When: November 18, 2026, 2:00-4:00 pm,
Where: David Braley Auditorium, 2nd floor, David Braley Health Science Centre, 100 Main Street West, Hamilton (across from City Hall)
2:00-3:00 pm. Speaker: Dr. Sasha Mullally, Professor of History and Associate Dean, University of New Brunswick (UNB)
Talk Title: Who Cared for Canada? Immigrant Doctors and the Making of Medicare
Talk abstract: Canada’s universal health care system is often told as a national story of political vision and public policy. Yet immigrant physicians played a crucial, and often overlooked, role in building and sustaining Medicare across the country. This talk explores how internationally trained doctors helped address physician shortages, expand access to care in underserved communities, and shape the practice of medicine in Canada. Drawing on demographic data, personal narratives, and public and professional debates, it examines how immigration and migration supported, sustained, and transformed Canada’s health care system during the critical early decades of Medicare.
Speaker Bio: Sasha Mullally is Professor of History and Associate Dean in the School of Graduate Studies at the University of New Brunswick (UNB). Her research examines the social and cultural histories of medicine and health in Canada and the United States, with a particular focus on the transnational movement of people and ideas. Her work explores the histories of rural health and medicine, interprofessionalism in health care, interdisciplinary applications of historical GIS, and the history of physician migration and immigration. Her publications include the co-authored Foreign Practices: Physician Immigration and the History of Canadian Medicare (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020).
Followed by
Roundtable discussion: How are International Medical Graduates (IMG’s) changing Canadian medicine today?
Summary: In this roundtable, IMG physicians, policy experts, historians, consider how IMGs are impacting Canadian healthcare today. Historically, when women and people of colour became doctors, they changed medicine for the better—how do IMGs in the Canadian medical workforce affect care today? How do they expand cultural understanding of patients, introduce new ways of thinking, or enrich options for patients? What do IMG physicians experience when they navigate the Canadian medical system?
Zoom option is also available, please register here: https://mcmaster.zoom.us/meeting/register/AaOAu-4mQrSver3nxGRlGw
Co-Sponsored by:
Department of Religious Studies
Globalization Program, FSS
Department of Political science (invited)
Wilson Institute in Canadian History
Department of Family Medicine