 The family moved on to Edmonton when MacLeod was five and then to the town of Mercoal, Alberta where his father worked in a coal mine.However, the MacLeods suffered from homesickness and when Alistair was 10, they returned to Cape Breton and the farmhouse in Dunvegan, Inverness County, that his great-grandfather had built in the 1860s.MacLeod enjoyed attending school and apparently did well there.