Doris McCarthy: Ninety Years Wise

Peter Harmathy teaches fine arts in Victoria, B.C.

Doris McCarthy is an established icon of Canadian landscape painting who
has an exhibition record that spans 70 years. She has written two
earlier memoirs—A Fool in Paradise: An Artist’s Early Life (1990)
and The Good Wine (1991). Retrospectives of her work were published in
1991, 1999, and 2004.

This memoir is about the summers McCarthy spent at her Georgian Bay
cottage, “Fool’s Paradise,” and the friends with whom she shared
that time in between painting. These friendships formed the soul and
spark of her life, in which even small day-to-day routines could hold
great meaning: “Old age brings my reward for all the loving I have
given in my lifetime, a reward far beyond expectation or deserving.”

McCarthy bequeathed the cottage and its property for use as an
artist’s retreat after her death. Her generous donation and additional
endowment are central to our understanding of her. Every artist’s life
is about giving a part of him- or herself to others; through her art and
her memoirs, Doris McCarthy has done that—and more.