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Drutz family
- Accession Number
- 2023-2-10
- Source
- Archival Accessions
- Accession Number
- 2023-2-10
- Material Format
- textual record (electronic)
- Physical Description
- 2 textual records (docx)
- Date
- 2022-2023
- Scope and Content
- Accession consists of material documenting two members of the Drutz family: Dr. Meyer George Drutz (1911–1984) and Dr. Harold Paul Drutz (1944–). Included is a "bio profile" for Harold and a document titled "Drutz family in medicine" that primarily relates to the life of Meyer.
- Administrative History
- Meyer George Drutz was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1911 to Barnett and Hannah Drutz. He was the third of five children. His parents had immigrated from eastern Europe (what is now Belarus) in 1908. Barnett's grandson, Harold, reports that Barnett was a tailor who earned eight dollars a week. They lived on Denison Avenue.
- Growing up in Toronto's Jewish community, Meyer was known as Mickey. An outstanding student, Meyer entered Jarvis Collegiate at the age of eleven. He continued to excel in school, and his marks were so high that he was able to meet the entrance criteria for University of Toronto's medical school at the time when there was a strict quota on the number of Jews and women in any given year.
- Meyer graduated from medical school in 1936 and interned at the original Mount Sinai Hospital at 100 Yorkville Avenue, which was one of the few hospitals where Jews were allowed to intern.
- In 1935, Meyer met Belle Ostry (1913–2001). Belle was born in Nikopol, Ukraine, which was on the Dnieper River, north of Odessa. In 1923, Belle's family immigrated to Canada, initially settling in Wadena, Saskatchewan, where Belle's father ran a general store.
- Belle went to business school in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In the early 1930s, she and a friend bought a car and drove to Toronto. After a period of courtship that their son Harold would describe as "very austere," Meyer and Belle married in Toronto in June 1936.
- With Canada, and the world, still in the grip of the Great Depression, Meyer accepted a job to go to Malartic, Quebec, where he became a doctor for the Malartic Goldfield Mines. Because the locals were not familiar with the name Meyer, he went by his middle name George, which continued for the rest of his life.
- When the Second World War broke out in 1939, the Quebec government refused to conscript Meyer on the grounds that he was the only doctor in three hundred square miles. Meyer's son, Harold, writes that in the winter his father used a dog sled to get to homes and deliver babies. Harold recalls the stories told to him by his mother of how George was trapped in an underground mine for three days when he went underground to help miners trapped after a cave-in.
- Belle and Meyer had their first child, a daughter, at Toronto Western Hospital in 1942. The baby was born in Toronto, because Belle had problems with hypertension, and Meyer sent her to Toronto for care. Their second child, Harold, was born in August 1944.
- In 1948, the family moved to Kitchener, Ontario, where Meyer practiced for less than a year.
- The family moved back to Toronto in 1949, where George set up a practice in the Keele Street/Rogers Road area. He was a founding member of the Northwestern General Hospital and was on the founding family practice staff of the New Mount Sinai Hospital (1956) and Baycrest Geriatric Hospital.
- Harold Drutz received his bachelor of arts from the University of Western Ontario in 1965 and his doctor of medicine from the University of Toronto in 1969. Upon graduating, he did his residency in urology, general surgery, and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Toronto from 1970–1974.
- He became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1974 in obstetrics and gynecology. The same year, he became a fellow in the bladder function unit at the Toronto General Hospital. In 1975, he was awarded a McLaughlin Fellowship and did pioneer training in female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery in Europe, Ethiopia, and the United States of America.
- In 1998, he became a full professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. From 1987–2015, he was the professor and head of the Division of Urogynecology (AKA Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery [FPMRS]) at the University of Toronto. From 1976–2015, he was the head of urogynecology at Mount Sinai Hospital. From 1986–2022, he was the head of urogynecology at Baycrest Geriatric Hospital. Baycrest Hospital was the first geriatric hospital in Canada to have a program in female pelvic medicine.
- From 1988–1991, he served on the American Urogynecological Association (AUGS) board of directors. From 1994–1996, he was president of the International Urogynecological Association (IUGA), the only Canadian to have been president of the society. In 1996, he received the degree of professor honoris causa from the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia. From 2000–2002, he served as the first president of the Canadian Society of Urogynecology and Reconstructive Surgery (CSURPS). From 2017–2019, he served as founding president of the Canadian Society for Pelvic Medicine (CSPM). The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Toronto has given Professor Drutz the title of "the founding father of urogynecology in Canada."
- Harold is the recipient of fifty-nine externally-funded peer reviewed grants. He is the author of 139 peer-reviewed papers, eighteen chapters in textbooks, and is the senior of author of two textbooks. He has trained forty-four fellows who practice all over the world.
- Use Conditions
- Copyright is held by the Ontario Jewish Archives. Please contact the Archives to obtain permission prior to use.
- Subjects
- Discrimination in higher education
- Families
- Physicians
- Name Access
- Drutz, Harold, 1944-
- Drutz, Meyer George , 1911-1984
- Places
- Toronto (Ont.)
- Source
- Archival Accessions