The Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences was well represented at this year’s McGill Alumni Association (MAA) Honour & Awards Celebration, which celebrates the work of students, faculty and staff, as well as of alumni and friends, who have made a significant impact on the University and community at large.
Sidney Leggett, an MSc student in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at the School of Population and Global Health, won the Chancellor Gretta Chambers Student Leadership Award for co-creating a course that offers graduate students at the School a wide-ranging introduction to Indigenous health.
Meanwhile, the Medicine Class of 1978 earned recognition for their exceptional volunteerism. As part of their most recent giving campaign, for their 45th-anniversary reunion at Homecoming Celebration Weekend last October, they surpassed their own fundraising goals by raising over $100,000 in support of upgrades to the iconic McIntyre Medical Building.
Prior to the ceremony, which was held on May 7, 2024, at Le 9e, the recently restored Art Deco restaurant in the old Eaton’s, FMHS Focus spoke with Leggett and two class representatives of Med’78.
Charting a new course
Sidney Leggett is co-creator with Josh Swain (MSc’23) of “Indigenous World Views in Health Delivery and Research,” a course that uses the prism of colonialism to better understand present-day Indigenous health.
Leggett, who is a McCall MacBain Scholar and Métis, calls it a crash course in relationship building with the Indigenous community. It’s hoped that offering more Indigenous-led classes will foster more inclusivity in the health professions and attract more Indigenous students to fields such as epidemiology and public health.
Her goal is to increase future policymakers’ awareness of Indigenous health care. Leggett expects that most alumni working in Canadian public health policy will eventually cross paths with the topic.
“If you don’t have an understanding of what Indigenous people of Canada went through with colonization and where the research climate is today, you’re going to make uninformed policy decisions left and right.”
She says the course, which she co-taught, also incorporates the research concept that sees communities as being fully capable of identifying their health priorities.
That’s something she will be putting into practice this summer as she returns to her native Winnipeg to work at the First Nations Health & Social Secretariat of Manitoba. While there, she will complete her master's research, which concerns the opioid epidemic during the COVID-19 pandemic in First Nations communities in Manitoba.
“I will be meeting with knowledge keepers to get a deeper understanding of what was happening in those times.” She hopes her research can help leaders in future crisis planning.
Leggett found her stride after switching from engineering at the University of Victoria to computer science at the University of Winnipeg. Her newfound talent for data and design helped revitalize the website at Turtle Lodge, run by the Sagkeeng First Nation, located 120 km north of Winnipeg. She also built what she called a story-catching site, sharing stories of Indigenous youth.
Leggett cites both her parents, Shannon and Sean, for the encouragement and examples that have led her to where she is now.
Her father is the director of mental health and addictions treatment and recovery for the Government of Manitoba. “His whole career path ended up following an advocacy route, doing addictions counselling and moving through the mental health and addictions world in government.” Her mother, she says, helped her stay authentic. “She passed on the importance of family and how to incorporate good values into the work I do. And to not take it too seriously.”
Where it all started
The McIntyre Medical Sciences Building opens up a flood of memories for many alumni.
Dr. Claus Hamann (MDCM’78) remembers the theatrical seating style of the amphitheatres. “It had such an august nature and a way of engaging the presenters. And the topics had a way of engaging us.” He remembers the grand rounds he attended there, one of them a lecture by Franz Ingelfinger, a renowned New England Journal of Medicine editor (Fun fact: Ingelfinger introduced the convention of the embargoed research paper).
So, it was not surprising that the Class of ’78 chose to rally around an upgrade of the McIntyre, which had been hobbled by a fire in 2018 and needed a general sprucing up, especially in an era of small group learning, electrified furniture and modular active learning classrooms.
In the School of Medicine, in particular, there is also the matter of an increased class size. This year’s incoming Med-1 class will boast 247 students, a 37% increase from 2018 when there were just 180. This calls for a larger dedicated space for Medicine classes to sit their exams all at once. And there is a need for students across the six schools of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences to have more study space available on campus.
Every five years, the class chooses where to direct its collective giving. Class Fundraising Chair Dr. Michele Hooper (MDCM’78) remembers perusing a list of potential projects. She and Hamann canvassed opinions on different options, with the results being clear: “It was the McIntyre. Eighty percent of people said, ‘Yes, I want to do this.’”
Hamann likes the idea of his class ushering in a new era of teaching, where desks would have USB ports where there once had been ashtrays: “This was an opportunity to create smartly equipped classrooms.”
The Class of ’78 has been particularly good at giving back. In their 45 years since graduation, they’ve raised the extraordinary amount of $940,000 (including pledges).
The goal for their contribution to the "McMed Remade” vision was $100,000. At last count, the figure was at $101,000. This will help efforts by the University, government and friends of the Faculty to modernize the building for the students of today and tomorrow.
