James F. “Mac” MacDonald

Laird of Princess Louisa Inlet — A Biographical Sketch

Introduction

James Frederick “Mac” MacDonald (1889–1978) is remembered today as the unofficial laird and first modern custodian of Princess Louisa Inlet on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast. A restless world traveller, prospector, storyteller, and host, Mac played a decisive role in preserving the head of the inlet around Chatterbox Falls and in shaping the conservation ethic that later guided the creation of Princess Louisa Marine Provincial Park. This sketch brings together published accounts, archival sources, and oral recollections to provide both a human portrait and a starting point for further research.

Early Life and Education

James Frederick MacDonald was born on Seattle’s First Hill on 14 May 1889. He grew up in a family that operated a neighborhood grocery business, later moving with his parents to Bainbridge Island across Puget Sound.[1] After graduating from high school in 1908, Mac and his friend Claude Braden embarked on an ambitious round-the-world tour. They financed their travels by presenting a magic-lantern slide show titled Picturesque America and Its Wonders, a program they advertised and performed in North America, Europe, and Asia.[1]

On returning to the United States, Mac briefly pursued higher education. He studied first at Amherst College and then transferred to the University of California, Berkeley for his junior year. In 1912 he left university to travel again, including a trip to Europe with a friend, Harry Thomson, before returning to tour the Pacific Northwest. During the First World War he served in the U.S. military; his surviving papers include correspondence and ephemera from this period.[1]

First Encounter with Princess Louisa Inlet

Mac first saw what would become his life’s landscape in 1919. Crewing aboard his uncle’s schooner Rambler, he entered the narrow tidal gate at Malibu Rapids and emerged into the hidden basin of Princess Louisa Inlet. John Henry Painter, writing for the Princess Louisa International Society, describes how the inlet’s sheer granite walls, deep basin, and the glacial stream that becomes Chatterbox Falls made a lasting impression on the young sailor.[2]

Mac later told visitors that even as he travelled the world after 1919, the vision of Princess Louisa remained “etched in his mind.”[2] In the 1920s he worked primarily in Nevada, prospecting in the mining camps near Reno and assessing deposits such as shell-marl in the desert.[1] Around 1926 he reportedly “struck it rich” on a claim, giving him enough capital to pursue what he called his real Eldorado: the fjord he had first seen from the deck of the Rambler.[3]

Homesteading at the Head of the Inlet

In 1927 Mac obtained a Crown grant on a parcel of land at the head of Princess Louisa Inlet, on the forested flats near the base of what is now known as Chatterbox Falls. The grant, roughly forty to forty-five acres, cost him about $420, a substantial sum for him but modest in retrospect.[2] Some later sources, including popular summaries, give 1919 as the purchase date, but both the Princess Louisa International Society and BC Parks place the formal acquisition in 1927; researchers should be alert to this discrepancy when reconstructing the property history.[3], [4]

Around 1930 Mac built what Painter calls an “impressive lodge” on the site, using peeled cedar logs sixty feet long and fifteen to twenty inches in diameter, supplied for around five dollars each.[2] The log house stood above the high tide line with a view across the basin toward the entrance. He cleared small garden plots, built log floats and docks for visiting boats, and cut trails so that guests could walk to better vantage points near the falls and into the forested slopes behind the cabin.[2], [5]

For many years Mac spent long seasons at the inlet and winters elsewhere, often in Mexico or traveling with friends he had met on the docks. Visitors soon learned that arriving at Princess Louisa meant not only spectacular scenery but also a chance to tie up at Mac’s float, accept a cup of coffee, talk over the day’s run, and perhaps play a game of chess. Accounts from yachting visitors and from Canadian boating writers emphasize that for many boaters in the mid-twentieth century, Mac himself was as much an attraction as the granite walls surrounding him.[2], [5]

Personality and Perceptions

Contemporary portraits highlight the complexity of Mac’s presence at the inlet. The Princess Louisa International Society describes him as “kind and engaging,” an easy conversationalist who loved chess and delighted visitors with vivid, romanticized stories about Coast Salish and other Indigenous peoples.[2] Many local residents and boaters regarded him as a gracious neighbor and informal host who made the inlet feel like a small, convivial village during the summer months.[5]

Others saw him differently. In a review of coastal literature, historian Jean Barman notes that Muriel Wylie Blanchet, whose memoir The Curve of Time has become a West Coast classic, initially portrayed Mac as “the man from California” who had spoiled the family’s previously private summer moorage at Princess Louisa Inlet. Over time, however, he won the Blanchet family over with his generosity and willingness to share the inlet, even if it meant they had to surrender some of their cherished solitude.[5], [6]

The Fire Dance and Malibu Connections

Mac’s flair for performance became legendary. The Princess Louisa International Society recalls him as “a flamboyant entertainer much loved for his fire dance using alcohol on parts of his body.” In his last public performance at the inlet’s Malibu Club resort, according to that account, he accidentally set the drapery on fire.[2] A 1988 BC Parks history pamphlet further described his act as a “fire ceremony and dance,” intended to illustrate the endurance of young warriors in the face of pain, though this explanation appears to have been more interpretive than ethnographically precise.[7]

Oral recollections from early Young Life campers at Malibu in the late 1960s add further detail. One former camper recalls Mac performing a fire routine for a camp audience at Malibu that involved juggling flaming torches as well as briefly igniting alcohol on his skin. In that recollection, Mac attributed the act to a “South Seas” origin rather than to local Pacific Northwest peoples and referred to an earlier performance in which he had set indoor drapes on fire. This testimony suggests that the “last performance” described in later institutional summaries may in fact compress several incidents and evolving versions of Mac’s act into a single story. As with all oral history, such recollections should be weighed against other sources, but they provide important texture and help document how visitors experienced Mac as an entertainer.

Marriage, Loss, and the Houseboat Years

Painter’s account notes that Mac married in 1941 and that, while bringing his bride into Princess Louisa, he found his beloved log lodge engulfed in flames; the building had burned in his absence.[2] The marriage did not last, and Mac lacked the resources to construct a replacement on the same scale. Instead, he acquired a house built on a barge, had it towed into the inlet, and moored it near his original shoreline clearing. From this floating home he continued to welcome visitors, maintain trails and floats, and play host each summer.[2], [5]

During these years his social network broadened. Hamilton’s Malibu Club resort, built at the entrance to the inlet in the 1940s as a “Mecca for Millionaires,” brought a stream of celebrities, wealthy guests, and, later, Christian youth campers into the area. Mac shuttled between his quiet head-of-inlet home and the more boisterous scene near Malibu, where he sometimes performed his fire dance and enjoyed the company of visitors from around the world.[2]

Conservation Vision and the Princess Louisa International Society

By the early 1950s Mac could see that the inlet was increasingly at risk from logging and large-scale resort development. Coastal timber companies were active in Jervis Inlet, and at least one hotel chain reportedly offered him $400,000 for his modest Crown-grant holding at the head of the inlet — an extraordinary sum compared with the $420 he had paid in 1927.[2], [5] He declined the offer, telling visitors that “this beautiful, peaceful haven should never belong to one individual” and that he regarded himself only as “the custodian of the property for Nature.”[3]

In 1953 Mac deeded roughly forty-five acres at the head of the inlet, including the flats near Chatterbox Falls, to a newly formed non-profit group, the Princess Louisa International Society. Its board was deliberately balanced between Canadian and American trustees, reflecting the cross-border boating community that had helped shape the plan. The transfer documents and contemporary accounts emphasize that the land was to be held in perpetual trust, “an international project” dedicated to preserving the inlet’s natural state for future generations.[3], [7], [8]

As part of the arrangement, Mac retained the right to moor his houseboat near Chatterbox Falls and to continue acting as host and caretaker. Over the next decade the Society attempted, with mixed success, to negotiate the purchase or protection of additional parcels in the inlet, including lands owned by timber companies and the estate of Malibu founder Tom Hamilton.[2]

Transfer to BC Parks and Final Years

In 1964–65, after roughly a decade of stewardship, the Princess Louisa International Society, with Mac’s approval, transferred the head-of-inlet lands to the Province of British Columbia. The property became Princess Louisa Marine Provincial Park (later Princess Louisa Marine Park), with the understanding that the area would be maintained as a Class A marine park and that the Society would continue as an advocate and fundraising partner.[2], [3], [8]

Mac continued to spend his summers at Princess Louisa into the early 1970s. BC Parks notes that he spent his last summer there in 1972, at age eighty-three, before declining health prevented further visits.[3] He died in Seattle in 1978 at the age of eighty-nine. His ashes were placed in the rock at the head of the inlet, where a bronze plaque, framed in moss, reads in part:

James Frederick Macdonald (1889–1978)
Laird of the Inlet
Gentleman
Friend to all who came here.

For many visitors, encountering this plaque near Chatterbox Falls, alongside the Society’s dock and the remains of earlier structures, provides a tangible connection between the modern marine park and the singular personality who helped set its preservation in motion.[5]

Legacy and Directions for Further Research

Mac’s legacy is both institutional and personal. Institutionally, the Princess Louisa International Society still works with BC Parks and other partners to acquire and protect additional parcels in the inlet, continuing the project he set in motion with his 1953 gift.[2], [8] Personally, memories of his hospitality, his stories, and his sometimes hair-raising fire performances continue to circulate among boaters, former Malibu staff and campers, and coastal residents.

For historians, Princess Louisa Inlet is also a site where multiple narratives intersect. Mac’s story is entwined with that of the shíshálh (Sechelt) Nation, whose village and resource sites long predate recreational cruising; with twentieth-century industrial logging and resort development; and with the growth of a transnational yachting culture in the Pacific Northwest. Any full account of his role must be placed in that broader context.

Researchers seeking to go beyond this sketch may wish to consult the following resources:

Notes and References

  1. [1] “James Frederick Macdonald papers, 1907–1924,” Archives West, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections, Seattle, WA. Collection overview and biographical note. Available at https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv28305 .
  2. [2] John Henry Painter, “History,” Princess Louisa International Society (Aug. 2013), society web article on the history of Princess Louisa Inlet, including a biographical sketch of James F. “Mac” MacDonald. Available at https://www.princesslouisa.bc.ca/history .
  3. [3] “Princess Louisa Marine Park: The Legend of Princess Louisa Marine Park,” BC Parks, Government of British Columbia. Provides Mac’s own statements about custodianship and the 1953 gift, and summarizes the transfer of the property to the province. Available at https://bcparks.ca/princess-louisa-marine-park/history/ .
  4. [4] “Princess Louisa Inlet,” Wikipedia, last modified 2025. General overview of the inlet’s geography and history, including a brief chronology of MacDonald’s land purchase and donation. Researchers should note that its 1919 purchase date differs from the 1927 date given in primary-based sources and should be verified against archival documents. Available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Louisa_Inlet .
  5. [5] Anne and Laurence Yeadon-Jones, “Sunshine Coast, British Columbia,” Canadian Boating (May 2010; updated 2023). Travel feature that includes a narrative of cruising to Princess Louisa, a discussion of MacDonald’s role in preserving the inlet, and a description of the memorial plaque at Chatterbox Falls. Available at https://canadianboating.ca/destinations/sunshine-coast-british-columbia/ .
  6. [6] Jean Barman, review of coastal memoirs and histories, BC Studies (reference to Wylie Blanchet’s perception of MacDonald as “the man from California” and later neighbor). The full article may require institutional access; see https://bcstudies.com/ and search for discussions of Princess Louisa Inlet and James F. MacDonald.
  7. [7] “Princess Louisa Inlet (BC Parks 1988 brochure),” reproduced at ExploreNorth. Provides a narrative of Mac’s discovery of the inlet, his role as host, and the formation of the Princess Louisa International Society, and briefly describes his “fire ceremony and dance.” Available at https://explorenorth.com/bc/princess_louisa_inlet-bc_parks-1988.html .
  8. [8] “Princess Louisa Inlet and Chatterbox Falls,” Vancouver Island View, updated 2024. A contemporary travel article that summarizes the formation of the Princess Louisa International Society, Mac’s 1953 donation, and the later transfer to BC Parks. Available at https://vancouverislandview.com/princess-louisa-inlet-and-chatterbox-falls/ .