Date of issue: January 17, 2000
Printer: Ashton-Potter Canada
Series: The Millennium Collection, Hearts of Gold
Design: Pierre-Yves Pelletier
Lucille Teasdale
Lucille Teasdale was born in Montreal in 1929. Coming from a relatively poor working-class family, she worked diligently to secure a scholarship that allowed her to attend medical school. In 1955, she graduated from Universit茅 de Montr茅al, following which she undertook specialty training in pediatric surgery.
In 1961, she traveled to Lacor, Uganda to assist Piero Corti (later to become her husband) who was working in a mission hospital. Teasdale acted as the first and only surgeon in the hospital and went on to spend the rest of her working life in the region. Over the course of her career, she performed thousands of operations, often in extremely difficult circumstances, such as the Ugandan civil war of the 1970s and 80s. She was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 1986, a condition she likely acquired from bone fragment induced punctures of her surgical gloves while she was operating on infected soldiers. She died in Uganda from complications of AIDS in 1996.
The Stamp
The stamp shows a young and healthy Teasdale with a stethoscope around her neck.