Ian McDonald

Ian McDonald was born on 18 April 1933, in St Augustine, Trinidad, where his mother, Thelma McDonald (née Seheult), was born, and where his father, John Archie McDonald (who was born in Saint Kitts and whose parents were born in Antigua), was Agricultural Director of Gordon Grant Limited. His uncle was Air Marshal Sir Arthur McDonald of the Royal Air Force. He had four sisters – Heather Murray, Gillian Howie, Robin McDonald and Monica Purkis – and one brother, Archie McDonald. McDonald's grandmother was poet and politician Hilda McDonald, first woman member of the Antiguan House of Assembly.

McDonald received his secondary education at Queen's Royal College (1942–51) in Port of Spain, where he obtained distinctions in History and English in the Higher School Certificate. He attended Clare College, Cambridge University (1951–55), where he obtained a BA Honours degree in History and later received his MA. He was elected President of the Cambridge University West Indian Society.

Sugar industry

In 1955, he went to the then British Guiana with the Booker Group, working first as secretary of the Bookers BG Group Committee and later as secretary of Bookers Sugar Estates, where he rose to be administrative director. When Bookers was nationalised in 1976 he remained with the Guyana Sugar Corporation where he held the post of Director of Marketing and Administration from 1976 until retirement in 1999. He represented Guyana and CARICOM on innumerable occasions at international conferences and forums on the sugar industry.

At the regional level he was involved with the Sugar Association of the Caribbean as Chairman of Marketing from 1990, then CEO from 1999 until retiring in 2007. In November 1995, he delivered an address and presented a paper on "The Sugar Industries of the English-Speaking Caribbean" to the International Sugar Organization in London. He was also Chairman of Demerara Sugar Terminals, which exports Guyana's sugar. For 35 years he was a member of the Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Fund Committee, which provides land and housing, water supply, and welfare facilities for sugar workers.

Guyanese business and interest

In 1991/92, McDonald held the position of Editorial Consultant with the West Indian Commission, chaired by Sir Shridath Ramphal. His job was to assist in drafting and producing the commission's report, Time for Action. To assist in the work of the Commission he prepared a monograph, Bedrock of a Nation: Cultural Foundations of West Indian Integration.

In 1996, he was selected as an inaugural member of the West Indies 2000 Group, a "think-tank" of 40 West Indian personalities that had no agenda except to encourage the reality of a West Indian identity and the strengthening of the values of a West Indian heritage.

McDonald was a member of the Guyana National Advisory Committee on External Negotiations. He held directorships at Hand-in-Hand Fire and Life Insurance Companies, the Hand-in-Hand Trust Company, Woodlands Diagnostic & Imaging Centre Inc, the Institute of Private Enterprise Development, St. Joseph Mercy Hospital (2000–2006), and was a Trustee of the St. John Boscoe Orphanage for Boys. McDonald was a member, from 2009, of the Council of Schoolnet Guyana, dedicated to the computerization of schools in Guyana.

McDonald had a son, Keith, from his first marriage to Myrna Foster, from whom he was divorced. He was later married to Mary Callender and they had two sons: Jamie and Darren. McDonald died on 24 July 2026, at the age of 93.