Stacey Gibson

‘The entire world coming together': U of T alumni's website highlights COVID-19 research, recoveries

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 22:17:24 +0000

‘The entire world coming together': U of T alumni's website highlights COVID-19 research, recoveries

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 04/22/2020 - 18:17

Cutline

U of T alumna Juliana Lee, who is now studying at Oxford, says she wanted to counter the steady stream of distressing pandemic news with information about vaccine research and patient recoveries (photo courtesy of Victor Schippers)

Stacey Gibson

Topic

Global Lens

Coronavirus

Alumni

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Graduate Students

Trinity College

In March, as the number of COVID-19 cases ascended worldwide, ��Ƶ alumna Juliana Lee realized that she had been posting so much negative news about the pandemic on Instagram and Facebook that she herself was becoming anxious and depressed.

“Frankly, I didn’t realize what I was doing to my own mental health,” she says. “I started to look for positive news and I realized that there’s actually so much out there regarding recovering patient stories and treatment and vaccine news, but the news media doesn’t give enough of a spotlight to those.

“I thought, ‘Why not create a website that focuses on those specifically?’”

Along with fellow Trinity College alumna Sophia Shim and current master’s student Leo Zhu Lee, Lee launched www.covid19recovery.net on March 18 to promote promising news associated with COVID-19. The site highlights the many vaccines being developed throughout the world and the stories of people who have regained their health after battling the virus. It also aims to educate, by explaining the science associated with the pandemic, and provide levity, with a quarantine playlist, links to music livestreams and suggestions for indoor health and wellness activities.

Lee’s favourite part of the website is the “community” section that focuses on the good works of people around the globe – from the U of T medicine students who are performing domestic tasks for health-care workers to people in Turkey who are leaving food packages outdoors for the needy.

The site garnered thousands of unique visitors from more than 70 countries in its first two weeks. It is now on Instagram and Facebook and offers a weekly newsletter.

Lee is well-suited to explain science to a general audience: She has a bachelor’s degree in immunology and biochemistry from U of T and now studies infectious diseases as a master’s student in clinical medicine at the University of Oxford. (Lee’s lab work involves studying malaria, while some of her lab colleagues are currently working on COVID-19 vaccines.)

She traces her interest in explaining science to the public to an experience in a second-year organic chemistry class at U of T. She had participated in a chemistry challenge and was selected to present her slides.

“It was such an amazing feeling to be able to present something that I know to people that I didn’t know,” she says. “That feeling still carries on, and I think that might have been what powered me to develop this website showing what I know to the general public.”

The website has not only helped alleviate some of Lee’s own anxiety, but it has made her acutely aware of the empathetic global response to the pandemic.

“One thing I realized while maintaining this website was that, literally, everyone around the world is moving toward one goal, which is fighting COVID-19,” Lee says. “I think it’s such a wonderful thing that’s happening because I don’t remember ever seeing the entire world coming together to fight for one goal. Seeing all these communities from different countries doing good for others is really heartwarming.”

Doing the devil’s work: How U of T's Elizabeth Bagshaw became a pioneer in women's health

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 16:35:49 +0000

Doing the devil’s work: How U of T's Elizabeth Bagshaw became a pioneer in women's health

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 08/20/2019 - 12:35

Cutline

Dr. Elizabeth Bagshaw packs her medical bag before making house calls in Hamilton in 1976 (photo by the Hamilton Spectator, courtesy of the Hamilton Historical Collection)

Topic

Subheadline

The local bishop called her a heretic. The Criminal Code deemed her work illegal. But Dr. Bagshaw was more concerned with helping women at Canada's first birth control centre.

In September of 1901, 19-year-old Elizabeth Bagshaw came to the ��Ƶ to register for studies in medicine. She had just arrived in the city the day before from her family farm near Cannington, Ont. When she entered the registration area, she noticed most of the women were in the line to enrol for arts courses. She joined the queue that was almost entirely men – to register for medicine. One young man tried to redirect her. I’ll stay here, she said. The reaction of the men was one of amused disbelief.

“They just laughed,” Bagshaw said in the National Film Board of Canada movie Doctor Woman: The Life and Times of Dr. Elizabeth Bagshaw.

It was the beginning of a life of defying expectations for Bagshaw who, after earning her medical degree from U of T in 1905, would set up a successful practice – exceedingly rare for a woman in the early 20th century. She became medical director of Canada’s first and illegal birth control clinic in 1932 and spent more than three decades at the centre empowering women to control their reproductive health and plan the size of their own families.

During her years at U of T, Bagshaw thrived under the challenge of medical school. Many of her classes were held at the Ontario Medical College for Women and she was particularly adept at dissection – her professor praised her proficiency at dissecting cadavers – likely due to her steady, level-headed nature and ambidexterity. She and the other women did, of course, face gender discrimination: classes such as obstetrics and dissection were segregated, teasing from male classmates occurred and women were pushed into the field of obstetrics or pediatrics.

“I’d [have] liked to have gone through for a surgeon, but in those days there was no chance,” she said in Doctor Woman. “They wouldn’t have trusted a woman in those days to be a surgeon.”

After moving to Hamilton, Ont., to begin her career, Bagshaw (photo, right, courtesy U of T Archives) found that maternity work was the mainstay of her practice. Many of her patients were recent immigrants, often Italian, raised in the tradition of midwifery – and this made them much more comfortable with a female doctor. In the early days, Bagshaw rented a horse and buggy from a livery to make house calls during the day; at night, she would bike to homes to deliver babies. So successful was she at maternity work that for three years in a row she signed more birth certificates than any other doctor in Hamilton.

Like every doctor of the time, she also ministered to patients suffering from life-threatening illnesses such as tuberculosis, smallpox and typhoid – in the days before the necessary antibiotics and immunizations existed. Bagshaw herself caught the Spanish flu – which killed tens of millions throughout the world from 1918 to 1920 – but made a full recovery. It was not possible, however, to make a full recovery from her personal losses: In the summer before her final year of medical school, her father had died in an accident on the farm, falling off a ladder and breaking his neck. Then, during the First World War, her suitor, Lou Honey, was killed in the line of duty. Before he had enlisted as a soldier, Honey had given her a diamond ring. He died in 1915. For many years, a picture of him in uniform remained on Bagshaw’s wall.

It was against the hardscrabble backdrop of the Great Depression that Bagshaw’s pioneering work with Canada’s first birth control clinic began. One day in 1932, a woman named Mary Hawkins paid a visit to her office. Hawkins – who did much volunteer work with women and children – had opened the clinic on March 3, 1932, to offer contraceptives and information on family planning. However, the doctor they hired resigned three weeks in, and Hawkins had come to implore Bagshaw to sign on as medical director.

The stakes for those involved in the clinic were extremely high: It was an indictable offence – liable to two years in prison – to sell or advertise contraceptives or to instruct people on how to use them. One clause in the code offered hope: if one could prove “public good” was served by their actions, they could avoid conviction. But no one wanted to be put in the position of a long, expensive trial or risk being jailed.

Bagshaw initially turned down the position of medical director. It was not out of legal concerns: She was not one to back away from a fight. But she was time-constrained as a doctor with a thriving practice and a young adopted son to raise.

Then, she changed her mind. As a physician, she had borne witness to the hardships that many large families faced, and the physical problems women suffered from bearing many children. Now, in addition, there was the relentless poverty caused by the Great Depression: husbands on relief, great numbers of children that couldn’t be fed or cared for. In the 1930s, the maternal death rate in Canada was high. Many women also died trying to perform abortions on themselves, or while undergoing the procedure illegally. Bagshaw believed informing and helping women in the arena of family planning was the right thing to do – for them and their families. “I had so many patients who were having babies nearly every year or two years, and their husbands were out of work, and they hadn’t enough to eat. Why should they go on having more children?” she said, pragmatically, in the book Elizabeth Bagshaw, by Marjorie Wild.

And so, almost every Friday afternoon for the next 34 years, Bagshaw would work in the clinic: She would fit women for diaphragms, instruct them on the proper use and then have them come in for a followup. She did not receive a salary – only a small honorarium fluctuating between $100 and $200 a year. The number of women who sought her help was well beyond the clinic’s predictions: In the first year, they expected about 60 women. Almost 400 came.

Dr. Elizabeth Bagshaw, CM, receiving the Governor General's award for the Persons Case (photo courtesy of the Government of Canada)

In retrospect, this likely didn’t shock them. The clinic provided the first opportunity most women ever had to learn about their own bodies and control their reproductive destinies. Prior to the clinic, men were the gatekeepers to women’s health in Canada. Men headed the educational and medical systems that controlled knowledge about birth control. They helmed the pulpits that made the religious creeds against using contraceptives. They ran the courts that judged birth control as unlawful, and spoke loudest in the court of public opinion that deemed it immoral. The women who ran the clinic cut through this socially constructed shame, countering that birth control was “about as immoral as a good day’s washing is immoral.”

“The challenges that [Bagshaw] faced during the Depression are similar to challenges that doctors in many countries face today, whether it is in countries where bias against women prevails or in countries where sexuality is not understood as a natural and important part of life,” says U of T’s Rebecca Cook, a professor emerita at U of T’s Faculty of Law and co-director of the Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program. “Her legacy continues to motivate doctors today. She understood that neglecting health care that only women need contributes to their subordination.”

One of the clinic’s staunchest opposers was the Roman Catholic Church. Bishop J.T. McNally of Hamilton incessantly attacked Hawkins and Bagshaw at the pulpit, referring to them as “devils and whores,” and birth control policies as “blasphemous, degrading, dehumanizing.”

“The bishop always warned the [nursing] graduates not to come near the [clinic] because it was run by heretics and devils,” said Bagshaw in Doctor Woman. “I was the devil. I didn’t worry about it.”

“It was the best advertising we had,” she added. “It was against the law to advertise, therefore we couldn’t say anything, but he advertised it – then I’d tell the nurses, ‘Be sure to be on time, don’t be late at the next two or three clinics because we’ll have a number of Roman Catholics there.’ And we always did.”

In September 1936, a trial brought the issue of the legality of distributing and advising on birth control to a head. Dorothea Palmer, a nurse with the Parents’ Information Bureau in Ottawa, was charged with advertising birth control after visiting women in their homes to teach them about family planning. After a tense 20 days of trial, a verdict was reached: she was not guilty. The magistrate found that Palmer had, indeed, acted for the “public good.” The case was appealed. She won again.

After that, the most stressful, worrisome years were over for the clinic. The fear of being charged or imprisoned had dissipated. But it wasn’t until 1969 – three years after Bagshaw retired from the clinic, that the birth control law was officially changed.

Bagshaw didn’t retire from her own practice until the age of 95 in 1976, which made her the oldest physician practising in Canada. (At that time, she had about 50 patients all over the age of 80.) She died at the age of 100. For her pioneering work, she had been inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame, invested into the Order of Canada and had an elementary school in Hamilton named in her honour. Bagshaw had greatly advanced the concept of health-care equality: Regardless of what opinions one held, society was not entitled to impose them in a way that impeded the health of another.

“In addition to her courage in facing prejudice and stigma, her work contributed to our understanding of health equity. She understood that health-care services need to be provided in an equitable way to all women, in a way that attends to their sex-specific health-care needs,” says Cook. “Now, international human rights law recognizes that for women to be equal, in fact, their sex-specific health-care needs have to be accommodated.”

Sabeen survived two abusive marriages. As a U of T student, she’s being mentored by someone who understands

noreen.rasbach — Wed, 01 May 2019 15:45:38 +0000

Sabeen survived two abusive marriages. As a U of T student, she’s being mentored by someone who understands

noreen.rasbach Wed, 05/01/2019 - 11:45

Cutline

Mentor Samra Zafar and Sabeen (photo by Steph Martyniuk)

Topic

Undergraduate Students

Subheadline

Sabeen* had survived two abusive marriages. She had entered the first – an arranged marriage – in Lahore, Pakistan, at the age of 21. After almost 10 difficult years, she boarded a plane with her children to start again in Canada. At 35, she then tried marriage a second time. This husband quickly turned emotionally abusive. To Sabeen, living with him felt like “living with the devil,” and she began fearing for the safety of her children. In a matter of months, she found the strength, yet again, to leave.

Sabeen had wanted to attend the ��Ƶ Mississauga for a long time, hoping to attain a degree in criminology and sociolegal studies to pursue a career in family law. But there were so many roadblocks to attending university, including paperwork: She didn’t have her transcripts from the university she had attended in Pakistan. She was dealing with the emotional and financial toll of a divorce in progress, and of being a single working mom. But she thought a lot about applying, anyhow.

One day, her mom sent her a link to a Toronto Life article, with a one-line message: “If she can do it, you can do it.” It was a memoir by U of T alum Samra Zafar, who had been forced into an arranged marriage at the age of 17. Like Sabeen, she had survived emotional and physical abuse. She, too, had two children very young. She, too, had found the strength to leave her marriage. Unlike Sabeen, Samra was much further ahead in her academic journey – and her journey of healing. She had not only earned a bachelor of science in financial economics from U of T Mississauga in 2013, but had followed it up with a master’s in economics in 2014. She was now pursuing a successful career in commercial banking.

After she read the article, an astounded Sabeen looked up Samra on Facebook and messaged her. She wrote, “I feel like this is a sign from God that I have to pursue this and submit an application to UTM.” Samra messaged her right back, and advised her to email her story to the office of the registrar. So Sabeen wrote to them, laying out her entire life story. “I felt, ‘I need someone to open one window for me so I can just jump through and save my life.’”

On a summer day in 2017, she was visiting her parents who were then living in Abu Dhabi. She sat down and checked her email. There was a letter of acceptance from U of T Mississauga. “‘I did it,’” she thought. “I got in.” That night, she messaged Samra. “I thought I heard Samra scream through Messenger. She was so happy for me.”

Since then, Samra has been her mentor, an unofficial position that sees them meet up or talk once a month. The first time they met, at a Starbucks, they talked away the hours over coffee that went cold. “I thought, ‘She is so powerful and confident’ – and her smile,” says Sabeen. “When people go through pain, it’s hard to smile. So for her to be able to smile like that, where her eyes and her entire face sparkle, you can tell she’s come a long way and she’s proud of herself.” Adds Sabeen: “My smile’s kind of getting there now. Going to UTM is my healing process. Doing something for myself is a whole new beginning.”

Their conversations range from academics, to juggling single parenthood with classes, to career goals, to dealing with fears about future relationships. “It’s very holistic,” says Samra. “It’s not just about school; it’s about life.” And because mentoring shape-shifts with each step that the mentee takes, the conversations change, too: When Sabeen started school, she had questions about the credit system. Now, she mulls over whether she should pursue grad school right away or enter the job market.

They also talk about lighthearted things – from the keto diet to dating: “She has a great sense of humour,” says Samra. “There was a time when I went through a breakup and I said, ‘Oh my God, I have the worst luck with men.’” They both just looked at each other. “Babe, I’m with you,” said Sabeen. “We’re both magnets.” In that moment, they burst out laughing.

“Mentoring is very different from teaching or coaching or even helping, because it’s not about what you can do for them. It’s about how you can empower them to do it for themselves,” says Samra, who has mentored more than 30 women – at U of T and otherwise – and also founded Brave Beginnings, a non-profit to support abuse survivors. “My own mentors have never told me what to do. They’ve been my sounding board. They’ve given me ideas. They’ve played devil’s advocate. They’ve given me a reality check sometimes. They’ve connected me with people. At the end of the day, I’m empowered to make informed decisions for myself, which is so liberating. I can actually craft and create the life that I want for myself, and I don’t want to do it alone and I’m not meant to do it alone. That’s the power of mentoring.”

When Samra left her husband in her second year at U of T Mississauga in 2011 and moved into campus housing, she was struggling under the weight of court cases surrounding the divorce and domestic abuse; her own challenges of healing and coping; working multiple jobs; raising her girls; and going to school. It was her university mentors and friends who lifted her up: Students would look after her children when she was at the lawyer’s office. Professors would spend hours motivating her and encouraging her to go on.

One mentor who had a profound effect on her was John Rothschild, a U of T alumnus who was then CEO of Prime Restaurants. He is still an integral part of her life, providing emotional support and encouragement, and helping her navigate fears and hard decisions. “People would hold my hand in the worst circumstances. It just warmed my heart so much, and that is what made all the difference,” she says. “I realized that resilience is not just an individual concept. It’s a collective concept. When people are connected to each other, and when people are comfortable in offering and asking for help, that’s what builds resilience.”

Like Samra, Sabeen certainly knows what it’s like to navigate her way through extreme stressors while attending university and raising children. She tries to schedule her classes so she can be there when her 10-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter get home from school; then she makes dinner and helps them with homework. When night hits, it is time for her to do her own assignments. Making friends with other students has been difficult given the difference in age and life experience – and Samra helps her with that. “Only she can understand the pain that I feel, the misery of being undermined so much,” says Sabeen. “She went to hell, she came back. And she’s OK. Unless you’ve been to hell and back, you don’t know what it feels like and you don’t know if it’s going to be OK.”

Samra was accepted into U of T in 2004, but her husband wouldn’t pay the tuition fee and she couldn’t get OSAP because of his salary and assets. She started to babysit and tutor, and saved enough money on the sly for tuition. On a proud day in June 2013, at the age of 31, she walked across the dais in Convocation Hall, graduating as U of T Mississauga’s top economics student. Samra is now an alumni governor at U of T and her bestselling memoir, A Good Wife, was recently published by HarperCollins.

A few weeks ago, Samra had a vivid dream that she was back living with her ex-husband and his parents. She was in the basement, and tried to open the door to get out. She was trapped. She woke in a sweat and looked around. She was home in her condo, safe. Her kids came by. “Are you OK, Mommy?” They all hugged.

After Samra has had a nightmare or flashback, or has experienced anxiety, she imagines embracing her young self. “That 17-year-old girl who was forced into marriage or the 23-year-old who was told she couldn’t go to school, I just imagine hugging her and telling her it’s OK. You’re a part of me and I love you, and just saying the things she should have heard at the time.”

Now, as a mentor, Samra is able to support other women who may need an embrace – whether it’s a physical one, or more of a helping hand. She tells them: “The only thing that can heal you is you. Know that the strength lies inside of you, not around you. The people around you will help you realize that strength, and that’s what mentoring is about, but ultimately it’s in there. Once you know that you have that power, then you’re unstoppable.”

*Sabeen’s last name has been withheld at her request.

This article first appeared in the ��Ƶ Magazine. Read more of the Spring 2019 issue.

Beauty in the everyday: author and U of T alumna Kyo Maclear writes about birding

ullahnor — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 21:00:59 +0000

Beauty in the everyday: author and U of T alumna Kyo Maclear writes about birding

ullahnor Wed, 01/18/2017 - 16:00

Cutline

Author Kyo Maclear identifies herself as an amateur birder. She writes about birding in the city and how it helped her get through a difficult year (photo by David Wall)

Stacey Gibson

Author legacy

Stacey Gibson

Topic

Birders often speak of a “spark bird” – the one that hooks you on birding, and never lets go.

For author Kyo Maclear, a U of T alumna, there were two: the exotic magnolia warbler – the yellow-streaked songster who migrates north from South America – and the more modest house sparrow, ubiquitous on Toronto’s streetscape and in its skies.

“There’s a competitive aspect to birding: people covet the rare,” says Maclear. “But actually, finding house sparrows everywhere makes it so pleasurable because they’re always around. I’ve always liked the common.”

It is finding the beauty in the everyday and urbane that Maclear captures so well in her new book, Birds Art Life, equal parts memoir, sketchbook and meditations arising from birding in the city.

The book centres on one year in Maclear’s life: a devastating one in which she watches her father – an award-winning war reporter – lose his independence and dignity after suffering two strokes.

An only child with two young boys, Maclear struggles to care for two generations of loved ones. She needs an outlet to help her breathe and recalibrate. A new friend with a passion for birding takes her on outings, introducing her to chimney swifts in High Park, trumpet swans at a local marina, red-necked grebes at Humber Bay.

“Just walking around the city with him made me discover that every shrub and tree had a whole sub-world of birds that I’d never known about,” she says.

The passion for winged creatures does, indeed, run deep among writers: Sylvia Plath had her beekeeping, Nabokov his butterflies, Jonathan Franzen writes feverishly about his birds.

While Maclear identifies as an amateur birder, the passion she feels for them begins to fuel her work.

“For me, having a bit of a routine where you make space and hold a space for beauty or for creativity is so important. And birding gave me the oxygen and psychic spaciousness needed to get through a creative rut,” says Maclear, the author of such children’s books as Virginia Wolf.

Maclear’s love of all things literary and artistic was writ large during her days at U of T. While pursuing a BA in fine art and art history through University College (and later a master's from OISE), she wrote about art, dance and theatre and drew illustrations for the Varsity.

She and a group of friends – including now well-known activist Naomi Klein – created Free School at UC, an open-format classroom where speakers talked about everything from ecology to the anti-apartheid movement as students sat in a circle and let the conversation flow.

“That give-and-take, to me, is the DNA of learning,” says Maclear.

Today, Maclear is writing another children’s book and working on her PhD at York University.

The birding remains, and she’s grateful that it helped her see beyond Toronto’s concrete: “I didn’t notice the rhythms of the city and the whole understory that was happening,” says Maclear of her pre-birding days.

“I could see the permanent infrastructure of buildings, but I didn’t notice how much was transient – the seasonal, annual story that happens where certain birds vanish and then others appear. There’s a sense of rhythm that’s very analog and human.”