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Norman Miles Guiou was born February 26, 1893, in Ottawa to father Alonzo Herrett Guiou and mother Robenia Wallace. Guiou was raised and educated in Ottawa and attended Lisgar Collegiate where he gained an interest in biology and medicine after participating in science classes under the tutelage of his teacher, William Smeaton. In 1911 Guiou pursued his MD at McGill University, Montreal. During his fourth year at McGill at the start of the First World War, he enlisted as a private and in the spring of 1915 went to France with the McGill Hospital Unit, where he was eventually promoted to sergeant. Due to the great need of doctors during the First World War, Guiou was sent back to McGill University in the summer of 1916 to complete his medical program and interned at the Montreal General Hospital for 2 months. It was during this internship that Guiou learned about blood transfusions and cross-matching blood. After this internship and completion of his MD, Guiou enlisted once more, and went to France as a Medical Officer at McGill Hospital under John McCrae, just outside Boulogne. During the remainder of the First World War, Guiou originated the use of direct donor blood transfusion to resuscitate wounded soldiers as far forward as the Regimental Aid Post, using modified citrate bottles developed by Dr. O.H Robertson.

After the First World War, Guiou married Mary Elizabeth Brown in 1923, and had a son- William Wallace Guiou in 1925. In 1926, William Wallace died to pneumonia at 3 months old, and a week later Mary Elizabeth also passed away. In 1928 Guiou married Ella Loyale Mix. During this time, Guiou pursued post graduate training in New York, and went on to work at the Ottawa Civic Hospital, where he was Senior Surgeon, and then Chief Gynaecologist. He was also chairperson of the Blood Transfusion and Parenteral Fluid Committee, where he was instrumental in convincing the administration to allow nurses to give blood.

In around 1935 Guiou was inspired by the volunteer blood donors of Toc H (a veteran’s group) and convinced the Ottawa Red Cross branch under Jim Potter to start the blood donor initiative, resulting in the creation of a blood clinic in 1938 and subsequent blood drives. Thanks to Guiou, Toc H and Jim Potter, more whole blood clinics would be opened in Ontario by the Red Cross, just prior to the start of the Second World War. During the Second World War, Guiou was a member of the National Red Cross Committee on Blood for the Wounded.

In 1964 Guiou was successful in convincing Ottawa to add fluoride to its water supply. In 1985 Guiou authored the book “Transfusion: A Canadian Surgeons Story of War and in Peace”, documenting his role in blood transfusions during the First World War and leading up to the Second World War. Guiou passed away August 10, 1992.

Guiou was a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada, an Honorary Member of the Canadian Red Cross Society, a Life Member of the Ontario Medical Association, and a past president of the Academy of Medicine, Ottawa. His work has been published in various scholarly journals internationally.

Gerry Glow was born July 6, 1913, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to father Israel Glow, and mother Ida Gurvitch. Glow grew up alongside his brother Morris and was educated at St. Johns Technical Highschool. Following High School, Glow attended the University of Manitoba for one year. In 1937, Glow joined the Communist Party of Canada, and subsequently decided to fight in the Spanish Civil War, as he felt he had a duty to help the Spaniard’s fight for democracy. In 1937, Glow arrived in Spain, where he trained with the 2nd Battalion of Instruction, Canadian Company, before attending First Aid School in December of 1937. Glow then served with the 12th Brigade, 2nd Battalion, Company 2 from March to April of 1938. In July of 1938, Glow was transferred to the Mackenzie Papineau Battalion. Glow served in The Retreats from Belchite to Gandesa and the Ebro Crossing to Corbera.

Glow returned to Canada after the Spanish Civil War concluded and was involved in various strikes and demonstrations in Canada. He later worked in his brother Morris’s pharmacy and went on to marry Sally Bolt. Glow passed away February 23, 1997, in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

John Fowler was born on July 3, 1888 in West Ham, London, England. He enlisted in the Canadian army, machine gun section 169th Overseas Battalion CEF Camp Niagara, on February 14, 1916. He served in England and France (including Vimy Ridge). He was hospitalized with pneumonia and suspected tuberculosis in England and France in 1917. He spent five months at the Hamilton Sanatorium recovering from tuberculosis and bronchitis. He later spent five years in and out of various hospitals in New Jersey, Vancouver, and New Zealand seeking treatment. Although he was an engineer prior to the war, he was not able to work due to his collapsed lung. He spent his working years on a small pension supplemented by part-time self-employment. He was married to Harriet Elizabeth Fox (married on November 27, 1915) and they had one son together, William John Fowler (who served in the Second World War).

John Charles Firmin was working on a farm north of Lethbridge, Alberta when he heard about the Spanish Civil War. With sympathy for the Republic and indignation over fascism and Nazism, he left Lethbridge for Toronto, from where he was sent to New York and then to Manhattan, heading across the ocean for France. He went from Le Havre to Carcassonne and after a long trip climbing over the Pyrenees, he finally reached Figueras in March 1938.
Joining the Mackenzie Papineau Battalion on March 28, 1938, he billeted in a camp in Figueras for about two weeks for training before going to Gandesa, where he was involved in a battle and badly wounded. He was carried to a field medical ambulance for treatment and then transferred to a prison hospital in Saragossa for operation. Following that he was sent to another hospital in Bilbao along with some of his Spanish comrades and received another operation on his arm. He spent the Christmas of 1938 in the hospital and stayed until his arm had healed up. Following his stay in Bilbao, he was kept in prisons in Burgos and Valdemoceda until May 1939, when he was released from Spain and returned to Canada. He later joined the Mackenzie Papineau Veterans Association in Toronto. He died in 1982 in Semans, Saskatchewan.

The Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) is governed by the McMaster University Tenure and Promotion Policy. Each department can form their own Tenure and Promotion Committee (T&P) who makes recommendations on faculty concerning tenure and promotions.

Dr. Fenigstein was born in Warsaw, Poland, on May 12, 1913, to Zygmund Fenigstein and Julia Kissin. Dr. Fenigstein studied in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Warsaw before being conscripted to the Officer's Medical Academy of the Polish army in September 1937. In April 1940, Dr. Fenigstein went to the Warsaw Jewish Hospital, working as an assistant physician in the department of pathology. He taught anatomy and pathology in the Warsaw ghetto underground medical school and did plenty of research on topics like hunger disease until the first big liquidation of Warsaw ghetto on July 22, 1942. During the final liquidation starting on April 19, 1943, Dr. Fenigstein was sent south to a camp near the city of Lublin and from there he started his way through a few concentration camps in occupied Poland and then in Germany. He was liberated by the 3rd American army near Munich on April 30, 1945. After the war, Dr. Fenigstein studied obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Munich, Frauenklinik. In September 1948, he moved to Toronto, Canada, where he started as a general practitioner and then worked as a family physician. After acquiring certification in psychiatry from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, Dr. Fenigstein started working as a practicing psychiatrist. He also taught at Sunnybrook Hospital as a teaching staff for many years before he resigned in 1970.

Eisen was born in Vilno, Poland, on December 17, 1908. She finished high school in 1932 and accepted nursing training in a school called Dolsz. After moving from Vilno to Warsaw, she worked as a nurse in hospitals in Czyste. She took her State Board Examination in 1938 and then worked as a full-fledged nurse in hospitals in the Warsaw ghettos until the mass deportations began in 1943. She managed to escape from the ghetto and worked with a church from 1943 to 1945. She got married at 48 years old and moved to New York.

Ethel S.C. Duff (maiden name Ethel Sage Colter) was born near Balcarres, Saskatchewan on October 7, 1906, to William Henry Colter and Nellie Sage Moorehouse. As daughter of a minister who had to move every three years, she lived all over Saskatchewan during her childhood. After graduating from high school, she went to a normal school in Regina and started teaching in 1924. After the Great Depression hit, she went to United College and married her first husband, Aaron Magid (b. 1905), who was then a practicing physician at Sceptre, Saskatchewan. in 1934, the couple went to Winnipeg, where Dr. Magid practiced medicine in the north end of Winnipeg and at the same time actively involved in politics as a communist. In the spring of 1937, Dr. Magid went to Spain and served as a doctor in the front lines doing first aid work near the trenches. A year later, Ethel went to Spain to join her husband and stayed in Barcelona for a month before coming back to Canada. Two months after Ethel’s returning to Canada, in October 1938, Dr. Magid went back Canada as well. The couple went to Magrath and stayed there until 1948, when Dr. Magid bought a practice from a doctor in Niagara Falls and moved out there.