Jennie Smillie Robertson

Jennie Smillie Robertson
Jennie Smillie
Born	(1878-02-10)February 10, 1878 Hensall, Ontario, Canada
Died	February 26, 1981(1981-02-26) (aged 103)
Resting place	Mount Pleasant Cemetery
Education	Ontario Medical College for Women (merged into University of Toronto), M.D. 1909
Occupation	Physician and surgeon
Employer	Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, Women's College Hospital
Known for	First female surgeon in Canada
Spouse(s)	Alex Robertson

The Women's College Hospital in Toronto that Smillie helped found as the Ontario Medical College for Women.

Jennie Robertson (February 10, 1878 – February 26, 1981) was a Canadian obstetrics and gynaecology surgeon and physician. She was the first modern female surgeon in Canada and performed the country's first major gynecological surgery.^[1] Born on a farm, she displayed interest in medicine from an early age and taught in schools to save her salary to pay for medical school. She attended the Ontario Medical College for Women through its absorption into the University of Toronto and helped re-found it as today's Women's College Hospital after no hospital would let her perform surgery. In her later life, she married her childhood sweetheart at age 70 and died at age 103, in 1981.

Early life and education

Born on February 10, 1878 as Jane Smillie on a farm outside of Hensall, Ontario,^[2][3] Smillie was the fourth child of Benjamin Smillie (1839–1886) and his wife, Jane Smillie (née Buchanan) (1849–1906). She had six siblings.^[4] Later in life, she told another female doctor friend, "I was only 3 when I first thought about being a doctor. I heard of a woman missionary doctor. When I was 5 I asked my mother if women could be doctors. She told me they could and from then on I knew that is what I would do."^[4]

During her childhood, both of her parents had been interested in education; since they lived on a farm, she and her siblings walked 2 and a half miles to school, attending public schools in Hensall. Later, Smillie paid for room and board to attend public schools in Seaforth, Ontario.^[5]

Smillie initially was educated as and worked as a teacher until she was 25^[5] so that she could save from her salary in order to attend the Ontario Medical College for Women.^[6] During her second year of medical school, in 1906, the College was merged into the University of Toronto’s medical school, making the amalgamated school coeducational; some of the women felt hostility from their male peers, though Smillie viewed the women as a positive influence on the young men.^[6] Smillie graduated in 1909.^[1]

Career

Although Smillie had graduated, medical internships in Canada were difficult for women to obtain;^[5] no hospital in Toronto would take her as a resident intern, so she completed an internship at Philadelphia's Women's Medical College.^[6][7] In 1910, she returned to Canada and set up her practice, but as no doctors would train her, she traveled again to Philadelphia and took six months of intensive training under another woman surgeon, including a week where she alone was in charge of the surgical ward. She stated this experience significantly built her confidence.^[4]

Even after her second return to Toronto, no hospital would allow her to perform surgery, so she performed an oophorectomy in order to remove a ovarian tumor^[4] using daylight on a patient's kitchen table.^[5][6] She was the first physician and the first woman to do major gynecological surgery in Canada,^[6] and this surgery was the first major gynecological surgery done in a patient's home.^[1] This also made her the first woman surgeon in the country.^[1]

Due to their lack of options, an increase in female patients wanting their services,^[4] and a growing number of women physicians in Canada,^[5] Smillie and her female colleagues reestablished the Ontario Medical College for Women as the Women's College Hospital, which was first located inside rented houses before a building could be built.^[4] At the Women's College Hospital, she held the chairmanship of the Gynecology department from 1912 to 1942.^[6] In the early days of its reestablishment, financial difficulties led the founding women doctors to gather vegetables from farmers' wives in order to feed their patients.^[7] During her career, Smillie performed mainly abdominal and gynecological surgeries.^[4] In 1948, Smillie retired.^[7]

Outside of the hospital, Smillie was a founding member of an organization for Canadian women in medicine,^[1][8] the Federation of Medical Women of Canada, and was at one point the president of the Women's Liberal Association. She was politically active in liberal causes.^[5]

Last years and legacy

Smillie married Alex Robertson when she was 70, after her retirement. He was her childhood sweetheart. She commented that "I first met the man I was to marry many years later, in 1898 while I was teaching. At that time I was planning for medicine, not marriage, and I didn’t think I could have both."^[1] At that point, she had met him forty years previously, and he was now a widower.^[5] He died ten years after.^[4] She died in a nursing home on February 26, 1981, at the age of 103 and is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto.^[3]

In 2013, Hensall, Ontario dedicated and named a pocket park in her honor.^[2]

In 2016, Smillie was one of the nominees to be the first woman to have her face printed on banknotes of the Canadian dollar.^[9] However, early civil rights activist Viola Desmond was chosen to the be the first woman – and black person – to appear on Canadian money.^[10]

References