Head and shoulders image of Dr. W. Stewart Lindsay, first Dean of Medicine, 1927-1952.

Bio/Historical Note: Dr. Walker Stewart Lindsay came to the University of Saskatchewan in 1919. For the next three decades he would play a pivotal role in the education of the province’s future doctors. Born in Halifax in 1885, he received his medical training at the University of Edinburgh. He was invited by Walter C. Murray, University of Saskatchewan President, whom he had known as a child, to create the small Department of Bacteriology under the aegis of the College of Arts and Science. Dr. Lindsay’s laboratory, in one of the greenhouses, was the first medical teaching facility in what would become in the School of Medical Sciences in 1926. Between 1926 and 1956, students at the U of S were able to take two years of basic pre-medical classes prior to enrolment at a major medical school in Canada for the final two years of instruction. The school became a college in 1952. Dr. Lindsay served as dean of Medicine from 1926 until 1951, retiring in 1952. From 1956-1960 he was the assistant Medical Director at University Hospital. In 1955 he received an honourary Doctor of Laws degree from the U of S at a ceremony marking the opening of University Hospital. In 1971 the U of S established a named chair in the College of Education known as the W.S. Lindsay Professorship. In 1976 he became a member of the Canadian Association of Pathologists. Dr. Lindsay died in 1979. The W.S. Lindsay Gold Medal in Nursing is named in his honour and is given annually to the student with the highest cumulative grade-point average in the entire nursing program that year. Lindsay Drive and Place in Greystone Heights are named in his honour.