Georgie Doucet - Club and Provincial Golf Champion - “Small in stature but tall in spirit”

Margaret Georgina Doucet was born in Tompkins, Newfoundland in 1933. Her father Alexander Doucet was a blacksmith from Tompkins, and her mother, Florence Cassie MacLellan, was from Margaree, Inverness County, Cape Breton. The family moved from Newfoundland to Antigonish, N.S. in 1945. Georgie finished high school there and attended St. F.X. University, earning an Education Degree.

In 1956, while teaching school in Antigonish, Georgie took up the game of golf. At that time she was 28 years old -  which would be considered old for a person to take up the sport - but she quickly became very good and won the 1957 club handicap trophy (see photo at right). She had company because her two older sisters, May and Kay, also started playing the game. Within 3 years Georgie reduced her handicap to 10, and she was wining local and provincial tournaments, including the Antigonish Club Championship in 1958, when she upset defending champion Mary Boyd.  She also had her first hole in one while playing with her sister May!

In the same year, she won the consolation championship of the Maritime Ladies Tournament held at Brightwood Golf Club in Dartmouth, N.S. That championship was won by Rita Lohnes of Lunenburg, who at that time was a junior, but who would later win five Nova Scotia championships as a senior and have many battles with Georgie.

Georgie’s win in the consolation final over Marg Johnstone of Chester, N.S. was reported in the Halifax Mail-Star as a tournament surprise because it was her “first taste of title play and her initial serious competition over a full 18-hole course.”

Georgie continued competing at the Maritime level in 1959 at the Maritime Championship, this time in Charlottetown, P.E.I., where she went face to face with Rita Lohnes. The Lunenburg player beat Georgie in the final round over 36 holes of match play at the Belvedere Golf Club.

Georgie avenged herself with Rita Lohnes when in 1961 she played against her on the Antigonish course in the Labour Day Invitational tourney and proceeded to beat her in the final round, with a brilliant four over par score of 77. (Photo at left shows Georgie in action at Lingan Golf Club in inter-club competition with Joan Lowrey and Winnie McCarthy) 

That same year saw Georgie once again face all the best golfers in the Maritimes, at the 1961 Ladies Championship played in Moncton, New Brunswick, which was won by Rita Lohnes, who beat Mary Ellen Driscoll in the final. In that tournament, Georgie was one of the three low medalists coming third (81) to Lohnes (78), and Driscoll (80).

1962 saw Georgie win top honours in the annual ladies invitational field day staged at the Antigonish Golf Club which hosted fifty golfers from Antigonish, New Glasgow, Truro, Sydney and North Sydney.

In 1963, Georgie was runner up to Mary Ellen Driscoll at the Nova Scotia Ladies Championship held in Truro, N.S. Driscoll was at that time a previous four-time Nova Scotia Champion.

The year 1965 saw Georgie turn her talents to the national golf scene when she qualified for the Canadian Close and Open Championship held at the Westmount Golf Club in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. That tournament boasted over 160 golfers from all provinces except Newfoundland, and included future Canadian Hall of Fame and LPGA players, Sandra Post and the winner Jocelyne Bourassa from Quebec. Georgie was the captain of the Nova Scotia team, made up of four senior and two junior golfers.

Ten years later, in 1975, Georgie went back to the national scene when she qualified and competed  as one of the Nova Scotia players in the Canadian Ladies Golf Championship at the Oakfield Golf Club in Grand Lake, Nova Scotia, which was won by Debbie Massey.

Georgie topped off her career in 1981, when she won the Nova Scotia Senior Ladies Championship. 

In 1995 the Antigonish Golf Club celebrated Georgie’s career by hanging a plaque in her honour in the clubhouse. At that time Cheryl MacGillivray, on behalf of the ladies division, noted that she had won at least 25 ladies club championships along with her other wins, and had dominated the ladies game in the Antigonish area for over 30 years. She concluded by saying. “All this has been accomplished by a lady who may be small in stature but who is tall in spirit.”

Georgie died in 2004.  (She is pictured above - centre - with her sisters May and Kay in 1987)

Submitted by Doug MacLellan