Earle Shouldice
Section 26, Lot 1
Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto
Born in Chesley, Ontario, Shouldice graduated in medicine from the University of Toronto in 1916. He taught clinical medicine for a quarter-of-a-century before establishing the Shouldice Clinic. His interest in the treatment of hernias developed during the Second World War when, as a consulting physician to the Canadian Army, he was surprised by the number of otherwise fit young men who couldn’t join the army because of their hernias. Dr. Shouldice began to operate on them for free, and, after the war had ended, opened the first Shouldice Clinic in a six-room house on Church Street in downtown Toronto. Soon the extremely successful treatment methods used by Dr. Shouldice became known far and wide and it became necessary to find more expansive quarters for the clinic.
In 1953, the doctor purchased the Bayview Avenue home of the late George McCullough (Section 20, Lot 67) in the Toronto suburb of Thornhill, including 135 acres of adjacent land, for $250,000 and converted in into the new Shouldice Clinic. Since 1945, more than 200,000 patients have received hernia operations at the Shouldice Clinic. Dr. Earle Shouldice succumbed to a heart attack at his Bayview Avenue clinic on August 20, 1965 at the age of 74.
Mike Filey
Mount Pleasant Cemetery: An Illustrated Guide
Second Edition Revised and Expanded