.

"He would be very satisfied and very proud that the Macphail family legacy was you know fully 360 degree wrapped up in this final piece of the map," he said.

"I'm sure that my father would be beaming."

Something his mother, Joan Lindsay agrees with.

Love for the area

"He really would have been thrilled. As would many of his sisters," she said. "They would also have been delighted because this would have been the wish of their mother and their grandfather."

Joan Lindsay said she came across letters written byMacphail during the First World War clearly show Macphail's love for the region.

"I found a couple of letters where he was writing his brother about what they were experiencing during World War Iand their thoughts always went back to Orwell. And the peace and tranquility and the beautiful place that it was. I found that really quite marvellous," she said.

Lindsay never met Macphail herself but said through his writing it was clear that he wanted the land preserved, something which she's glad her family contributed to.

"There's a tremendous sense of honour for all of us."

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