Article content

Montreal sportswriting legend Ian MacDonald, who spent 29 years with the Montreal Gazette, has died. He was 87.

MacDonald passed away after a heart attack on Wednesday night, his daughter Sandra told the Montreal Gazette’s Dave Stubbs on Thursday morning.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Montreal sportswriter Ian MacDonald has passed away Back to video

Even after his retirement from the paper in 1998, MacDonald kept active as a writer — and in life — by continuing to contribute freelance pieces to the Montreal Gazette for years.

MacDonald was best known for his coverage of the Expos for the Montreal Gazette.

Ian Goodridge MacDonald was born in Montreal in January 1928. His family lived first in the Côte-des-Neiges area and then downtown on Prince Arthur, east of St-Urbain. He attended Montreal High School, and spent one year at Sir George Williams University (now part of Concordia University) when it was located on Drummond St.

One of MacDonald’s most memorable starts to a story, according to Stubbs, was: “The rain ruined Jim Fanning’s debut as manager of the Expos. It stopped.”

MacDonald got his start in journalism in 1948 when he began writing about his own swim competitions for The Herald, eventually earning a full-time job at the paper as a sports writer.

In 1955, he joined The Montreal Star, where he began to cover the Alouettes in 1959.

In 1970, he moved to the Montreal Gazette to become the paper’s baseball writer, replacing Ted Blackman who was named sports editor at the time.