“I first moved to Canada with my husband at the time, and 60 years later I have four children who have all stayed here."
Alumna and retired GP, Dr Ann Cox, graduated from St George’s and 1959 and has spent the last 60 years living and working in Canada. She spoke to us about her experience of moving overseas and to share her reflections on her career.
Dr Cox attended the original Hyde Park Corner campus at a time when female trainees made up a small proportion of their cohort. Reflecting on her time at St George’s, she says, “Being in such a central location, the Hyde Park Corner campus felt right in the thick of things and gave me the best education I could get. We trained in large wards, each with around 10-20 patients which was wonderful practice for us as trainee doctors.”
Dr Cox moved to Montreal in 1960 shortly after graduating in Medicine, before all provinces in Canada had a public health system in place. She began her career in Canada as a GP and says, “I spent my first two years working in Montréal and Ontario. Ontario was a good place to be as a GP, and they brought in OHIP (Ontario’s Health Insurance Plan) not long after I became a GP.
“In some states of the USA, you needed to spend a year intercalating, whereas at the time that I moved to Canada I only needed to complete my exams to qualify there. Having completed these already in the UK, the transition to working in Canada felt quite smooth. In some provinces, you could even go straight into practice. A lot has changed since I trained but it felt as though you were very much assessed on the basis of marks in Canada, rather than class or gender.
“I later moved to Niagara Falls, and noticed a difference in ways of working. Being in a more provincial area was very different to working in a big city. My time as a GP here really allowed me to treat patients from cradle to grave. I loved having the chance to really get involved at the Surgery, from delivering babies to making home visits to support them through family deaths.
“When I moved to Toronto, I decided to retrain as a GP Psychotherapist. One part of the training I particularly enjoyed was being able to work to take part in my own Psychotherapy sessions with a trained Psychotherapist. This really allowed me to learn a lot about myself and my own upbringing and helped me a lot with my own practice.
Dr Cox says of her life in Canada, “I first moved here with my husband at the time, and 60 years later I have four children who have all stayed here. I can’t speak highly enough of Canada. Everyone is so polite and friendly, and I love the lifestyle and weather - my children have all grown up skiing from a very young age. If anyone is considering a move to Canada, I would say to them, come on over!” 