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Date of birth: Place of birth:
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Photo : Louise Leblanc 1995 - Cérémonie de remise des insignes de l'Ordre national du Québec
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At a very young age, Lucille
Teasdale became aware of social inequality. She
grew up in Montreal East, but as a boarding student
attended one of the most exclusive Catholic
colleges: the Collège Jésus-Marie
d'Outrement. She did volunteer work in a clinic
attended by the disadvantaged of the Plateau
Mont-Royal and there she acquired a conviction that
she could do something against the worst injustice:
disease. In 1940, she was accepted at medical
school at the Université de Montréal
and, in 1955, became the first Quebec woman to
obtain her diploma as a surgeon. She interned and
did her residency at the hospitals of
Sainte-Justine, Maisonneuve and l'Hôtel-Dieu.
It was at Sainte-Justine that she met her future
husband, Pietro Corti, a specialist in pediatrics,
who was interning in Montreal. From a well-to-do
Italian family, Dr. Corti was looking for new
challenges and saw service in Africa as a way to
leave his mark. To finish her training, Lucille
Teasdale had to receive training abroad. After
being turned down by American hospitals, because
she was a woman, she went to in Marseille. Dr.
Corti joined her and, after several meetings, she
agreed to accompany him to Uganda. This was the
beginning of an adventure that was to last 35
years.
In 1961, she set up a
practice in Gulu, a British protectorate in
Northern Uganda. She and her husband founded St.
Mary's-Lacor Hospital. During those years, she
performed more than 13,000 surgeries, while her
husband, in addition to working as an
anesthesiologist, administered the hospital and
helped train dozens of young doctors. The couple
devoted their lives to caring for such contagious
diseases as malaria and AIDS. They worked in very
difficult conditions -- civil war, epidemics and
massacres -- and with limited means. She operated
in unbelievable conditions and contracted AIDS in
the course of performing an operation. She had
wanted to save the life of a wounded Ugandan
soldier afflicted with this terrible disease. The
state of her health towards the end of her career
precluded her from performing surgery, so she
devoted herself to caring for patients with AIDS
and out-patients.
Lucille Teasdale was a member
of the Order of Canada. With her husband, she was
awarded the Saskawa Prize in 1986, the most
prestigious distinction awarded by the World Health
Organization. She was an officer of the Order of
Merit of the Republic of Italy and the winner of
numerous awards in Europe. She died of AIDS on
August 1, 1996. Dr. Teasdale devoted her life to
caring for the destitute.
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