Andrew Smith
Plot 1, Lots 2 and 11
Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto
Andrew Smith, founder of Canada’s first veterinary school, was born in Dalrymple, Ayrshire, Scotland on July 12, 1834, the only child of James Smith and Agnes McNider. He attended the local parish school and later worked on his family’s farm and, while still a youth, served as the secretary of the Dalrymple’s agricultural society. At the age of 25 he left the farm to attend the Highland Society’s Veterinary School in Edinburgh, graduating with honours in 1861.
The famed professor Adam Fergusson of the Board of Agriculture of Upper Canada offered Smith the opportunity to train veterinary surgeons in Toronto and in 1862 he founded the Upper Canada Veterinary School in leased properties on Temperance Street, the first of its kind in Canada. Dr. Smith was the first qualified veterinarian in Canada and served as the Ontario Veterinary Medical Association’s President from its formation in 1874 until its incorporation in 1879. He ran the school for 46 years, and by the time he handed it over to the provincial government in 1908, the then named Ontario Veterinary College had graduated some 3000 veterinarians.
He had a lifelong love of horses and was an acclaimed expert in equine diseases. He owned racehorses and judged horse shows in Canada and internationally and in 1883 became a founding member of the Toronto Hunt Club, and later the Ontario Jockey Club. He was also active in his community and served as honorary governor of the Toronto General Hospital and director of the Consumers’ Gas Company, and founded the Industrial Exhibition in Toronto, renamed in 1912 to the Canadian National Exhibition.
Dr. Smith married Mary Anne Hornesby in Toronto in 1863, and had eight children, but only one son and three daughters survived to adulthood. On August 15, 1910 he died from blood poisoning at his home at 311 Jarvis Street in Toronto, and is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery with his wife and some of his children.
Mike Filey
Mount Pleasant Cemetery: An Illustrated Guide
Second>Edition Revised and Expanded