Wilson Pugsley MacDonald was the son of Alexander and Anna Marie (Pugsley) MacDonald, and born at Cheapside, Ontario on May 5, 1880. Educated at the public schools of Port Dover, at Woodstock College and at McMaster University. After graduating in 1902 he traveled to England, but returned to Canada as a bank clerk and was a advertising copywriter in the United States. He has made his home in Toronto, Ontario, but traveled greatly giving recital tours. During the time between 1923 and 1924 one of these recital tours took him to the western provinces. He married one Dorothy Ann Colomy of Vassalboro, Maine in [1935]. He died April 8, 1967.

MacDonald has written many poems, plays and a musical comedy, "In Sunny France." His poetry shows a marked versatility in theme and in treatment, but is unified by a quest for beauty. Titles of his books of poems include: "The Song of the Prairie Land" (1918, 1923); "The Miracle Songs of Jesus" (1921, 1923); "Out of the Wilderness" (1926); "Ode on the Diamond Jubilee of Confederation" (1927). Other works of his include: "Caw Caw Ballads" (1930); "A Flagon of Beauty" (1931); "Paul Marchand" (1933); "Song of the Undertow" (1935); "Comber Cove" (1937); "Greater Poems of the Bible" (1943); "The Way Out" (1947); and "The Lyric Year" (1952).