E108 Black Surgeons in Canada with Don Nakayama, Cathy Slaney, Shannon Prince & Vivian McAlister
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Chad Ball 00:12
Welcome to the Cold Steel podcast, hosted by Ameer Farooq and myself, Chad Ball. We consider it an absolute privilege to bring you guests from around the world who are truly experts in their craft. Our mission is to offer you a combination of not only master classes on clinical surgery topics, but also insights into achieving personal growth, productivity, and fulfillment as a surgeon, and perhaps more importantly, as a human.
Ameer Farooq 00:42
Happy New Year to all our listeners, we hope you have a fulfilling and healthy 2022. Thank you all so much for tuning in every week, and we hope to continue to bring you new content that keeps your surgical minds and hearts inspired and educated to keep doing all the work that you do. We are very excited this week to bring you this episode on Black surgeons in North America. This is an initiative led by Dr. Don Nakayama, who's a pediatric surgeon in North Carolina and was sponsored by the American College of Surgeons and is now available as a book and also as a PDF form. And this book is really an amazing collection of the amazing contributions of Black surgeons across North America. Specifically for this episode, we were lucky enough to sit down again with Dr. Vivian McAlister, who as listeners will know is a longtime friend of the podcast, to tell us about the contribution specifically of Black Canadian surgeons. We were also lucky enough to be joined by Dr. Nakayama himself, as well as Dr. Cathy Slaney, who is a sociologist whose work is focused on her great grandfather, Dr. Anderson Abbott, who is one of the surgeons profiled in the book. Last but not at all least, we were joined by Shannon Price, who is the curator of the Buxton National Historic Site and museum. And she shared her insights, specifically around Buxton, and what a unique community that was. This episode was really such a fascinating foray into the untold stories of the contributions of Black surgeons in our country. We were both really inspired by our guest's thoughts about how we can perhaps learn from this history to help us heal the ongoing racial rules that exists within our culture and in our society. As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @CanJSurg.
Vivian McAlister 02:36
So, Vivian McAlister is my name. I'm a surgeon at University Hospital in London, Ontario. And on faculty at the University of Western Ontario. And in our district, we have the great honor in our history of being the area where there were several terminus for the Underground Railroad. I've known about this, of course, all of my time here, but not particularly an expert in it. However, my interest is really in the history of surgery. And when Dr. Nakayama came and asked me, would I write a small biography for this book on Anderson Abbott, I realized two things. One, while I could give the perspective of a surgeon in the past, I really couldn't give the perspective of growing up as a Black man in Canada. And I was very fortunate to have an opportunity to build a team so that we could look at that biography. But in doing so, we really found a very rich history of Black surgery, of Black surgeons and surgery in Canada, and particularly in this district.
Chad Ball 03:58
It's such an amazing endeavor. Don, I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about your background and in particular, what led you to edit your book, Black Surgeons in Surgery in America?
Don Nakayama 04:10
I think it's, a I'm a professor of surgery in pediatric surgery at the University of North Carolina and I came to appreciate the history relatively late in my career, you know, when established as a practice and established an academic identity. Only relatively later, when one has more time, you develop an interest in history and history of surgery is such a rich field. I was interested, especially, in the history of Black Americans and surgeons. I knew that there was a small literature out there about those topics and I thought it'd be nice to have a collection of stories that we could give to inspire surgeons of all races, but especially Black medical students and residents. And I've pitched it to Patricia Turner, who at the time was director of Member Services, now she's executive director of the American College of Surgeons, as to whether we could do that. And she says, "Good idea." And so, what I had thought was being a pamphlet of, a collection of stories and articles, turned out to be much more. And it was an opportunity to really kind of flesh it out. In order to get the proper background, he had to have all the backstories of it. And it turned out to be the history of the United States. The history of Black United States, which is the history of United States. From the very first slaves that came aboard with the Jamestown colony in 1619. It turned out that Black surgery nearly entirely spans that era. And part of that, in order to get more stories, I needed stories about Black Canadians, because it became immediately obvious that pivotal figures were Canadians or were educated in Canada. Including Anderson Abbott and Alexander Augusta, who were both active just before the Civil War, during and after the Civil War, as prominent surgeons of any race, but especially in Black surgical history. And I reached out to Vivian because I knew that he was a historian and interested in such things. And I said, "Would you write a chapter?" As he indicated, you know, once you start digging, you find out so much more about the story, the actual story. And it turns out that the story about Black surgeons in Canada turned out to be one of the foundational chapters of the collection. It's second in the collection, and it really sets the stage because Canada was refuge, right? Canada was a terminus of the Underground Railroad in Western Ontario. And there's this remarkable school called the Buxton school, that I'm sure we'll be hearing about, that was really the cradle of many of the early surgeons who gained prominence in America. So that's one thread that turned out to be a major, important thread in the book. And we're happy that it's there because it wouldn't be complete without it.
Chad Ball 07:23
Well, I think we're all thrilled. And we'll be even more thrilled across the country, as Canadian surgeons learn more and more about this history. It's an incredible endeavor and it's amazing that you've accomplished this book. Shannon, I wonder if we pop over to you, if you could provide our listeners with a bit of background in terms of your career, as well as how you got involved.
Shannon Prince 07:55
Thank you. My name is Shannon Prince. I'm the curator of the Buxton National Historic Site Museum in Northwestern Ontario. And I'm also a sixth-generation descendant from this settlement. So basically, I grew up living this history on a daily basis. But it wasn't until many years later that I really, truly appreciated it, and knew more about it. I guess, living here, it was always assumed that everybody knew the history. And I guess we did, and my part was just a snippet. But it wasn't as big as I could have been during that time, when you listen... and I regret not listening to my grandparents more about telling you the different stories. I would hear the stories, and I would listen semi and then after reconnecting with family, and then they would have one part of the story and I would have another part. So, it was really, really great. And one of the most, and I think my husband Brian, who has always been into history, and has written books and has done research and research upon research, just about every person within the settlement. He was the one that really, not wrote me, but really got me into it because he would write stories about some of the women that made it to Buxton. And he asked me to tell stories about them. So, he would have like a Coles Notes version, and then I would go back, and I wanted to research more about this person. I really got into character, so it was my way of sharing, bringing that history to life. Eventually, I became the curator here at the museum in 1999. And it's been the most rewarding job, aside from being a wife and mother, etc. But I guess, because on a daily basis there either people calling or coming through those doors. It seems like everybody has a piece of this incredible story and journey that these freedom seekers had. And it just enriches my life. And I hope I help to enrich theirs by what we have. So, it has been very, very gratifying. Is that a good Coles Notes version to start?
Chad Ball 10:25
That's absolutely wonderful. My only other question up front would be maybe, for some of our international audience who may not know Buxton, or maybe even some Canadians who don't, can you briefly frame what you're referring to specifically, not only in terms of the museum, but beyond?
Shannon Prince 10:42
The Buxton settlement, it was one of those last stops on the Underground Railroad, that Vivian was talking about earlier. And we are located 15 to 20 minutes southwest of Chatham, Ontario. Approximately an hour from Detroit and three hours from Toronto, which are probably the largest entry points, I would think, into Canada. And the Niagara area, a little over three and a half from Niagara. But we were one of those last stops on the Underground Railroad, like so many other places. Some down in Windsor, London, Toronto, outside of Toronto, Owen Sound, Niagara on the Lake. But the really interesting aspect with regards to our settlement was the fact that it was 9000 acres. And it was the largest out of all the settlements. But it was also classified as the most successful out of all those settlements. And because there was quite a bit of opposition in the outlying area, with basically Blacks coming into this mostly White population. Reverend King, the founder of our settlement, put a lot of rules in place. Because he firmly believed that if Blacks are given those same opportunities as Whites, they could become self-sufficient and self-sustaining. So, for example, the land can only be purchased by Blacks, your homes had to be a certain size, there was no alcohol, businesses are Black owned and operated. And you had 10 years to pay your land off. But what was really interesting was the education that was being taught, that Whites were viewing Blacks through a whole different lens when they realize the quality of education that was being taught here in the settlement. That's absolutely remarkable. Cathy, as a contributor to this project as well, I'm curious what your background is, and how you got involved.
Cathy Slaney 12:45
Wow, it was actually a big surprise to me and my family. Because we knew all about him, but we didn't know he was Black. So, Anderson Abbott was sort of my entry into the entire field. And once Dan Hill actually reveal that to us, it started a whole sequence of investigation. But it took a while because it was so far removed, we weren't even really that involved. I mean, it was interesting. Like, "Oh, wow, I didn't know that. That was amazing." And you just kind of went by. And finally, I went on down to the Toronto Reference Library and found stacks and stacks of papers and volumes of notes. And thought, who knew this was here? Thought, oh well, no one's gonna read this because it's all handwritten. And so, maybe I'll just transcribe them and see what that reveals? Well, it took months and eventually, I realized, still, nobody was really going to read it like that. So had to put it into the perspective of where he was coming from and describe what was going on, that drew Anderson Abbott to write like that. But in the process, of course, we had to dig into the family genealogy and found lots of really interesting things. That drew me into I ended up having to get a PhD in this, just so I could figure out how to say it and qualify some of it. But, in my case, in my side of the family, we didn't live as Black. So, it's really from a very different perspective. Now, we have since discovered a huge range of relatives and cousins, both here and over the border.
Chad Ball 14:49
That's an amazing story. Shannon, I want to come back to you and you could expand on the importance of the Buxton Mission School in Southwestern Ontario and particularly, the evolution of Black education from that standpoint. What sort of role did it play in that story?
Shannon Prince 15:09
It was really amazing. Because Blacks were denied one in the United States, this was something that they really embraced. And because Reverend King, he valued education, so when he founded this settlement, it was based on the land and education, building schools, and building churches. So, when he built his, well, when he took his former enslaved people to the district or common school, the doors were locked. So, he built one on his own farm and invited anyone to come. You want a good education? Come to my school. So ironically, when he opened it, they were 14 Blacks and two Whites that went to that school. But within a year, there were more White children going to Reverend King's school because of the quality of education that was being taught. So, he was teaching your basics. It was called a classical education. Everything plus Greek, Latin in a Christian based education. So that's where Anderson Abbott received his education. So, when he finished here, he went to Knox and Trinity colleges in Toronto, as like so many others. So, you have James Rapier, who was educated in Buxton, became the first Black teacher at the school that's still standing beside the museum, which was built in 1861. He became the first congressman in the state of Alabama. You have the first Congressman, I mean, the first speaker of the state legislature in Mississippi, you have principles of university and high school, editors of race relation newspaper. They were educated in Buxton, because of this high-quality education that was being taught. I think that was one thing that gravitated people to this area, not only because of the opportunities, because of the land, and even though the rules, some felt were arbitrary, it was the education that really prompted them to seek that education. And then when the Civil War broke out, there were 70 men who left here to go back and fight in the Civil War. But after the war was over, many of those well-educated, well-established people, they left here and went back to the United States to help with that reconstruction because of what they had obtained here, in Buxton.
Chad Ball 17:35
Oh, that's fascinating. Vivian, popping back to you, I want to ask you a two-part question that Ameer and I were wondering. The first is that you wrote a really neat piece for the American College of Surgeons' history community about the inaugural shawl, Lincoln's inauguration and assassination. How does that fit into this story? For the first question. And the second question, the correlating one, is, the hospital for Blacks in Washington during the Civil War was known as the contraband hospital. I'm curious how that name came about. How important was it, really, and how does it link up again with what we're talking about in Canada?
Vivian McAlister 18:21
The reason I wrote the piece was actually the trouble in the US at the inauguration. The confirmation for Joe Biden. And the troubles that he was going to have with his inauguration. And I said it echoed the inauguration troubles for Abraham Lincoln. One of the things that happened at that time was Mrs. Lincoln gave Abraham Lincoln a shawl for the trip from Ohio down to Washington. And he was making a long trip, speaking as he went. There were several plans to assassinate him along the way. And one of the ruses that he used to get through the city of Baltimore, to change train stations, was to cover himself with the shawl and pretend to be an invalid. And it was the Pinkerton Detective Agency, and the first female detective in the Pinkertons, who assisted him in this. She pretended to be his sister. And they wheeled him in a chair across to the other train station, and he made it to the inauguration. Well, as we all know the history, he was assassinated soon after his second inauguration. And at that terrible time, Mrs. Lincoln was present when he was shot. She was actually extracted from the scene because she was so distraught, and they prevented her from staying with her husband while he was lay dying. Anderson Abbott was a Black surgeon in Washington at that time, and a friend of Mrs. Lincoln's confidant, Kirkley. She asked Anderson to come with her to go and see Mrs. Lincoln and comfort her. Now, we don't know for sure if Anderson Abbott was present when Lincoln died. I think he was most likely with Mrs. Lincoln, and he was comforting her. The actual documented history is a little bit uncertain. What we do know for certain, though, is that after the assassination, Mrs. Lincoln was giving away mementos of her husband and she sent the shawl to Toronto, to Anderson Abbott, where he had returned. And in it she said, this is in memory of my husband, who was your very good friend, something like that. And, Kathy, if you'd remind me, I think it was one of your grand uncles who gave the shawl to a history museum in the US. And it is currently in the US, there.
Cathy Slaney 21:01
Yes. Yeah. It was a friendship that he had acquired, interestingly enough, with his mentor, Dr. Augusta. His wife, Mary Augusta, was good friends with Elizabeth Keckley. So, I think that's where the connection was, and he had a foot in the door there. But yeah, he was very pleased with the shawl. It was an honor to have it. And it is with the Wisconsin Historical Society now. And at one point, we had a play, a musical play. And Tom Kneebone and Dinah Christie did a wonderful little play called Doc Ruffin. And we had the Textile Museum send the shawl up for display. We had the reenactment group come and do a display and it was a wonderful concert. Over 100 cousins from the States came as well. He visited all of the cemetery plots and Buxton. And just kind of shared the whole history. Because we all had a different idea and different stories. So, we put it all together. But the shawl was certainly a big honor. It's not actually a shawl, it's actually quite a large blanket. Yeah, it's in good shape, still.
Vivian McAlister 22:44
I speculated why Mary Lincoln chose that as the memento to give to Anderson Abbott, because he wasn't connected to the shawl before that. And I think it's because it's a houndstooth shawl which has little stripes of Black and White. And she knew that that was symbolic. That you need both Black and White to make this thing complete. And that was the message.
Cathy Slaney 23:12
I think so.
Vivian McAlister 23:14
The Contraband Hospital comes from a different story. Early in the Civil War, some slaves moved across the lines, and they were still in states where slavery was permitted. So, the owners would go to the Union Army and demand the slaves back. Unfortunately, one of the generals in a fort came up with the plan that if you consider slaves property, and we consider them your property being used in the war, we're confiscating it as contraband property. So, slaves were given a refuge if they could cross to Union lines on the basis that they were contraband property. This was before emancipation. So, the refugees who congregated in Washington were placed in an army camp and it became known as the contraband camp. What I think was fascinating about it, is that they actually really organized themselves extremely well there. And they did that on their own. Including a hospital to see to these large number of refugees. Augusta was the first director of the hospital; Anderson Abbott became a director of the hospital. I think in all four Canadian trained surgeons, were part of that hospital. And I believe it has an important role because, although it was a hospital for Black people, it was on the route that Abraham Lincoln took every day and summer, back and forth as he rode to the White House from his summer cottage. Because it was very hot in Washington in those days, and they had a cottage in a cooler place. But he drove past the contraband camp every day. And he visited the hospital on one occasion. There is a picture of them standing, singing, or doing something like making some sort of a presentation there. And later, it became known that the people who were in the hospital were from Buxton. And they sent a mission up to Buxton to see, how is that settlement working? Because there were White people who believed that Black slaves in, what you might call, benign slavery, were in a better off position than where they had come from in Africa. And it was a terrible thesis, but a lot of people believed it. And this mission to Buxton came back and reported to Congress that they were a thriving community that had organized themselves. Reverend King's model was a fair ground and no favor. What he wanted was just the opportunity. Nobody got any favors to do what they did. So, in Buxton, the settlement proved that emancipation, which had occurred, should be followed by full citizenship. And that's what's known as the 14th amendment. It came out of, I think, all of those actions. The contraband hospital and the Buxton Mission School, they played important roles in it.
Cathy Slaney 26:47
Can I just add to that, Vivian? If you don't mind. You were talking about Samuel Gridley Howe from Boston; he was commissioned in 1864. And this is one of my favorite... well, this is the quote that he made: "Buxton is certainly a very interesting place. 20 years ago, most of them were slaves who owned nothing, not even their children. Now they have their wives and their children about them. They have the great essentials for human happiness. Something to love, something to do, and something to hope for."
Chad Ball 27:21
That's absolutely perfect. Cathy, not to perseverate on Anderson Abbott. You know, it's such a central important figure. But as you and Vivian have both said, he returned from the Civil War. It's important, I think, to just state to all of our listeners that he had a number of leadership positions as the chief of a number of hospitals, not only Toronto General Hospital, of course. I'm curious if you could just outline that a little bit, in terms of his role and his leadership talents. As well as, maybe, some of the honours that that he, eventually, has received, in terms of recognition, in downtown Toronto.
Cathy Slaney 28:00
Well, he combined his quest for social justice and equality with his medical practice. That fused together in Chatham when he became the first Black coroner of Kent County. And although he practiced medicine, he was also involved in every social aspect of the school board, Medical Association, Mechanics Institute or library. He was very much involved in the educational institutions there, that Nasmi Institution and others, making sure that all of the Black population had an opportunity to get an education. From there, he moved to Dundas and had another practice, again, very socially involved. And at one point, he was also chief of staff at the Toronto General Hospital. As he replaced, forget the doctor's name, a famous doctor there. It's important to know that being chief of hospital, chief surgeon or superintendent, it involved every aspect of running a hospital, from supplies and ordering, training, any inpatients as well as outpatient and emergency departments. It was all new and there were not a lot of people assigned to different jobs. So, the head of hospital had his finger on everything. As he did at the Contraband or Freedmen's Hospital. So, he was well-practiced with that. And he also was very, very interested in germ theory. So, he followed Florence Nightingale and all the work that she had done. And his interest was in preventing disease. So, it was new. It wasn't just treating what appeared, it was trying to promote hygiene and public health. And then from there, he went on to Provident Hospital and established a nursing program for Black nurses. Because at the time, of course, they were not welcome in the educational institutions. And so, with segregation, the hospitals were separate. So, the Black patients were not necessarily able to acquire White physicians or nurses. So, separate programs had to be created. That would lead to the development of the situation where Anderson's son, Wilson, who was a doctor, and trained in the States, fairly light skinned, and also able to pass as White, married a White woman named, Florence Nightingale, complicating the time. Who knew? But anyways. So, he became chief of Henrotin Hospital, which was a very prominent hospital there. Surprising, it shocked all of the other cousins, the Black cousins as well, that he was able to do that.
Chad Ball 31:41
Don, coming back to you. With your overall command of this history and this domain, Ameer and I are curious if there's any particular favorites, either individuals or anecdotes, among some of the Black surgeons associated with Canada, that come to mind for you?
Don Nakayama 32:02
Yeah, it's incredibly rich. Every story, and just hearing these stories just makes it a little irritating, they're holding back on a lot of the information that should have made the book. But in truth, there are two figures really, that stand out for me, and one is John Rapier Jr. His family is very famous because, the Rapier-Thomas family, the mother actually had one line that was Black and other line that was White. The White father of that line was James Catrin, who was the Supreme Court Justice. And he voted with a 7 to 2 majority on the Dred Scott decision, Dred Scott decision, which is the thing that justified segregation for a court for decades afterwards. And so that's one of the things that's tremendously interesting. The other one is a guy named Martin Delaney. And Delaney had a connection to Canada because he practiced there. And he practiced there before the war. But before that, the way that he was educated was, he was apprentice to abolitionist physicians in Pittsburgh, where he grew up. And he came in under the wing of one of the very influential figures in American history. And that's Frederick Douglass. And he was partnered with Frederick Douglass in one of his first publications, the North Star. And they had a falling out, but they were intellectual rivals and at one point, Martin Delaney was his equal. And during the time that he was trying to establish himself, he tried to get into Harvard Medical School, and he actually got into the first medical school class in 1850. And they lasted two months before there was such an uproar that they were they were dismissed, just summarily dismissed. And he and two others were supposed to be pioneering the Black medical students and Black medical education at Harvard, but that just didn't work out because there's uniform opposition from names that one would know and recognize, like Oliver Wendell Holmes was Dean during that time. And Henry Bigelow was Professor of Surgery. And it's just a fact, that's what happened. He was so disillusioned that he became the first Black nationalist. He espoused that there's no way that Blacks would ever get equal footing in American society. Frederick Douglass, on the other hand, that's what he aspired to. And he said, Douglas, just give us a chance, we can do it, we can build our own communities and make it in American society. Well, Martin Delaney was the person who said no, there's no way. And he was the one who actually went in and tried to establish a settlement in Nigeria, and actually found a national polity of Black Americans or Black people. And if it wasn't for the Civil War, who knows what would happen. But he actually came back and joined the Union cause. Well, Delaney later became part of both the Republican and Democrat party. He didn't know, after the war, what to do with himself. And he gradually just dwindled away. But during that time, he was the forerunner of Black Power, Black Panthers, Black Lives Matter. All of these can trace their roots all the way back to Martin Delaney. So, it's incredible political history that that both informs and is revealing. And you can't get away from it.
Chad Ball 36:13
That's incredible. Shannon, I'm curious if you could comment on where the story of these pioneering Black surgeons fits within the larger Black history in Canada.
Shannon Prince 36:24
A lot of people, in Canadian history, are not aware that there was even slavery here in Canada, which was viewed as the land of freedom. Slavery existed as way back as 1500s. So, I think that the surgeon aspect, and I guess all the education for Blacks, not only surgeons, but everyone. And I guess I say that from my little community of Buxton perspective. Because of that denial in the south, and now coming up here, again, because Blacks were viewed as, could not do anything. They were shunned. And because of the discrimination that they faced here in Canada as well, they were missing a lot of opportunities. So, to gain that education, whether you eventually, to become a surgeon or a doctor or a teacher, that was monumental for those accomplishments during that time period. And I think because of those of us that are descended, or even have parts of our history, both the United States and Canada, have witnessed so many atrocities that an injustice is that we have faced as Blacks, and to obtain that further education component, it's something they thrive for. So, I think being part of the Canadian complexion, the Canadian mosaic, I think it's wonderful. And it's just within the last several, I don't know how many years, I want to say, but for Canadians to realize the significance and the contributions that Blacks have made into shaping the Canadian history. It's wonderful. So, I think, I don't know if I've answered your question or not, but I think the education component in itself. It's something that we are all blessed to have, I think.
Chad Ball 38:42
Vivian, I wanted to sort of close out with you before everyone makes a final comment, and ask you, if you're aware, given your mastery of Canadian history, if there's more recent examples of pioneering Black surgeons in Canada that come to mind for you.
Vivian McAlister 39:01
Yes, we did get stuck at the Civil War period in our discussion today. But the story is continuous from that time and the role played by the University of Toronto, I think is worth mentioning. It was one of the few universities that encouraged at least some Black students. And if you go all the way up to the 1950s, they had maybe the first surgeons in, what I think is as, the modern era, who are black. One is a man called Douglas Salmon. And fascinatingly, when he was a student, a high school student, he was being routed down the direction of becoming technical, of working with his hands. But he was good at music, and he was at the conservatory and his music teacher said, "That's rubbish, you shouldn't be doing that, you should be looking for a full education." He had to go to night school, and he eventually got into a class in which there were three other Black students in the University of Toronto and graduated. And he became the director of surgery at the Scarborough Hospital. So, I mean, the story continued there. Interestingly, he graduated from the University of Toronto, but couldn't get a residency position. So, we weren't free of discrimination in those days here. What we tended to discriminate was about what jobs people did afterwards. And Jewish people and Black people had a hard time getting residency positions in Toronto for a while. And he went back across the border to Detroit, where Salmon did his residency and came back to Canada as a fully-fledged surgeon. So, if you look at a pattern for these stories that I think Don has collected, they are the pattern of very determined people who used, often, their privilege from wealth that their parents had accumulated to and then their ability to bypass that jurisdictional barriers. They would move from one jurisdiction to the other to achieve their goals. And in doing so, they felt they could not only just be a surgeon, they had to be a political leader as well, like Martin Delaney. Leaving an inheritance behind, a legacy behind, for those who followed. And I'Il just finish with one quick thing. I always ask myself, "Well, what happened to the University of Western Ontario here?" Because, for those of you who know your geography well, Shannon is west of me and Cathy, up at the University of Toronto, is east of me. So, a lot of these people bypassed us. And two things were the answer. One was, the medical school at the time of the Civil War didn't exist, it came into being about 15 years later. But still, we still had an under-representation of Black people in our student body and certainly on faculty. So, I made an effort to find out like, when did Black students graduate from the University of Western Ontario? We don't celebrate it at all. It took quite a bit. I had to go through, just looking at class photos and saying, "Oh, there's one," trying to find out who he was. And I found a name, Lewis Milburn, who graduated in 1957, became an aviation medicine specialist and was actually the assistant director of aerospace medicine at NASA. So, you know, he's somebody who should have been recognized, regardless of the color of his skin, but to achieve it as a Black man was also remarkable at NASA at that time. We have another one, Steven Blizzard, who graduated about five years later. He was a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). He was at the same time, a jet fighter pilot and a flight surgeon. I think it's almost unique in the history of the RCAF to have, because you could switch from being a physician to being a pilot, but not both at the same time. But he somehow managed to finagle it. That he was actually both a flight surgeon and a fighter pilot. Anyway, so there are so many examples, Chad, that I think we should be looking into this in all our schools. Getting this history and celebrating it, because it's definitely there.
Ameer Farooq 44:06
In closing, I'd like to ask all of you to leave our listeners with some final thoughts about the work that you've done, and perhaps even a way forward, whether that's in terms of thinking about how to honor these Black surgeons or Black physicians and Black pioneers in our Canadian history. Or any other thoughts that you might have from doing the work that you've done.
Shannon Prince 44:30
The federal government, for the last several years during Black History Month, they will always seek out to honour different Black institutions or organizations. So, we really like to bring that to their attention, again, for some of these not so well-known people. I know, because there are so many greats. I'm thinking of a lady right now, her name was Hattie Rue Hatchet. She escaped slavery in Alabama, made it up here to Buxton. But she became, you know, she wrote the official marching song for the World War One soldiers, that nobody is familiar with. So, there's so many people that are in everyone's backyard, that we need to really salute and say, "Thank you for your contribution." So, here at the museum, we are doing that continually. When groups come through, when people come through, and when we are speaking to our government officials on who needs to be recognized, we bring that to their attention. Not only federally, provincially, municipally, and locally. Because I think everyone throughout Canadian history have significant people that are in their own backyards, if you will, that need to be recognized for their contributions. They are there, we just need to identify. So, I think that's one great pleasure and honour that we have at the museum, bringing everyone's stories to life. And to be more well-known.
Ameer Farooq 46:15
It's really a great message and the work that you're doing with the museum is fantastic. Cathy, if I could turn to you, what are some final thoughts that you have from having done this work? And do you have any thoughts about a way forward?
Cathy Slaney 46:28
I agree with Shannon completely, I think it's a matter of bringing the stories to light and doing that in a way that people can actually relate to them. It's one thing to hear a story about somebody, but you're not at all like them or you don't have that experience, but to bring it down to earth and try and engage people in a way that they can relate. And they go, yeah, that happened to me, or that's how I felt. Whether it was 100 years ago or whether it was yesterday. And also bringing it down to the different levels. You know. These stories could be turned into children's stories, you know, so that they actually hear the message and it's not something that they learn in school in a history lesson. Because I can hardly remember any history lessons. But the things that they mean with you, are things that mean something to you personally. So, I would say yes. And there's so many stories we haven't heard, because people go, "Oh, it's just me, it's just, you know, my grandmother, whatever." But no, they're really good stories that need to be heard. And Buxton's a good place to do it. But that's one place. And it could really be everywhere. I should also note that these were all men who were educated and became successful, and that there were a lot of women still receiving education and potentially being able to contribute great things. One of Anderson's daughters was a kindergarten teacher and she, from the Froebel technique, but she had to go down to the states to be employed. Another one was a dietitian, and certified at the University of Toronto, and she too had to go to the States to be employed. And of course, none of them could be employed if they were married. So, they generally worked for about 10 years before they were married.
Ameer Farooq 48:32
I particularly like your highlighting of this idea of telling the stories of these people. You know, I have three children at home who are six, four and two. They need picture books and children's books that speak to them about these types of stories that really don't get highlighted. Don't get told. Dr. McAlister, you did sort of, I think, mention some of your thoughts. But is there one takeaway that you have from doing all this work, that you want our listeners to know?
Vivian McAlister 49:02
Quickest, simplest thing, message, I think the deepest message I got from it, that this is a shared history. This isn't for Black History Month. I think that's very important, Shannon, because we're trying to promote things that we have forgotten, but this is actually a collective history. These stories are shared by us all and we're all enriched by knowing them. And we're certainly impoverished by ignoring them.
Ameer Farooq 49:32
I like the word impoverished. We really are impoverished by not highlighting these stories. Dr. Nakayama, I'll leave the final word to you, and again, kudos for organizing all of this and writing this book and spearheading this effort. What's one big takeaway that you have from doing all this work? I know that's a big ask for you. And where do you see, especially in our turmoil and in the political climate that we find ourselves in today, is there a way forward that you feel that you can see from having done this work, as to maybe how we can heal the divides within our fractured nations?
Don Nakayama 50:11
It's not simple but let me give it a try. I think one of the things that we wrestle with is health disparities, right? There are differential outcomes for longevity, for access to care, for outcomes for various diseases, there's just a plain difference. Okay. And that's the legacy of 400 years. That's plain and simple. It's part of the reality of the United States, and it's part of reality of healthcare everywhere. So, what do you do about it? Well, one of the things that's most nagging is the fact that we can't get much more above 6% or 7% of African Americans in medical schools, you know? The affirmative action, the civil rights legislation in 1964, in 1965, was supposed to have solved all that. But one the realities of medical school admissions is that there's a ceiling. And it's not an intentional ceiling, it's just a ceiling. Things don't get above 6% or 7%. So, what do you do about it? One of the things that has always been part of the solutions is the pipeline, right? It's just training. It's not just getting undergraduates, Black undergraduates to be interested in medical school, it's something that has to start from way back, it's got to start from the very start. And that's the lesson in history. And that's the lesson of the Buxton School. In that, you take Black children, and you give them education, and you give them the same education that one would have anywhere. And you give them a classical education, it's not anything special. It's the same stuff that comes from millennia. And this is how we train children to become citizens and adults. You put them in there and lo and behold, the first class of the Buxton School. Six Black men, four of them turned out to be physicians, and three of them served in Union Army as surgeons. And that's the lesson. They say that if you forget history, you're doomed to repeat it. Well, that may not be so, but it certainly rhymes, okay? And that shows the power of the pipeline. That is something visioned by Reverend William King of starting the school, and just believing in it, really made a difference. And that's the story of the Buxton School, that's the story of Black surgeons and surgery in America. We have to take that forward. It's something that, you know, education is a great leveler, right? It's a great opportunity. That's what we have to relearn every generation or so, but this is a way out.
Ameer Farooq 53:11
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