Tell the Driver: A Biography of Elinor FE Black, MD

Cynthia R. Comacchio is an assistant professor of History at Wilfrid
Laurier University in Waterloo.

Elinor Black was another of the pioneering women physicians of Canada
whose stories are just beginning to become known. Born in Nelson, B.C.,
in 1905, Black was a spirited “girl of the new day,” with various
medical firsts to her credit. Drawing carefully from diaries,
correspondence, and other personal papers, Vandervoort shows how Black
struggled—first against her own family, which objected to her desire
to study medicine, and then within the sexist confines of the medical
profession in early 20th-century Canada—to earn her medical degree, to
build a practice in Winnipeg in the depths of the Depression, and then
to attain a teaching post at the University of Manitoba Medical School
in the late 1930s. She was the first woman to head a department at a
Canadian medical school, a feat that did not take place until 1951.
Black’s research findings in obstetrics and gynaecology were widely
published internationally; she was also the first Canadian woman to gain
membership in the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of
Britain.

Vandervoort fits the young Black neatly into the context of the
1920s’ optimism about the “new day” that had arrived for Canadian
women in the wake of the socioeconomic upheaval wrought by the Great
War. Once again, we see the difficulties confronted by ambitious,
intelligent women of the period who sought higher education, and, in
particular, the problems they encountered in pursuing medical training.
Added to these were the difficulties of establishing and carrying out a
practice. But Black not only struggled on against the odds imposed by
gender prejudice and economic collapse—she seems to have thrived. She
is portrayed as a fascinating individual in her own right, a woman of
“tremendous presence and charisma,” as well as an accomplished
practitioner and researcher in women’s health concerns. Vandervoort
argues that Black “wore men’s clothing” (not literally, but
psychologically) in order to survive the dismissive and patronizing
response that frequently met women doctors of her day. What makes her
truly impressive, however, was her overall indomitability. As the author
describes it, “when the clothing got too tight, Elinor lashed out.”
In short, she knew both how to get on in a “man’s world,” and how
to speak up as a woman when doing so mattered more than professional
politics or social convention.

Deftly incorporating her subject’s own voice through excerpts from
her diaries and letters—Black was an expressive and enthusiastic
writer—Vandervoort has written a biography that should appeal to all
interested in Canadian medical history, and in the history of women in
the 20th century.