With excerpts from Doug Warren’s Memoirs
KAWARTHA LAKES-Doug Warren was born on July 16, 1916 at Fenelon Falls, Ontario. As he was coming into the world, six thousand kilometers away, the British Army was fighting desperately to capture Delville Wood during the Battle of the Somme—as Doug would reflect on as an octogenarian. Life would never be quite the same again after the Battle of the Somme—its first day (July 1) is often taken to be one of the greatest catastrophes in the history of the British Army, as it sustained 57,470 casualties in a single day. It was also a day of men doing their duty, as nine Victoria Crosses were awarded for bravery. The British Army would persevere and by November they had advanced six miles along much of the front. But at what cost?

The significance and the decisions of the commanders at the Battle of the Somme continue to be debated to this day—was it “Lions Led by Donkeys?” Nevertheless, many Canadians took from it a sense of duty, to keep the faith for all of the soldiers who laid down their lives for their country. It also became an enduring testament to the horrors of war. Doug Warren’s life would reflect both of these sentiments. He had a very strong sense of being there for his neighbours, community and country. He would enlist to serve in the Second World War. But he would serve as a doctor, and did not hesitate to express his pacifist views. As an older gentleman, it was very important to him to make sure that no youngster could ever believe that war was anything but terrible. He would refer to the Great War as a “tragedy.”

Doug was raised in family that valued sobriety and industry. His parents, Fred and Ethel Warren became the first couple married at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church on June 14, 1911. Fenelon Falls was a dry town and would remain so for decades. The Warrens were good Presbyterians, and alcohol would never touch Fred and Ethel’s lips. When Fred was 13, his father (blacksmith W.B. Warren) passed away, so out of necessity he began a career in retailing by taking a job at W.L. Robson’s store. There he befriended his boss’ daughter, Ethel Warren and they would pool their resources to operate Warren’s Store. Doug had an older sister Mary, and younger brother Don.
As Doug was growing up, churches were a huge part of Fenelon Falls, many people truly did keep the Sabbath holy. St. Andrew’s had three services each Sunday: Morning service at 11 am, evening service at 7 pm and Sunday School at 2:30 pm. It was fairly common to go to more than one church service. As a boy, Doug won a copy of the Book of Praise (the Presbyterian Hymn Book) for perfect attendance at Sunday School. He remembered hearing about Agnes Dickson’s missions to China and learning about how all children in the world were children of a loving God. At Mission Band “we pasted cut-outs from magazines in out-dated wallpaper sample books.” Shipped with bales of used clothing to overseas missions, later in life he wondered “what recipients thought of these sincerely motivated but irrelevant pictures from our magazines.” In Sunday School, he learned the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”—lessons that guided how he lived his life.
Doug attended Fenelon Falls Public School, where he learned the Three ‘R’s like so many other schoolboys in Ontario. He recalled how there was an emphasis on learning agriculture, so each student tended their own garden pots on the top of the school hill. They learned how to keep farm animals, fowl and raise crops. His teacher, Eva Taylor, allowed him to depict what he wished in art class, rather than the vase they were supposed to draw, and he would develop a lifelong love of art, like his father, uncle and brother. He would always remember a passage from one of his readers: “It is physically impossible for a well-educated, intellectual or brave man to make money the chief object of his thoughts.” Ideals were always very important to Doug.
After Public School, Doug moved on to Fenelon Falls Continuation School (later Fenelon Falls Secondary School). In that era, being a cadet was mandatory:
Unfortunately for me, I was too small for the available uniforms, so my modification of breeches and puttees resulted in my having to play the kettle drum for the marching of the Corps. The following year the cadet program was discontinued. I had however, been introduced to military affairs and had learned to “walk in step.”

Having a regimented childhood also extended to being a Boy Scout—though Fenelon Falls had no scout leader. So, he was a Lone Scout—each boy selected an adult to serve as their councillor and friend, who would examine them and grant passing status for each of their tests and badges.
“One of the most important events of my life occurred during my High School days. In the summer, my father rented boats to supplement his store income. There were about twenty sixteen-foot skiffs and canoes in his fleet. On Cameron Lake, west of the railroad bridge, he had one of the boathouses in which they were kept. One summer day, I was going there, walking along Water Street, which we knew as ‘the Canal Bank.’ Passing the Cement Dock, I saw a beautiful young lady, sitting with her legs in the water, preparing for a swim. I remember that she was wearing a white bathing suit. Strange as it may sound, I believe I fell in love with her at that moment. In any case, Dorothy Lankin eventually became my wife, after a long courtship of almost ten years.”

As a youth, Doug would help out at his parents’ store, “on weekends, after school and especially Saturday evenings, the busiest time of the week.” In that era, farm families would come into town on Saturday evening to shop and socialize—it might be the only time all week that they made it so far from home. Practically everyone who lived in this era had joyful memories of the games that kids played, fathers spending time together at the pool hall, or getting ice cream cones. As the son of a shop keeper, Doug was not out on the streets, making merry with the other kids in town. “Sometimes Saturday night skating, hockey or baseball games, dancing at the Pavillion or other activities seemed of higher priority from a teenager’s point of view.” But he would be the good son, helping out with his father’s business. For a high school student, working every Saturday night, was the reality of coming from a relatively prosperous family. Because his family worked hard, post-secondary education was a possibility for Doug—which was not common in this era.
His childhood best friend was Hugh Murray Graham, the son of Dr. Grattan Graham, who had served in the medical corps during the Great War, before returning to his home town to start a practice. Grattan’s father Dr. Hugh Henry Graham, had also been a village physician. Doug remembered how they made paper mats together, built shacks in the back yard with the wooden packing boxes (there was no cardboard in this era) from Warren’s Store, raised chickens, rabbits, pigeons, played hockey, and enjoyed hiking together. As a boy, Doug was fascinated by everything he learned when Dr. Grattan Graham occasionally took him on house visits. “This was the stimulus for me to later follow his profession.” Grandson Rob Warren elaborates, “I think he became a physician became he sincerely wanted to help people.”
When Doug was a teenager, continuation school students could apply directly to medical school—there was no requirement of completing Premed first, nor were the grades required as high as at present: “with my high school grades, today I would not be accepted in any medical school in Canada.” Just finishing high school was an accomplishment that was not common—a large proportion of children were at work by 16. Few families felt that they could afford post-secondary education—but Doug was one of the fortunate few. He would attend the University of Toronto, where his uncle Donald Oakley Robson was a classics professor.
As he was attending medical school, “it seemed obvious in the later years of the 30s that war was in the offing.” He joined the Canadian officers Training Corps, and would be trained at Camps Niagara and Borden. He graduated as an MD in 1941, at a time when the military required many physicians. Doug completed a brief placement, then married Dorothy, before he was deployed to Western Canada and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands to serve in units defending against a potential Japanese attack and researching winter warfare. He then transferred to the United States Army to serve in the Pacific Theatre. While he was completing training at the American Medical Training Centre in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Nazi German surrendered, followed three months later by Japan.
Doug was always a pacifist, “I believe that he enlisted because of his duty to country,” Rob notes. “He believed in being loyal. He would instill in me that you are very lucky to be living in the country that you are living in at the time you are living in it. He often said that to me. He wanted me to appreciate that what we have here is amazing and most people in the world don’t have it, and that I should be thankful for that. He was willing to fight for that when World War II started.”
Serving in the military was not something that Doug was not at all eager to talk about. “It was not something that he brought up himself at all,” Rob recalls. “He had to be asked. He did have items from his military service in his home, like a foxhole shovel and his old helmet. He would explain what they were, but only if he was asked. He would say that World War II was horrible… a horrible thing that should never be repeated. He was definitely a pacifist.”
Doug’s military service ended decades before the advent of free universal healthcare in Canada. In that era, there was not the same issue today that people did not have a primary care physician. Instead, many people waited altogether too long before going to the doctor because they were afraid of how much it would cost. Small town doctors often took what their patients could give as payment—for instance potatoes or eggs—realizing what a hardship it might be for their patients to have to do without the bartered goods.
Doug believed that “medicine, as much as possible, should be preventative.” After he was discharged from the military, he returned to the University of Toronto to complete a Diploma in Public Health. After completing his placement as Medical Officer of Health for the City of Brandon, Manitoba, he worked for Imperial Oil in Sarnia. When his job ended there, he worked as a family physician, before accepting a professorial appointment at the University of Toronto, where he spent five years.
After he retired, Doug and Dorothy returned to their childhood home in Fenelon Falls. He volunteered to serve on a lot of committees, including Fenelon Falls village council. “I never met someone who wanted to help people like he did,” Rob explains. “He took the physician’s oath to heart, first of all to do no harm. He rarely uttered a bad word about anybody. When I asked him, “Don’t you hate that person?’ He would reply, ‘I don’t hate anyone, there are just some people that I don’t have time for.’ He was that kind of a gentle and helpful person. I remember as a 9 or 10 year old kid, I would go with him to these board meetings. They were learning experiences for me, and learning was important to him.”
Wayne Hutchinson recalls serving on council with Doug. “He did not run for council because he had an agenda, he was just there to help the village, to do what he could to help everybody. In those days, people would come to the meetings, upset about some issue, demanding that council do something in particular. He was a really nice guy and very level headed. When people came to council upset, he would ask appropriate questions. He made the effort to calm people down, and he was good at that. He was very quiet, very polite and you could see the wheels turning in his head before he spoke. He was thinking of the right words to say to get you to calm down. He took the time to dig into things, and learn about the issues before we passed anything. He always wanted to have the background information and was very through. He was a very good councillor.” Later, when his niece Pat Warren was running for council he taught her, “always get the best value of each tax dollar spent.”
Dr. Doug Warren would always be very interested in doing whatever he could to keep the people around him be healthy. “He would make sure that the village employees were following the rules and regulations so they would not injure themselves on the job,” Wayne recounts. “He wanted to make sure that we never had a claim for workman’s compensation. I remember him really stressing that to Al Finney, Clarence Alldred and Ross Arscott.”
“I think he enjoyed serving on council because he liked to get work done for the village,” Rob explains. “I don’t think he enjoyed the politics that came with the job. I got the sense that it was not easy to get things done. He was someone who believed that if something was for public benefit then we should do it, but there were strong personalities in village politics, and if one person did not like another then it wouldn’t happen. He was someone who could set just about anything aside for the greater good, but I think he found it frustrating when others couldn’t. I think a reason that he retired from council was because he realized that you could do more by surrounding yourself with like-minded people who were going in the same direction—it was easier than arguing with other people, to persuade them to do what you believe is the public good. I think he found that politics got in the way of making positive changes.”

Doug really enjoyed volunteering for the Fenelon Falls Historical Society and Museum (the museum was founded by the Historical Society, but in later years they were separate entities—due to the kind of political disagreements that Doug found frustrating). “He spoke at the opening of the museum in 1963,” Rob observes. “He spent a lot of time doing research in graveyards and giving historical tours of the village. I remember he had such reverence for Mark Fell—he was a very important person to my grandfather. Mark had fought in the First World War, and done so much as a carpenter and mason to build the village. Being such an entrepreneur and such a generator of action in the town, I have never seen my grandfather be in such awe of someone as him.”
When the author of this article was in Grade 10, he invited Dr. Doug Warren to be a guest speaker for a presentation on the Second World War. The expectation in recruiting a veteran was that he would share what it was like serve. Instead, Doug brought his dictionary, and explained at length that it was the dictionary that we should be studying. He did not say anything about serving in the military at all. He effectively communicated how strongly he believed that if there was one thing that that the class should learn about war, it was to learn how to communicate with each other to avoid it ever happening again. That and he had many specific lessons of what not to do to stay healthy: Do not listen to the radio in the bathtub; Do not walk backwards while cutting grass; and so on… As a student it was hard not to wonder what had happened to one of his patients to inspire these guidelines, but they were lessons that were hard to forget!
Rob adds, “The first book he gave me was the dictionary, and I still have it. He believed that speakers have always ruled the world, and the wise thing is to join them. Writing, speaking and being able to communicate were of the utmost importance to him. He instilled that in me from a very early age. He loved to give me books and learning opportunities. … You don’t know how many times he chastised me for pulling the lawnmower backwards!”
In his retirement years, Doug “was constantly reading. He would ready history books, books about the war, biographies, Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. He studied classics like Machiavelli’s Prince and Stephen Leacock. He had subscriptions to dozens of magazines. He and Dorothy both loved to read and they liked to play Scrabble together. Though they were both so well read, she won most of the games—but they were a good match.”
Doug and Dorothy “were solid together. Things would never change with them. They were not overly affectionate, but you could tell they were absolutely devoted to each other all the time. Doug was very cheerful, optimistic and helpful, a very positive person. Dorothy was very proper. You needed to mind your manners, don’t hold a fork that way, don’t sit on that couch, but she was also a kind person. He doted on her hand and foot. Before she knew that she wanted it, he had it for her. Anything that she needed or wanted he had for her, and she loved that. I thought they were an ideal couple and a perfect marriage. I never saw them fight. You might hear ‘Oh my goodness, I can’t believe you said that.’ But they were a couple that said ‘I love you’ every night. They were very steadfast and they taught me the value of generosity and being kind to people.”

Spending their retirement years in Fenelon Falls, their hometown, meant a lot to Doug and Dorothy. They lived on Lankin Lane, which was named after her family—Dorothy’s father owned 1000 feet of waterfront and split it up among his seven children. In their retirement years, the whole shoreline was populated with her family. “They both loved being here it was their idea of a little piece of heaven. Doug liked to golf and garden—there was always a big vegetable garden. He grew way too many vegetables for his own use and as a kid I would sell them from my wagon. He spent a lot of time looking after the grounds. He was a very social person. He would go into town every day to stop and talk with people about how things were going. If you spent time with him, it was always a very slow day, because he had to stop and talk to everyone who knew him—and he knew everybody and all about their family.”
“He was happiest with his family,” Rob says. “When we arrived to visit him, that was the happiest that I ever saw him. He loved having his grandkids around. He taught me to golf. He loved art, so we would often have morning painting sessions. Other days we would work with clay. When I was interested in wildflowers and biology, he would go out with me and drive around looking for different wild plants.
Fred Warren had acted as the village Santa Claus and Doug would follow in his shoes, at least for his own family. “I remember in my early years being visited by “Santa,” who strangely sounded like my grandfather and smelled of the same aftershave! I would also receive calls from Santa before Christmas and he would tell me about the North Pole and ask what I wanted. I will always fondly remember the magic he added to those early Christmases. Whether it was playing Santa, attending the Presbyterian Church or joining the Freemasons I found he often tried to uphold the practices and values that Fred had impressed on him through his life.”
Doug “cherished his family.” Rob elaborates, “the family around him and the family that came before him. As grandchildren we never felt anything but love and support from him. When I was just learning to speak, I called him Bunky. Rather than correct it he embraced it and I never addressed him by any other name. The first thing that I think about with him was his smile. He was always happy and smiling and he was a good person and I grew up idolizing him.”

Doug Warren devoted his life to his ideals. “His message to everyone was be good to each other and just get along—that is more important than anything else,” Rob explains. “It was the meaning of life to him to be a good person and be good to those around you—then you will have the happiest life. He was very well loved. He never said a bad thing about anyone and I never heard anyone say a bad thing about him. I never found anyone who did not admire him. As a child, I figured if I could be that kind of person, I would be well ahead in life. He was a great role model. His ideals are becoming rare these days. There are a lot of people who have something bad to say at the drop of a hat. It was nice to know someone who was so optimistic about everyone that he knew.”
This story is a memory and nobody’s memory is perfect. Sometimes details get a little mixed up, things get forgotten or overlooked, and the perspective is inevitably subjective. If you notice something that not right, have something you would like to tell us, or a memory to share the museum would be happy to hear from you: [email protected]
This story is part of our partnership with Maryboro Lodge, The Fenelon Falls Museum and was written by Glenn Walker.
If you want to make a donation to the museum, you can e-transfer to: [email protected] or mail a cheque to :
Maryboro Lodge Museum
Box 179
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Fenelon Falls, ON
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