Dr.
Emily Howard Stowe was the first female doctor to practice in Canada and an activist for women's rights and suffrage. Stowe helped found the women's suffrage movement in Canada and campaigned for Canada's first medical college for women.
Medical careerStowe was denied entrance into the Toronto School of Medicine in 1865 and was told by the school's Vice President, "The doors of the University are not open to women and I trust they never will be." Unable to study medicine in Canada, Emily Stowe earned her degree in the United States from the homeopathic New York Medical College for Women in 1867. The same year, Emily returned to Canada and opened a practice in Toronto, Ontario.
Stowe's medical practice stood on Richmond Street in Toronto. Stowe gained some local prominence through public lectures on women's health and maintained a steady clientele through newspaper advertisements.
In 1870, the president of the Toronto School of Medicine granted special permission to Stowe and fellow student Jenny Kidd Trout to attend classes, a requirement for medical practitioners with foreign licenses. Faced with hostility from both the male faculty and students, Stowe refused to take the oral and written exams and left the school.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario granted Stowe a license to practice medicine on July 16, 1880, based on her experience with homeopathic medicine since 1850. This license made Stowe the second female licensed physician in Canada, after Trout.
Her daughter, Augusta Stowe-Gullen, was the first woman to earn a medical degree in Canada.