This talk will examine the history of women studying veterinary medicine at the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC). While women today represent a sizeable proportion of veterinary practitioners, for much of the twentieth century veterinary medicine was a male dominated profession. This dominance extended to the veterinary schools, which acted as professional gatekeepers. As Canada’s oldest continually operating veterinary school, the OVC was both central to the process of professional gatekeeping and was also a key site for the training of women veterinarians. Women applying to OVC faced admission practices that favoured male applicants and those women who were accepted to the OVC were met with the masculine culture of veterinary medicine. Despite these difficulties, women actively and successfully pursued veterinary training at the OVC, including in areas such as large animal medicine for which they were widely believed to be unsuitable.
Speaker: Kevin Woodger a holds a PhD from the Department of History at the University of Toronto. His areas of research include the history of veterinary medicine in Canada as well as the history of childhood and youth.
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Note: The Toronto Branch OGS Annual General Meeting will be held at 7:00 pm. A Zoom registration link for the AGM will be emailed to members.
Stanley George Sinclair Grizzle was a Canadian citizenship judge, a soldier, a political candidate and an activist. Born in Toronto to Jamaican immigrant parents at the end of WWI Stanley G. Grizzle became a railway porter at 22, founded the Railway Porter’s Trade Union Council and was active in the labour movement throughout his life, becoming the first African-Canadian member of a trade union. Mr. Grizzle was an associate editor and columnist for Contrast, a black community newspaper and penned the book My Name’s Not George: The Story of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in Canada. In 1959 Mr. Grizzle and Jack White became the first African-Canadians to run in an Ontario election. Mr. Grizzle has also received the Order of Ontario, Order of Canada and the Order of Distinction from Jamaica for his valuable contributions to Canadian society.
Speaker: In her work life, Pancheta (Pat) Barnett, Ph.D (Hon) has been an actor, writer, artist, empowering speaker, ordained minister and practitioner of holistic medicine. For 20 years she held the position of Director of Communications at North York General Hospital.
Since 2013 Ms. Barnett has acted as President of The East York Historical Society. She has also held the role of Chair, Committee for Honourific and Ceremonial Street and Lane-Naming for the Toronto and East York Community Preservation Panel. In that capacity she was proud to champion the name “Stanley G. Grizzle Lane” for a public lane in the Danforth and Main area near Stanley G. Grizzle Park. The proposal was successful and the name was adopted in 2018.
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