Dr. Bruce Chown awaiting presentation of an honourary Doctor of Laws degree at spring Convocation held in Physical Education gymnasium. Norman K. Cram, University Registrar, preparing to hood recipient.

Bio/Historical Note: Born at Winnipeg on 10 November 1893, Henry Bruce Chown graduated from McGill University with a BSc in 1914. After service in the Canadian Forces overseas in the First World War, where he won several decorations, he attended the University of Manitoba, serving as President of the Students’ Union (1921) and graduating from its Medical School in 1922. Chown founded the Winnipeg Rh Laboratory in 1944, serving as its director until 1972. His laboratory discovered the mechanism of Rh haemolytic disease, its management, and its ultimate prevention, perhaps the most outstanding medical discovery ever made in Manitoba. In 1945 Chown carried out the first exchange transfusion of blood in Winnipeg. He was Chairman of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital from 1949-1959, and co-founded the Rh Institute in 1969. Chown was a member of the Scientific Club of Winnipeg (1934-1961) and was President of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba (1944). In recognition of his community service, he received the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal (1977) and was awarded honourary degrees by the University of Manitoba (1963); the University of Saskatchewan in 1970; and the University of Winnipeg (1979). Chown was inducted into the Manitoba Order of the Buffalo Hunt in 1968 and was given a Centennial Medal of Honour by the Manitoba Historical Society in 1970. Chown died at Victoria, British Columbia on 3 July 1986.