We are not amused

We are not amused

	PHOTO: G. ZIMBEL

Queen Victoria sits regally in front of the building which houses one of the most prestigious music faculties in the country. She might not look so proud, however, if she knew about the pigeons who drop in on classes on the top floor of McGill's Strathcona Music Building. They're not there to rehearse Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals. They're there because the century-old former Royal Victoria College is crumbling, and its leaky roof offers good nesting space.

While the roof is currently being repaired, hopes for a fully revivified music building were dashed last month by the Quebec government, when an aide to Education Minister François Legault informed McGill that, despite previous assurances from the minister and his predecessor, the long-awaited capital project for renovation and extension of the Strathcona Building had been vetoed by the Treasury Board.

"I can't say I'm not disappointed," Principal Bernard Shapiro told the Montreal Gazette. "This has been discussed ad nauseam with the government. Every time, they have responded that this is necessary, that something must be done. I really feel quite outraged by the response, especially since we always raise part of the money ourselves."

Exasperated students and faculty members have registered their dismay by launching a letter-writing and postcard campaign aimed at the minister. Initial promises from Quebec were for $16 million in funding, with the rest of the projected $41-million price tag being raised privately by the University. Shapiro says McGill intends to pursue the project, perhaps in a revised form, and suggests that approval for a new plan might come next year. For now, the Music faculty will have to wait.

Stamp of approval

Another McGill medical luminary is being officially recognized, although she may be less well known than fellow Canadian Medical Hall of Fame members Osler and Penfield. Dr. Maude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott, BA1891, had a postage stamp issued in her honour in January, and the federal Heritage Minister will be on campus this month to unveil a plaque commemorating Abbott's "national historic significance."

As a woman, Abbott was denied admission to medical school at McGill and completed her education at Bishop's. After two years of further training in Europe, she came back to Montreal and obtained a faculty position at McGill. In 1910, the University took the unusual step of awarding her an honorary MDCM, although it would be another eight years before women were accepted to study medicine.

Around this time she was invited by Sir William Osler to contribute a chapter on congenital heart disease to his multi-volume text, A System of Medicine. Abbott was inspired by Osler's interest which, she later said, "aroused my intellect to its most passionate endeavour." Osler pronounced her monograph "quite the best ever written on the subject" and she went on to become a world authority on heart defects and to publish The Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease.

Among many activities and accomplishments during her career, Abbott was a founder of the Federation of Medical Women of Canada (FMWC) in 1924. To help mark the organization's 75th anniversary last year, Susan Kelen, BSc'76, volunteered to make a presentation about Maude Abbott at the annual conference. She contacted a family friend, Charlotte Ferencz, MDCM'45, who had written about Abbott in the past, and in Ferencz's files, Kelen came across a 1989 letter from Canada Post denying a petition by a number of McGill doctors to issue a stamp in Abbott's honour. Kelen decided to right this injustice and sent Canada Post all the material she could gather on Abbott's achievements. At the conference she issued Maude Abbott postcards and asked participants to mail them to Canada Post. By September, the post office had seen the error of its ways and agreed to issue a stamp.

The likeness is a portrait painted by one of Abbott's childhood friends in 1936 when, upon her retirement, McGill presented Abbott with a second honorary degree. This one recognized her as "a stimulating teacher, an indefatigable investigator and a champion of higher education." Abbott is the only person ever to have been awarded two honorary degrees by McGill.