Thirty-two young women, most of them pictured here from 1925, are the first graduates of the Ottawa Civic Hospital School of Nursing. Only single women “in good health with a robust constitution” were admitted to the red-brick nurses’ residence at 737 Parkdale Avenue, until 1969 when the rules changed, allowing married women into the program. According to archival information, life at the school was demanding and highly regimented. “Smoking, alcohol, and bobbed hair were forbidden.”  

Ottawa philanthropist and community-builder Jean Teron proudly wears her mother’s 1924 nursing pin, given to 20-year-old Ida Catherine McDowell when she graduated from the program nearly a century ago. Jean’s sister Katherine also graduated from the Civic Hospital School of Nursing.   

“My mother’s hand scratching in her biography says that she was so happy at the Civic to receive a mark of 100 on her medical nursing exam,” says Jean. “My mother says she did really well as an A1 nurse, whatever that is, despite the long hours and very little pay.” Jean says her mother and best friend Jean Forbes were the first Civic graduates to go on to higher education, studying Public Health Nursing at McGill.  

By the time the School of Nursing closed in 1973, more than 4,000 graduates had made the symbolic walk down the front steps of the Civic Hospital, marking the start of their nursing career.  

On July 14, 1967, Dr. Shiv Jindal arrived in Canada after beginning his career in Nephrology in 1964 in Belfast, North Ireland. He joined the team at the Civic and helped establish the Department of Nephrology, which was in its infancy. At that time, the Civic had only one dialysis machine. 

Over the next four decades Dr. Jindal continued to make an impact, from treating thousands of patients to helping develop a renal transplant program and dialysis unit to offering his expertise on anti-rejection medication during Ottawa’s first heart transplant in 1984 (see moment #29 for more on this historic event!)  

In 2007, 40 years after arriving at the Civic, Dr. Jindal and his wife Sarita donated $1 million to establish Canada’s first research program on the prevention of kidney disease. Then, in 2013, the Jindal Research Chair for the Prevention of Kidney Disease was established. 

Most recently, the Jindals made another investment in the future of healthcare with a $1-million donation to the Campaign to Create Tomorrow. They view this gift as an investment in improving patients’ lives and in preventative healthcare. 

Over the years, The Ottawa Hospital has made major contributions to kidney research and continues to do so. More than 1,700 patients received dialysis last year at our hospital. 

April 1998 brought major change to healthcare delivery in Ottawa and the surrounding regions. 

That’s when the Civic, General, Riverside, and Grace hospitals were brought together to create The Ottawa Hospital. 

Watch as Dr. Kitts shares about that historic time in our hospital’s history and his own memories from his decades of leadership. 

Now, serving a population of more than two million people — and home to some of the world’s most cutting-edge medical research — The Ottawa Hospital has touched countless lives. 

Along with our three main campuses, we also operate more than 20 off-campus sites, including seven kidney dialysis clinics across Eastern Ontario, the Irving Greenberg Family Cancer Centre at the Queensway Carleton Hospital, and the breast screening clinic at Hampton Park Plaza. 

It seems Olympic and World Cup skiers Art and Andy Tommy did a lot together over the years, even winding up with a fracture on the same leg — in the same room at The Ottawa Civic Hospital in 1955.  

Art, then 21, broke his leg first when the two brothers were in a car accident on their way to a competition in the U.S. Twenty-two-year-old Andy walked away with a few bruises, only to break his leg at Camp Fortune, landing them in the hospital together with matching injuries.  

Andy would endure six breaks over the span of a very successful career that included both brothers qualifying for the 1956 Olympic Games in Italy. Sadly, Art would pull an ankle ligament a month before the Games and Andy would suffer a double fracture on his right leg — neither was able to compete. However, a third brother, Fred, was a member of Canada’s Alpine Ski Team and did compete in the 1960 Olympic Games on a team that Andy coached. Art and Andy were both inducted to the Canadian Ski Hall of Fame 

The Tommy family might be best known for how they enrich our region’s ski and sporting experience through the success of their retail stores Tommy & Lefebvre and the Edelweiss Valley Ski and Golf Resort.

Dr. Gordon Armstrong left an indelible mark not only on Ottawa’s medical community, but also around the world.  

Born in Hong Kong and raised in rural Ontario, he graduated from Queen’s University and began his surgical practice in Ottawa in 1954, later serving as Chief of Orthopaedics at the Civic. Throughout his career, he prioritized sharing knowledge and techniques, training medical professionals worldwide and refusing royalties for his inventions. 

Among the lives touched by Dr. Armstrong’s care, a patient named Shelley, who was diagnosed with scoliosis at a young age, vividly remembers meeting Dr. Armstrong as she faced the prospect of corrective surgery and fusion. “He had such an amazing sense of humour and he put me at ease. I remember how kind and how reassuring he was because it was a risky surgery.” 

And, in 1980, a surgery he was involved in, performed under unusual circumstances, led to a partnership on the other side of the planet. 

Dr. Armstrong received a request to perform surgery on Deng Pufang, the son of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. Deng Pufang was injured during the Cultural Revolution, rendering him paraplegic. Secretly transported to Ottawa for the operation, this event catalyzed a formal partnership between the Ottawa Civic Hospital and the Beijing Union Memorial Hospital. Over time, fourteen Chinese doctors across different medical fields received training in Ottawa as part of this collaboration. 

In 2001, Dr. Armstrong was awarded the Order of Canada for his significant contributions to improving the lives of people with spinal injuries. His involvement with the National Research Council of Canada led to advancements in clinical assessment and implant design for patients with spinal deformities.  

Dr. Armstrong passed away in 2018, but his legacy lives on through the Gordon Armstrong Combined Spine Program at The Ottawa Hospital’s Civic Campus, inaugurated by his son Dr. Doug Armstrong and colleagues. The program honors Dr. Armstrong’s commitment to excellence in orthopaedics and neurosurgery, embodying his vision of enhancing patient care through learning, innovation, and research.