Video Transcription
With the Recent pandemic and the courageous work done by our brave frontline workers, the Young Canuckstorian Project looks to celebrate some of the outstanding community leaders from the past who have gone above and beyond the call for their Lambton, our home.
Doctor, wife, mother, world traveler, and maker of the famous chili sauce recipe, that’s our Doc Dougall. Anna Marion Brown was born Eddy’s Mills, Dawn Township, Lambton County. She attended school in Oil Springs and she went on to attend the University of Western Ontario where she graduated from the School of Medicine in 1927. Only the second woman to achieve the goal at this time. Doctor Marion Dougall married Doctor Roswell Dougall and in 1930 they moved to Petrolia and set up a practice during the Great Depression. In 1939, Marion’s husband volunteered his services for the armed forces during World War II.
It was during that time Marion took over her husband’s medical practice in Petrolia and began her career as a general practitioner which continued in Petrolia until the mid-1970s. After her retirement she continued at the medical office in Twilight Haven. She cared for the people of Petrolia and the surrounding area for over 40 years.
Doctor Marion Dougall was a world traveler and was said to have been around the world twice. Many who have deep roots in Lambton County may use Doc Dougall’s recipe for chili sauce. The famous Lambton County chili sauce recipe first appeared in the CEE Hospital Guild cookbook in 1953 and it continues to be handed down through generations.
Doc Dougall, a magnificent community leader and inventor of the famous Lambton County Chili sauce.
Additional Information
Anna Marion Brown was born on September 3rd, 1904 to John Brown, a merchant, and Ethel M Stephenson in Dawn Township.
Dr. Marion Dougall married Dr. Roswell Percival Ingham Dougall on June 14th, 1927. Shortly after they lived in Detroit where she worked in pediatrics. In 1930 they moved to Petrolia and it was during the Great Depression that Marion took a step back from her practice to raise their three children Mona, Ross and Janice.
During the War, Dr. Dougall was one of nine doctors in the area that made calls to Sarnia and throughout the County. After WWII, her husband remained in Europe as director of missing persons until 1953. She took complete control of the practice after her husband’s death in 1962, cutting her work time to four full days and two half days per week and emergency cases.
Marion appreciated listening to good music. She loved the Opera and would travel to Europe once or twice a year to attend performances. As her memorial reads, she traveled around the world twice but she always disappointed that she had never visited Easter Island. She was an enthusiastic student of archaeology, travelling to remote areas where there was a great deal of archaeological finds such as Egypt.
One of her hobbies included gardening, with many of her plants brought home from her wanderings. Her favorite reading material was her old scrapbook filled with pictures of the many babies she delivered over the years, with appropriate captions to each picture. This album was given to her by a group of Petrolia women at a party in her honour and it became one of her most treasured possessions.
She passed on Wednesday, August 26, 1987.
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