Canadian artist and writer Doris Jean McCarthy was born on July 7th, 1910 in Calgary, Alberta, the youngest child of George Arnold McCarthy and Jennie (nee Moffatt) McCarthy. Doris had two older brothers, Kenneth and Douglas. During the first year of Doris’s life the McCarthy family lived at Ten and a Half Street in Calgary before moving to Vancouver in the summer of 1912, and then to Boise, Idaho in December 1912. The family continued to migrate due to George Arnold McCarthy’s job as an engineer. By the spring of 1913 the McCarthy family had relocated to Berkeley, California, and moved once more to spend the summer in Moncton, New Brunswick (where George Arnold McCarthy’s family lived) before finally settling in Toronto, Ontario in the fall of 1913. Over the years, Doris’s family spent their summers in Muskoka, on Silver Island. Doris continued to live in Toronto until purchasing her own property on the Scarborough Bluffs, a home her mother referred to as a “Fool’s Paradise”. The property is known as “Fool’s Paradise” to this day.

Doris began school at age 5, attending Williamson Road Public School in Toronto from 1915 to 1921. At age 11 Doris began middle school at Toronto’s Malvern Collegiate Institute in 1921. She attended Malvern until graduating in 1926, though her high school diploma states her graduation year as 1925. In addition to attending high school at Malvern in the year 1925, Doris also began to attend Saturday Junior courses at the Ontario College of Art (OCA). Through these classes she was awarded a full time day scholarship to OCA for the fall of 1926, and thus began her academic artistic training. While attending OCA, Doris received instruction from Group of Seven members Arthur Lismer and J.E.H. MacDonald, as well as Emanuel Hahn, J.W. Beatty, Yvonne McKague Housser, Grace Coombs, Charles Goldhamer and others. Doris met artist Ethel Curry at OCA and together they spent many holidays painting in Haliburton and other Northern cities. Occasionally fellow classmates, such as Ed Noffke, Ruth Dingle, Franklin Casey, Frances Anne Johnston and Franklin Arbuckle, joined them on these painting trips.

Doris graduated from OCA in 1930. In the same year, Arthur Lismer offered her an opportunity to teach children's art classes at the Art Gallery of Toronto and thus began Doris’s career as a teacher. Doris worked part time as a teacher with Moulton College from 1931 to 1932, and received training at the Ontario Training College for Technical Teachers in Hamilton during the years 1932 to 1933. In 1932 Doris began teaching art at the Central Technical School (CTS) in Toronto, where she continued for 40 years. Her students included artists Harold Klunder, Dino Rigolo and Joyce Wieland. She retired from CTS in 1972. After retiring from teaching at the Toronto Central Technical School, Doris attended the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (UTSC) as a part-time student. She was 63 when she began her courses at UTSC and she was 79 upon graduating with an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Literature on June 6, 1989.

In addition to her career as a teacher, Doris dedicated her life to being an artist. She produced drawings at a young age and began to seriously study painting through her education at OCA, focusing on landscape as subject matter. Doris had her first exhibition with Ethel Curry at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto in 1930. After graduating from OCA, Doris supported herself as a practicing artist through her teacher’s salary. She exhibited many of her paintings with the Ontario Society of Artists (OSA), the Royal Canadian Academy (RCA), and the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour (CSPWC), as well as with other Canadian and international galleries and institutions. In her later years, Doris’s life as an artist began to build momentum. She received a number of accolades, such as the Order of Canada (1987) and Order of Ontario (1992), and in 1983 she was the subject of the award-winning documentary film entitled Doris McCarthy: Heart of a Painter. Major retrospectives of her work have been held, such as Doris McCarthy, Feast of Incarnation, Paintings 1929-1989, which traveled across the nation from 1991 until 1994, as well as other traveling exhibitions such as The View from Here (1991). In 2004, the Doris McCarthy Gallery (DMG) was opened at the University of Toronto Scarborough and Doris donated many of her works to the DMG’s permanent collection.

Doris was an active member of the Canadian arts community throughout her lifetime. She was a member of the OSA, RCA, CSWPC and other artist groups. She became the first woman president of the OSA, elected in 1964 and serving until 1967. Travel was also an important tool for artistic inspiration and study for Doris. She covered ground across Canada, Europe, Asia, New Zealand, and the Arctic over the years, documenting the landscapes of each location that she visited. Doris McCarthy was also a celebrated author and committed documenter of daily life. She began to keep diaries at age 12 (1922) and continued until the age of 95 (2005). These journals would become the source material for her three autobiographies, A Fool in Paradise (1990), The Good Wine (1991), and Ninety Years Wise (2004). Doris was also very active in the Canadian Girls in Training (CGIT) organization. She joined CGIT in 1925 and was a camp counselor for many summers in her younger years and a lifetime member of the “Shawnees” CGIT group. She was also very active in her church, St. Aidan’s Anglican Church, and completed liturgical artwork such as crèche carvings and calligraphy. On November 25th, 2010, Doris McCarthy passed away in her home at Fool’s Paradise. She is interred at Mount Pleasant Cemetery.