Don MacLeod [Curriculum Vitae] is the son of Professor Alexander and Dorothy MacLeod, for forty-five years Presbyterian missionaries to China and Taiwan. After a childhood spent in the turbulent Far East of the ‘forties and ‘fifties, Don returned in 1953 to attend Stony Brook School on Long Island. He went on to complete an Honours History degree at McGill under the direction of Professor W Stanford Reid. Awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1959, he received an AM there, and then proceeded to theological studies at Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia.During his student days he served congregations in the Presbyterian Church in Canada for five summers, in the Laurentians, and in Brockville and Kamloops Presbyteries. On graduation he was appointed by the Presbyterian Church in Canada to what became a seven point charge in rural Pictou County, Nova Scotia, comprising churches along the East River (Springville, St Paul’s and Sunny Brae) with Hopewell, Eureka, Middle River and Gairloch.
In 1967 he was asked by the Presbytery of East Toronto to plant a church in suburban Scarborough, a daughter congregation of Knox Church downtown, which, like Knox, would be distinctively Evangelical. This became the Bridlewood Presbyterian Church. Over a seven year period he initiated services in a high school, gathered a congregation, built a first unit, and saw the congregation grow to about two hundred members and adherents. In 1971 he became Vice-President and subsequently from 1973 to 1975 President of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. He organized its 1975 Christian Leadership Seminar at York University attended by over 1500 delegates. That same year he accepted a five year appointment as General Director of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of Canada. He has maintained an active interest in IVCF worldwide, and is closely in touch with IFES Barbados which he visits regularly.
In 1980 he was called to be Associate Minister of Knox Church, Toronto, and helped form The Renewal Fellowship Within The Presbyterian Church in Canada. Inaugurated on 8 May 1982, for five years he was its Chair and de facto Director. He left Canada for the United States in 1987 to sere as Senior Minister of the historic Newton Presbyterian Church, founded in 1846 by immigrants from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He returned to Canada in 1997 to be pastor of St. Andrew’s Church, Trenton, Ontario, and also taught, with his wife Judy, as adjuncts at Tyndale Theological Seminary, Toronto. Since 2007 Don has been Research Professor of Church History there.
Denominationally Don has been Chair of the denomination’s Committee on History for two separate terms, the last ending in 2011. He is also since 2008 President of the Canadian Society of Presbyterian History, As the author of the prize-winning W Stanford: An Evangelical Calvinist in the Academy he inaugurated the first Reid Lectureship at Tenth Church, Philadelphia, in November 2005., initiated by Laurel Gasque. Subsequently he went across Canada, lecturing on faith and the university from Vancouver to St John’s. He was chair of the group that organized the “Engaging the University” colloquium at Tyndale prior to the IFES quadrennial at Redeemer College in 2007, He is presently on the committee planning the W Stanford Reid centenary 26 – 28 September 2013, He has received two honorary Doctorates of Divinity: in 1988 from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, suburban Boston, and in 2011 from Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia.
Don enjoys a variety of interests, including stamp-collecting and antiques. He loves classical music and art history. The MacLeods live alongside the Murray Canal in Brighton, Ontario, looking out on the view that is the masthead of his website, and share a family home in Applethwaite, Keswick, Cumbia, England.