The wood tile game featuring letters of the alphabet with point value was played on a checker board and predates the first version of Scrabble by 12 years.
Since his father was a sea captain, he and his sister were raised by their aunt Eliza and her husband Patrick Sweeney who was a Deputy Sheriff.
After graduation, he began to study law in the office of James McQueen, (King's Counsel) in Shediac, NB.
He then made his way to Leadville, Colorado where he was employed in the gold mines for a couple of years before heading north of the border to Alberta to engage in ranching.
Many uncomfortable revelations – from fraud to conspiracies with German strikebreakers brought into the open by the scientist's numerous inventions, which include an anti-gravity device capable of levitating battleships[5] to escape enemy torpedoes.
Raymond Léger was a highly literate man who developed Jules Verne-like concepts of travel, rockets, spaceships and houses with wings.
Edward McDonald is the great-grandfather of Oscar-winning director, screenwriter and Disney animator Chris Williams, and Todd McLellan, a former professional ice hockey player, Stanley Cup winning assistant-coach with the Detroit Red Wings in 2008, and current head coach of the Edmonton Oilers hockey team.
He remained active as a barrister in the province of New Brunswick and on many occasions before the Nova Scotia Courts until a few months prior to his death when illness struck.
The initial version of the Scrabble Word Game was invented in 1938 by American architect Alfred Mosher Butts and was called Lexiko.
[12] It was only in 2014, when Pierre Cormier, a member of the Chamber of commerce for the town of Shediac, initiated a search that eventually led to the find of the patents themselves.
[13] In 2016, the town of Shediac would pay homage to McDonald by organizing several activities to celebrate the 90th anniversary of his Crossword Game.
The Chamber of Commerce commissioned a narrative painting of the inventor and his game that was created by Canadian artist Alvin Richard.
During a press conference held on June 8, 2016, in Shediac, John Chew, co-president of the North American Scrabble Players Association announced that Hasbro, the current owner of the Scrabble Game, would be supplying a large number of games to the town to demonstrate their support for the initiative.
The first tournament was won by Jackson Smylie of Toronto, a co-winner of the North American Scrabble Championship for students in 2011.
On September 17, Shediac hosted a roaring 1920s Gatsby themed night in conjunction with Scrabble related activities, highlighting the flapper fashion period when McDonald's game was invented.
Giant black and white letter tiles spelling "Shediac" were installed at the western entrance of the town alongside the 90-ton sculpture called (perhaps inaccurately) The World's Largest Lobster.