Charles Hayter’s moving story, “The Boy Who Loved Alice,” has been long listed for the 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize. It is one of 28 chosen from more than 1300 submissions from across Canada.
A reader for the competition says, “This father-son story spans decades, with cultural incompatibility and a struggle over sexuality, before coming to a place that surprises the author with the hidden lives of those we think we know.”
Zoe Whittle, Danny Ramadan and Knott are this year’s jury. The winner will receive $6000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two week residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and their work will be published on CBC Books.
The winner will be announced on September 25. Congratulations Charles and best wishes!
Alison Li has been awarded the 2025 Jason A. Hannah Medal by the Royal Society of Canada for her book Wondrous Transformations: A Maverick Physician, the Science of Hormones, and the Birth of the Transgender Revolution (University of North Carolina Press, 2023.) The Hannah Medal was established in 1976 with the assistance of Associated Medical Services Inc. and is awarded for an important work in the history of medicine published in the preceding five years.
Li says “It was tremendously rewarding to spend many years in the study of the life of Dr Harry Benjamin (1885-1986), a pivotal figure in the early development of transgender medicine. The long history of gender-affirming care deserves to be better known and I’m thankful to be able to share Benjamin’s story with a wider audience.”
The medal will be presented at the Awards Ceremony in Montreal on November 14 as part of the RSC Celebration of Excellence and Engagement.
Alison Li [Photo: Diana Renelli], Cover of Wondrous Transformations, University of North Carolina Press, 2023
Past and Present executive members of the CSHM, including TMHC members Heather McDougall and Charles Hayter [Photo: Susan Lamb]
Toronto Medical Historical Club was delighted to participate in the meeting of the Canadian Society for the History of Medicine (CSHM) at its annual meeting 31 May – 2 June 2025 at George Brown College, Toronto, in association with the Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities. Program and abstracts
Club members Peter Kopplin, Christopher Rutty, and Alison Li led a walking tour of local medical history sites in downtown Toronto. A delightful stop was made to view the class photos of several of our members at the University of Toronto Medical School.
Medical History Discovery Walk [Photo: Charles Hayter]
Peter Kopplin, Christopher Rutty, Alison Li
Professor Emerita Jacalyn Duffin by the photo of her UofToronto medical school class.
Charles Hayter, John Dirks, Christopher Rutty and Alison Li participated in a roundtable entitled “Bridging the Gap: Making Medical History Accessible to the General Public | Combler l’écart : rendre l’histoire de la médecine accessible au grand public.” Stephen McCabe presented a paper on “Sterling Bunnell and the Emergence of Hand Surgery.”
The TMHC was proud sponsor of the refreshments for the delightful annual tradition of the Strawberries and Champagne Book Launch at which we toasted the publications of CSHM members over the past year.
The TMHC was pleased to be able to help the Canadian Society for the History of Medicine mark their 75th Anniversary.
Elizabeth Hughes [Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto]
Club member Dr Christopher Rutty lends his expertise to this new article “Elizabeth Hughes, a menina que sobreviveu à ‘terapia da fome’ — e foi salva pela insulina” (“Elizabeth Hughes, the girl who survived ‘starvation therapy’ — and was saved by insulin”) in BBC News Brasil about Elizabeth Hughes and early diabetes management. As a young girl, Hughes was one of the first people with diabetes to receive insulin from Dr Frederick Banting. (This article is in Portuguese but if you wish to read it in English, you might use Google Translate.)
Chris Rutty explains that Hughes “became a researcher of the very disease she had,” and that in addition to being the daughter of US Secretary of State, Charles Evans Hughes, and to being at the right place at the right time, “she was very brilliant, intelligent, and committed.” Chris also explains that she was ground-breaking, as “one of the first people with diabetes to inject herself with insulin — something that is now routinely done by millions of patients with the disease around the world.”
Chris also relates the fact that the late historian Michael Bliss, also a club member, met Hughes when he was researching his book The Discovery of Insulin (1982). She was a very private individual and initially hesitant to speak about her experience, but came to understand the importance of her story. She allowed all the the materials to be released after her death.
Unveiling of portrait of Dr Alexander Augusta. Left to right: Nav Persaud, Gordon Shadrach, Modupe Tunde-Byass, Julian Sher, Heather Butts, Nicholas Terpstra, Sador Bereketab, Anu Popoola
A striking portrait of Dr. Alexander Thomas Augusta (1825-1890) was unveiled November 7, 2024 at a celebration held in Seeley Hall, Trinity College, University of Toronto. Dr Augusta was a physician, army officer, hospital administrator, professor, and a life-long activist fighting racism and segregation. He was the first Black officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War, the first Black hospital administrator, and the first Black medical professor in the United States.
Augusta was born in Norfolk, Virginia but arrived in Toronto and enrolled in medicine at Trinity College in 1853 after he was refused admission to medical school in the US. He became the first Black medical student in Canada West and was awarded his medical degree in 1860. While in Toronto, he opened a drugstore on Yonge Street and later a private practice as surgeon. As president of an organization to advance education among the Black community, he provided books and school supplies to Black children. During the American Civil War, he returned to the US and was commissioned as major and served as the first Black physician in the Union Army. In 1868, he was appointed to the faculty of Howard University.
