Dr. Ian M. McDonald, Dean of Medicine, speaks at the 75th annual Spring Convocation and the occasion of installation of Dr. Sylvia Fedoruk as Chancellor. Seated dignitaries in background; lectern with Centennial Auditorium banner in foreground.

Bio/Historical Note: Dr. Sylvia Olga Fedoruk was born in 1927 in Canora, Saskatchewan. She completed high school in Windsor, Ontario, and enrolled at the University of Saskatchewan in 1946. She earned her BA in 1949 and her MA in 1951. Dr. Fedoruk was a member of 12 intervarsity championship teams. She played on the Huskiette basketball team that won the Cecil Race Trophy five times, competed on the track team that won the Rutherford Trophy two times, was on the volleyball team that captured the Landa Trophy three times and was a member of the golf team that won the Birks Trophy two times. Dr. Fedoruk was co-captain of the basketball team for four years. In addition to her athletic endeavors for which she received a Major Athletic award, Dr. Fedoruk was active in other facets of campus life, including serving as president of the Women's Athletic Board in 1948-49. She was awarded the prestigious Spirit of Youth Trophy in 1949 as the female student-athlete combining leadership, sportsmanship, character, academics and athletics. Dr. Fedoruk went on to a distinguished career in medical physics, specializing in the use of radiation in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Dr. Fedoruk became the first female Chancellor at the University of Saskatchewan, serving from 1986-1991. In 1987 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was Lieutenant-Governor of Saskatchewan from 1988-1994. In 2009 Dr. Fedoruk was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. In 2012 the name of the Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation (CCNI) was changed to the Sylvia Fedoruk Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation in honor of the pioneering work she did in the treatment of cancer using cobalt-60 radiation therapy in the 1950s. Saskatoon honoured Dr. Fedoruk by naming Fedoruk Drive, located in the northeast sector of the city, after her. Dr. Fedoruk died in 2012 in Saskatoon at age 85. In 2017 Sylvia Fedoruk Public School opened in the Evergreen neighbourhood.