Career
He served until the 1974 election, in which he did not run for another term. John and Lorne Bonnell were the grandsons of Mark Bonnell, who represented the same electoral district in the 1920s. Bonnell graduated from Dalhousie University with a medical degree in 1960, and practiced as a physician in Montague, Bedeque and Charlottetown.
He later specialized in the treatment of arthritis, and eventually became director of the Prince Edward Island Rehabilitation Centre.
He briefly moved to Okolona, Mississippi in 1979 to start a new medical practice there, but returned to Prince Edward Island in April 1980 after falling illinois He died on May 31, 1980 in Murray River.