After a year of waiting, Dr. Nadine Caron accepted the Order of British Columbia, the highest form of recognition the Province gives out.
Caron was named a recipient in 2022, but received the award today (November 16) with the 2023 recipients.
Caron graduated from Simon Fraser University (SFU) in 1993 with a bachelor of science in kinesiology where she was awarded SFU’s most prestigious undergraduate award, the Gordon M. Shurm Gold Medal, bestowed on the student whose high scholastic standing and extracurricular activities demonstrate outstanding qualities of character and unselfish devotion to the university.
She then pursued her medical degree and graduated top of her class at the University of British Columbia (UBC), becoming the first Indigenous woman to graduate from UBC’s medical school.
Next up was her master’s degree, from Harvard.
Originally from Kamloops, Dr. Caron first came to Prince George in 2005, after a surgical residency and fellowship at the University of California, where she became Canada’s first-ever female Indigenous general surgeon.
Today, Dr. Caron teaches at UBC’s Northern Medical Program, teaches and co-directs at UBC’s Centre for Excellence in Indigenous Health (which she co-founded), holds the First Nations Health Authority chair in cancer and wellness at UBC, and holds a faculty positions at John Hopkins University and the Center for American Indian Health.
You can read her whole bio here.
You can find the other Order of British Columbia recipients here.
–Files by Will Peters, My Prince George Now