Anna Lois Dawson, born in 1851 while her father was superintendent of schools in Nova Scotia, was the eldest daughter of John William Dawson, principal of McGill University from 1855 to 1893. She was schooled in 1861-1862 at the Establishment for the Education of Young Ladies in Montreal where she learned drawing from Mrs. and Miss Tate and in 1863, at Mrs. Simpson’s Ladies School; drawing and painting were interests considered appropriate for young ladies at the time and she excelled at them, earning first prize at the midsummer exam in 1867. She continued her art lessons in 1873 with a Mr. Bird at an art school in Toronto. She accompanied her mother and father on his first and only sabbatical in 1884 when they travelled to Italy, Egypt, and the Holy Land. In 1876 she married Bernard James Harrington (1848-1907), a chemistry professor at McGill who was a former student of her father’s. Anna bore nine children: Eric, Edith, William, Bernard, Ruth, Clare, Constance, Conrad and Lois. Two of them died young: Eric at age 17 and Edith at age eleven, and much of her time and energy was devoted to care of sickly Eric. Her youngest daughter, Lois Winslow-Spragge, became the first art teacher at Miss Edgar's and Miss Cramp's School for Girls. While her husband stayed in town in the summer, Anna went with the children to Little Metis where they had a cottage next to the Dawson’s house, Birkenshaw. During these summers, she made many sketches and watercolor paintings, giving each a date and title. Many of her landscapes, painted from 1869 to 1914, are in the McCord Museum now.

The rest of the year, the family lived in Walbrae Place adjacent to the McGill campus in a house built for them by her father, until 1893 when her father purchased the house at 293 University (now 3641) and also bought the house next door for the Harringtons. The two families were very close and after Sir William’s death in 1899, a passage was built between the two houses for better communication. She lived there till her death in 1917.

She helped her father with his correspondence especially in his later years and illustrated many of his geological books. After his death, in 1900 she jotted down five pages of notes of memories of her father (among the Anna Dawson Harrington papers in the McGill University Archives, MG 1022, container 64) hoping to enliven the manuscript of his rather impersonal autobiography. However, her younger brother Rankine was determined to publish it as written and it appeared the following year entitled “Fifty years of work in Canada: scientific and educational,” with his editing, sparking a family feud between Rankine and Anna, who was supported by her older brother George. This dispute is well documented in the family’s correspondence preserved in the Dawson Family Fonds in the McGill University Archives.

Bernard James Harrington, sometimes known as B.J., was born in 1848 in Saint Andrew’s (Saint-Andre-Est), Lower Canada, to which his great grandfather had immigrated from Massachusetts in 1805 and helped establish the first Canadian paper mill there. Poor eyesight meant that most of his early education was under private teachers, but he entered McGill University and graduated from there with a B.A. in Natural Science with first class honours in 1869 and obtained a doctorate in mineralogy with distinction from Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School in 1871, apparently the first Canadian to get a PhD from there. That summer he helped John William Dawson, McGill’s principal, with research on Prince Edward Island and then began his 36-year teaching career at McGill by lecturing in chemistry, mineralogy, and assaying. After also spending some time in Britain visiting smelting works in chief mining and manufacturing centres, he added metallurgy to the subjects he taught. In 1872, in addition to his teaching load, he was appointed as chemist and mineralogist to the Geological Survey of Canada (conveniently based in Montreal), a post he held till 1879. He received the David Greenshields chair of chemistry and mineralogy at McGill in 1883. Among his other responsibilities were as president of the Natural History Society of Montreal, and as president of the chemistry and physics section of the Royal Society of Canada in 1890. He is the author of a biography of Sir William E. Logan, the first director of the Canadian Geological Survey, and many scientific publications.

As for his personal life, in 1876, he married Anna Lois Dawson, daughter of McGill’s principal, and began a family, eventually to include nine children (Eric, Edith, William, Bernard, Ruth, Clare, Constance, Conrad and Lois), although two (Eric and Edith) died before adulthood. His modest salary as a professor meant that the family lived simply but with much help from the generosity of his father-in-law, who built them a house next to the campus in Walbrae Place where they lived until 1893 when Dawson bought a house at 293 University (now 3641) for himself and bought them another house next door. He also bought them a cottage next to Birkenshaw, his summer home in Little Metis.

Harrington was a lover of music, for which he had some talent: he was an editor and composer in the production of the McGill College Song Book (1885). His portrait by Robert Harris hangs in the MacDonald Chemistry Building, of which he was the first director from its opening in 1898 until his death in 1907.