Doris McDonald

Ach tha ar cridheachan �san tir �thog suas sinn, �S gur tric na�r bruadair sinn mo cluain tibh gorm Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland, And we in dreams behold....(Anonymous) Doris McDonald finished her marathon on Tuesday, October 4, 2005. It began in Ethel, Ontario, but just when has always been a closely guarded secret. As a child, she had been known as the fastest runner of her peers, and she certainly proved endurance to be another of her qualities. Doris, however, peaked a day too soon. She missed the Wednesday night opening game of her beloved Maple Leafs. (It might have been uncanny timing on her part and a glimpse of things to come; their loss would have been enough to kill her.) Her parents, Isabel Maude Bartley and Archibald (Archie) Livingstone McDonald, and her brother Ian Duncan Smith McDonald and his wife Inez Dean Jickling, cheered her on from the other side of the finish line. She kept up on Brussels news from her restaurant or tea room, the Scotch Thistle Grill and, after retiring, at the morning group of the UCW at Brussels United Church. She also found time to tend, and smell, her roses and their closely guarded companion plant, a lone Scotch thistle, to enjoy the cottage at Kintail and to curl. On a Sunday afternoon in her pre-retirement years she enjoyed checking out her cattle on her farm in the summer and, in the winter, skating in her speed skates to a scratchy waltz tune at the Brussels rink. Maple Leaf hockey remained her passion to the end, and in the off-season there was Blue Jays baseball as well. In the last few years, Doris was pampered by the caring and gentle people at Huronlea. After a short service at her house on Friday afternoon of October 7, she was piped to a well deserved rest. Please join with us in celebrating a life well lived, a marathon well run. Archie, Susie and Sandy