Women in STEM - Downtown Guelph

Media Release

Street light banners inspired by local Nobel Prize winner installed on Carden Street Downtown Guelph, May 2019 - The Downtown Guelph Business Association (DGBA), with a funding partnership from the City of Guelph, is happy to announce its newest street light banner project: Canadian Women in STEM. This project recognizes, honours, and in many cases celebrates Women Scientists in Canada and their contributions to the world of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). From now until October, pedestrians can walk along Carden Street and learn about female scientists and the range of their contributions on a local, national, and global scale.

Dr. Donna Strickland

Donna Strickland is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo. Professor Strickland is one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 for developing chirped pulse amplification with Gérard Mourou, her PhD supervisor at the time. They published this Nobel-winning research in 1985 when Strickland was a PhD student at the University of Rochester in New York state. Together they paved the way toward the most intense laser pulses ever created. The research has several applications today in industry and medicine — including the cutting of a patient’s cornea in laser eye surgery, and the machining of small glass parts for use in cell phones.

Dr. Maude Abbott

An unwavering trailblazer with a devotion to science, Dr. Maude Abbott paved the path for future generations of women in medicine, bravely overcoming adversity. Determined to have a career in medicine at a time when the profession was only beginning to soften its views on women becoming doctors, Dr. Abbott became an international authority on cardiac disease and steadily broke down barriers many women faced when entering medicine.

Dr. Maydianne Andrade

Maydianne Andrade is a Jamaican-born Canadian ecologist. She is known for her work on the mating habits of spiders. In 2005, she was named one of the Brilliant 10 by Popular Science magazine.[2] In 2007, she was named a Canadian Research Chair in Integrative Behavioural Ecology. Her best known work is about the mating habits of Australian redback spiders where the most successful males often increase the amount of time they spend mating while being cannibalized by female redbacks.

Dr. Victoria Arbour

Victoria Arbour is a vertebrate paleontologist and evolutionary biologist and is the leading expert on the paleobiology of the armoured dinosaurs known as ankylosaurs. She has named several new species of ankylosaurs, studied how they used and evolved their charismatic armour and weaponry, and investigated how their biogeography was shaped by dispersals between Asia and North America.

Celina Baines

Celina Baines is a PhD student who developed a new model system for researching the evolutionary ecology of long-distance insect movement.

Dr. Helen Battle

A pioneering Canadian zoologist, Dr. Helen Battle was emeritus professor of Zoology – the study of animals – at Western University. Her career shone with firsts. After earning her BA at Western in 1923, she became its first Master of Arts graduate from the Department of Zoology. Her thesis was in the field of fish embryology, an area that fascinated her and in which she went on to make some of her greatest scientific contributions. She was the first woman in Canada to earn a PhD in marine biology, from the University of Toronto. With this, she returned to her hometown of London, Ontario in 1929 and began teaching at Western. As an Assistant Professor at Western, Battle was one of the first zoologists to actively apply laboratory research methods to marine problems. She also pioneered the use of fish eggs to study the effects of cancer-causing substances on cell development.

Colette Benko

While her peers were preparing to enter high school, Colette Benko was preparing for aggressive cancer treatment. The surgery to remove a mango-sized tumour in her stomach also took a piece of the 13-year-old’s femoral nerve, breaking the circuit that sends a signal from the competitive dancer’s brain to her leg, telling it to move. The chemotherapy that followed left Benko sicker than the worst bout of stomach flu. But Benko saw beyond the hardship she faced, allowing the experience to lay the groundwork for a research project that soon may lead to clinical trials of an effective and less toxic treatment for neuroblastoma – a common childhood cancer.

Dr. Harriet Brooks

Harriet Brooks (July 2, 1876 – April 17, 1933) was the first Canadian female nuclear physicist. She is most famous for her research on nuclear transmutations and radioactivity. Ernest Rutherford, who guided her graduate work, regarded her as being next to Marie Curie in the calibre of her aptitude. She was among the first persons to discover radon and to try to determine its atomic mass.

Dr. Mary Beverley-Burton

Dr. Mary Beverley-Burton’s extensive work at the U of G on fish parasites is honoured in the species name Pseudorhabdosynochus beverleyburtonae.

Dr. Anne Innis Dagg

Anne Innis Dagg (born 1933, in Toronto, Ontario) is a Canadian zoologist, biologist, feminist, and author of numerous books. A pioneer in the study of animal behaviour in the wild, Dagg is credited with being the first to study giraffe in the wild and to study animals in the wild in Africa. Her impact on current understandings of giraffe biology and behaviour were focus of the 2018 documentary The Woman Who Loves Giraffes. In addition to her giraffe related research, Dagg has published extensively about camels, primates and Canadian wildlife, and has raised concerns about the influence of sociobiology on how animal related research is shared with the general public. She has also researched and written extensively about the gender bias in academia, drawing attention to the detrimental impact anti-nepotism rules can have on the academic careers of the wives of male faculty members and sexist academic work environments that fail to support female researchers.

Carrie Derick

Carrie Derick's (1862-1941) long affiliation with McGill culminated in her becoming the first female full professor at any Canadian university. Born in 1862, Derick was already teaching at the age of fifteen, and later attended McGill’s Normal School, graduating in 1881. After serving as the Principal of a Montreal grammar school, she returned to McGill for her BA, graduating in 1890. She remained with the Department of Botany as a Lecturer, and her research was crucial in the early development of Genetics studies at McGill. Derick became the Department’s unofficial interim head between 1909 and 1912 (filling in for the ailing official chair), and was made Professor of Comparative Morphology and Genetics in 1912. Her active leadership in this field, as well as in the Local and National Councils of Women, with particular attention to social reform, continued until her death in 1941.

Dr. Lillian Eva Quan Dyck

The Honourable Dr. Lillian Eva Quan Dyck (born August 24, 1945) is a Canadian senator from Saskatchewan. Member of the Gordon First Nation in Saskatchewan, and a first generation Chinese Canadian, she is the first female First Nations senator and first Canadian born Chinese senator. Before being appointed to the Senate, Dyck was a neuroscientist with the University of Saskatchewan, where she was also an associate dean. On March 12, 1999, Dyck, who is of Cree and Chinese heritage and was one of the first Aboriginal women in Canada to pursue an academic career in the sciences, was presented with a lifetime achievement award by Indspire. She continues to teach at the university as well as conduct research on a part-time basis.

Dr. Memory Elvin-Lewis

Ethnobotanist and Infectious Disease Microbiologist: Dr. Elvin-Lewis is an expert on evaluating traditional medicines and their use.

Dr. Leone Norwood Farrell

Leone Norwood Farrell (1904–1986) was a Canadian biochemist and microbiologist who identified microbial strains of industrial importance and developed innovative techniques for the manufacture of vaccines and antibiotics. Farrell was born in Monkland, Ontario in 1904 and moved to Toronto as a child. She completed her MA on the chemistry of fermentation in 1929 at the University of Toronto. She obtained a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Toronto in 1933, which was rare for women at the time.

Dr. Katharine Anne Scott Hayhoe

Katharine Anne Scott Hayhoe (born April 15, 1972) is an atmospheric scientist and professor of political science at Texas Tech University, where she is director of the Climate Science Center. She is also the CEO of the consulting firm ATMOS Research and Consulting. Hayhoe has worked at Texas Tech since 2005. She has authored more than 120 peer-reviewed publications, and wrote the book A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions together with her husband, Andrew Farley. She also co-authored some reports for the US Global Change Research Program, as well as some National Academy of Sciences reports, including the 3rd National Climate Assessment, released on May 6, 2014.

Dr. Anna Marion Hilliard

In 1947, Dr Marion Anna Hilliard was appointed head of the gynecology and obstetrics department at the Women’s College Hospital. This position occupied her fully, yet she had many other projects. She suggested how the hospital could be improved and expanded. She wanted the University’s Faculty of Medicine to accept the hospital for teaching. But her projects often met with indifference or rejection. That year, 1947, Marion and her colleagues developed a simplified method for detecting early symptoms of cancer, particularly of the cervix. This brought enquiries from all over the world. Marion lobbied for and raised funds for the Cancer Detection Clinic. The Clinic was opened in April 1948, the first of its kind in Canada.

Dr. Laura Hug

Laura Hug seeks to define microbial diversity and function at contaminated sites using culture-based and culture-independent methods, generating a blueprint of which species are there and which pathways are active. Her research expands our understanding of the tree of life, while simultaneously developing solutions to address the impacts of human activities on the environment.

Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey

In 1960, America had a stroke of luck. That was when the application to begin mass-marketing the drug thalidomide in the United States landed on the desk of Frances Oldham Kelsey, a reviewer at the Food and Drug Administration. Today we know that the drug can cause a range of severe congenital deformities and even infant death when taken by pregnant women for nausea. But at the time, thalidomide’s darker effects were just becoming known.

Dr. Barbara Sherwood Lollar

Barbara Sherwood Lollar, CC FRSC (born February 19, 1963) is a Canadian geologist and academic known for her research into billion-year-old water. Born in the United States, the daughter of John and Joan Sherwood, she joined the University of Toronto in 1992 after receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in Geological Sciences from Harvard University, a Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from University of Waterloo, and a postdoctoral fellow at University of Cambridge. She is currently a Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Toronto. In 2007, she was made a Canada Research Chair in Isotope Geochemistry of the Earth and the Environment. It was renewed in 2014.

Elsie MacGill

In the early years of Second World War, fighter planes were in short supply. So Canada's war machine turned to a small northern Ontario town and an exceptional person named Elsie MacGill. MacGill worked for the Canadian Car and Foundry Company (CanCar) in Fort William, Ontario (now Thunder Bay). The company primarily manufactured railway boxcars but now the Allies) needed Hawker Hurricane airplanes and quickly. The daunting task fell to Elsie MacGill. The 35-year-old Canadian was one of the country's top aeronautical engineers, a field dominated by men. Before the war, MacGill had designed and tested training airplanes. In 1940, she had to turn CanCar into an airplane assembly line. By the end of the war, one of out every ten Hurricane fighters - 2,000 in all - had been built by CanCar. MacGill became a war hero -- a symbol of the miracle of Canadas economic wartime transformation. A comic book, called Queen of the Hurricanes, was devoted to her exploits in January 1942.

Dr. Frances Gertrude McGill

Frances Gertrude McGill (November 18, 1882 – January 21, 1959) was a pioneering Canadian forensic pathologist, criminologist, allergologist, and allergist. After graduating with her medical degree from the University of Manitoba in 1915, McGill moved to Saskatchewan and became the provincial bacteriologist and then the provincial pathologist. She worked extensively with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and local police forces for more than thirty years, conducting forensic examinations across the province, and was instrumental in establishing the first RCMP forensic laboratory. She was director of the RCMP laboratory for three years, and trained new RCMP recruits in forensic methods of detection. McGill became internationally known for her expertise in forensic pathology, and received the nickname "the Sherlock Holmes of Saskatchewan". Alongside her pathological work, McGill also operated a private medical practice for the diagnosis and treatment of allergies. She was acknowledged as a specialist in allergy testing, and doctors across Saskatchewan referred their patients to her care.

Dr. Maud Menten

Dr Maud Menten (March 20, 1879 – July 17, 1960) was a Canadian physician-scientist who made significant contributions to enzyme kinetics and histochemistry. Her name is associated with the famous Michaelis–Menten equation in biochemistry. Maud Menten was born in Port Lambton, Ontario and studied medicine at the University of Toronto(B.A. 1904, M.B. 1907, M.D. 1911, Ph.D., 1916). She was among the first women in Canada to earn a medical doctorate.She completed her thesis work at University of Chicago. At that time women were not allowed to do research in Canada, so she decided to do research in other countries such as the United States and Germany. In 1912 she moved to Berlin where she worked with Leonor Michaelisand co-authored their paper in Biochemische Zeitschrift which showed that the rate of an enzyme-catalyzed reaction is proportional to the amount of the enzyme-substrate complex.

Dr. Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture

Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture (often known simply as Edith Monture), Mohawk First World War veteran, registered nurse, (born 10 April 1890 on Six Nations reserve near Brantford, ON; died 3 April 1996 in Ohsweken, ON). Edith was the first Indigenous woman to become a registered nurse in Canada and to gain the right to vote in a Canadian federal election. She was also the first Indigenous woman from Canada to serve in the United States military. Edith broke barriers for Indigenous women in the armed forces and with regards to federal voting rights. A street (Edith Monture Avenue) and park (Edith Monture Park) are named after her in Brantford, Ontario.

Tasnia Nabil

A frequent science fair award winner and science advocate, Tasnia Nabil has placed at the Canada Wide Science Fair, Sanofi Biogenius Competition, International BioGENEius Challenge and in various Science Olympiads for her work on cancer therapies. The Grade 12 student is known for what could be a groundbreaking method of removing cancer cells with little-to-no side effects. By injecting nanoparticles into the body and having them oscillate at high speeds with magnets, they heat up to a temperature that kills the cancer cells while healthy cells remain unharmed.

École Polytechnique

On Dec. 6, 1989, 14 women were killed at École Polytechnique, Montreal. They were killed because they were women, because most were students in an engineering program.

Dr. Jennie Kidd Trout

Jennie Kidd Trout ( April 21, 1841 – November 10, 1921) was the first woman in Canada to become a licensed medical doctor, on March 11, 1875. Trout was the only woman in Canada licensed to practice medicine until July 1880, when Emily Stowe completed the official qualifications. Born in Wooden Mills, Kelso, Scotland, Jennie Trout (whose name is variously spelled 'Jenny') moved with her parents to Canada in 1847, settling near Stratford, Ontario. Trout had taken a course in teaching after graduation, and had taught until her marriage to Edward Trout. She married Trout in 1865 and thereafter moved to Toronto, where Edward ran a newspaper. In 1991, Canada Post issued a postage stamp in her honour to commemorate her as the first woman licensed to practise medicine in Canada.

Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe

Prof. Emma Allen-Vercoe, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Guelph, is among 14 researchers from five countries on a research team looking to study connections between microbes in the body and cancer. Her expertise in culturing gut microbes developed in her U of G lab – and its custom-designed “robo-gut” mimicking the workings of the large intestine — led the team’s principal investigators to invite her to join the project.

Dr. Frances Wagner

At a time when female scientists were a rarity, Frances Wagner embarked on a career in micropaleontology, becoming a distinguished expert and embracing the rough-and-tumble life of a field researcher for the Geological Survey of Canada. Dr. Wagner, who died on Nov. 8 at the age of 89 in Falmouth, N.S., not only advanced her discipline, she led the way for other women to succeed in non-traditional fields.

Alice Evelyn Wilson

Alice Evelyn Wilson, MBE, FRSC, FRCGS (August 26, 1881 – April 15, 1964) was Canada's first female geologist. Her scientific studies of the rocks and fossils of the Ottawa region between 1913 and 1963 remain a respected source of knowledge.

Dr. Beatrice Helen Worsley

Beatrice "Trixie" Helen Worsley (18 October 1921 – 8 May 1972) was the first female computer scientist in Canada. She received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Cambridge with Alan Turing and Douglas Hartree as advisers, the first Ph.D granted in what would today be known as computer science. She wrote the first program to run on EDSAC, co-wrote the first compiler for Toronto's Ferranti Mark 1, wrote numerous papers in computer science, and taught computers and engineering at Queen's University and the University of Toronto for over 20 years before her untimely death at the age of 50.