convent high school in Montreal. One day, a group of missionary nuns visited the school. They had just returned from China, and they talked about their work in an orphanage looking after Chinese babies. Lucille was fascinated by the stories of their work. That very day she decided, “I want to help poor and needy children. I’m going to do that by becoming a doctor!”
The only person she told was her father. “A doctor?” he said. “Yes,” Lucille replied with certainty. “And I want to work in India.” Her father was stunned. None of his other children showed any interest even in finishing high school, and Lucille was talking about a career that would require many long years of study.
He was also aware that Montreal in the 1950s, like most of the province of Quebec, was a very conservative society. Career opportunities were limited, especially for women. Many chose to be nurses or teachers and some became nuns. He pointed out that it was almost unheard of for a woman to train as a doctor, a career traditionally reserved for men.
But Lucille was not deterred. “I want to be a doctor, so I will just have to find a way.”
Her father was clearly proud that she wished to continue her studies and did everything he could to help her. With his support, she studied even harder at school, managed to score top marks in her final examinations, and was awarded a bursary to attend Collège Jésus-Marie, one of the most prestigious classical colleges for women in Montreal, where she would complete high school. She was the only one in her family to do so.
At the college, Lucille met Dr. Jeanne Marcelle Dussault, a well-known woman doctor from Montreal who came to speak to the students. Lucille had already read about Dr. Dussault and was inspired by her example. Here is a woman, a French Canadian and a doctor, she thought. Having Dr. Dussault as a role model increased her determination to reach her goal.
With her mind fixed firmly on a medical career, Lucille continued to be a dedicated student. After four years at the college, she won a scholarship to enter the school of medicine at the Université de Montréal. She was twenty-one.
The day in September 1950 when Lucille first walked into the Université de Montréal’s medical school, she knew she was entering a man’s world. Still, she was astonished to discover that, in her class of 110 students, there were only eight women. Her father had been right, but even he was surprised. “Only eight?” he asked, incredulously.
“Yes, and this is a big year for women!” Lucille laughed.
Lucille was a keen and bright student. She was also strikingly attractive, tall and slender with wavy blonde hair and big brown eyes. In spite of her inferiority complex – she always thought others were better and brighter than she was – she was popular with her first year classmates, who elected her Miss Medicine. Others too noticed this bright young student: when the Quebec publication Le Petit Journal was looking for a university student to feature on its cover for the October 1951 edition, they chose a photo of the budding doctor Lucille Teasdale giving an injection to a rabbit!
In 1955, Lucille graduated from medical school cum laude. She had decided to specialize in surgery and began her internship at Ste-Justine’s children’s hospital in Montreal. She was the only woman in her class to choose surgery. She thought women were made for surgery, that it was women’s work – like sewing.
Few were convinced. All her friends tried to discourage her from choosing surgery. “Surgery is a man’s world,” one of them told her. Another took her aside and gave her an even stronger warning: “No mother would ever put her child’s life in the hands of a woman surgeon,” she said.
Lucille was determined to silence the sceptics. She would show her male colleagues that she was as good as they were. So she worked twice as hard, often for sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. Finally, after five gruelling years, she successfully completed her training and became one of Quebec’s first female surgeons.
Lucille was working at Ste-Justine’s when a friend introduced her to a young Italian doctor who had come to Montreal to study pediatrics. His name was Piero Corti. She took little notice of him at first, but he later approached her in the hospital corridor and reintroduced himself. Piero was a good-looking young man, short and stocky, with a sparkle in his eyes and an engaging smile. She found him charming and amusing to be with, and she couldn’t stop laughing at the way he spoke both French and English with a singsong Italian accent. But Lucille was so engrossed in her studies that she did not give him another thought. Piero, however, was immediately attracted by the beauty and intensity of this young intern.
The two came from very different backgrounds. Lucille had grown up in a working-class district of Montreal, while Piero was the son of a wealthy textile manufacturer from Milan, the fifth in a family of ten. At school, Lucille strove to excel, but Piero preferred sports and fast motorbikes to homework. Despite their comfortable circumstances, Piero’s parents encouraged all their children to follow a profession, so he chose medicine and obtained a medical degree. He studied radiology and anesthesiology at the University of Milan.
Like Lucille, Piero was attracted by the idea of living and working in the Third World. One of his brothers was a Jesuit missionary in Chad, West Africa. A brother-in-law had served as a doctor, first in India and then in Africa. Their stories fascinated him and he was determined to follow in their footsteps.
Lucille had still to complete the final stage of her training. In order to practise as a surgeon, she needed one further diploma that required a period of training to be taken outside Canada. She sent letters to twenty top hospitals in the United States asking to be admitted to their surgical residence program. All twenty turned her down.
Lucille was absolutely furious. I have an excellent academic record and impressive credentials. It must he the fact I’m a woman that has ruined my chance of a job in the United States, she realized. She buried her anger and decided instead to apply for a job in France. She immediately received offers of positions in both Paris and Marseilles.
She chose Marseilles, a bustling Mediterranean seaport in the south of France. Now thirty-one years old, she said goodbye to her friends and family, and in September 1960, her father drove her to New York, where she boarded the S.S. Liberié.
After a five-day crossing, they reached the French port of Le Havre. Lucille boarded the train for the journey south. She grew increasingly excited as they flew past charming French villages with red-tiled roofs. As they moved south, she could feel the heat of the sun and marvelled at the luminescence of the countryside that so captivated Impressionist painters such as Van Gogh and Cézanne.
She caught her first sight of the Mediterranean when she reached Marseilles, a noisy and crowded city bordering the sea. She moved in with a French family and started work at once as an intern in pediatric surgery at the Hôpital de la Conception.
Lucille adjusted quickly to life in Marseilles. She made many new friends, but she was startled by their ignorance of Canada. “In Montreal, do you have snow ten months a year?” one of them asked. “Is there ever any sun? What language do you speak?” inquired another. They were very surprised when she told them that many Canadians living in Montreal speak French at school, at university, even in the shops. They were just as surprised when she told them that in summer, Montrealers grow tomatoes! They thought Montreal must always be much too cold.
She was amused to discover that the French spoken in France was different from the French she had learned in Canada. “The people here have difficulty understanding me because we
