Geoff Dougherty
Québec & Worcester 1973
Born in Montreal in 1953, Geoff Dougherty studied in the US and at McGill University before going to Oxford to read for a second undergraduate degree in physiology. He returned to medical school at McGill and specialised in paediatrics while also completing a graduate degree in epidemiology. Dougherty was the founding director of the first Division of General Paediatrics at Montreal Children’s Hospital at the McGill University Health Centre. He continues with clinical work and academic research and is also supervising physician at the Heart & Hands Paediatric Clinic, offering medical care for children in underserved communities. Alongside his medical career, Dougherty serves as a class leader for the Rhodes class of 1973, and recently organised its 50th anniversary reunion. In 2025, he will join the second cohort of Oxford Next Horizons, a six-month experience for those in mid to late career, offering the chance to think, explore and reinvent. This narrative is excerpted from an interview with the Rhodes Trust on 27 June 2024.
‘Values centred on education and community service’
I grew up largely in Montreal. I was one of five children, and my mother was very much a believer in public education, so none of us went to private schools of any kind. My mother had initially been a scientist, and then went on to a career in public service, first in education and then in politics. At one point, she was a member of the Québec provincial legislature. She also held many volunteer positions. Her father was a Quaker and a doctor, and I think that gave her values centred on education and community service. My father was also a very liberal, open-minded tolerant person. He was a businessman and a family man, and very present in our lives. Our family was very involved in outdoor activities. So, we grew up skiing, camping and canoeing. That was the origin of my interest in cross-country skiing, which I still do now.
I began my undergraduate education at a liberal arts college in Vermont. At that time, I wasn’t oriented towards medicine or science. My interest was in the social sciences, and especially anthropology. As part of my studies, I spent some time in Africa doing what in social anthropology is called participant observation, so observing local habits and customs. Back in North America, my father told me that it was too expensive for me to continue at my college in the US. So, I returned home and went to McGill to continue studying anthropology.
On applying for the Rhodes Scholarship
I really had no intention of applying for the Rhodes Scholarship, but a number of my friends who I had known in secondary school, and who were a year or two older than me, were applying, and they encouraged me to apply as well. So, it was a bit serendipitous, and actually, it was a bit embarrassing when I was chosen and they weren’t.
I still remember getting the telephone call at my parents’ house when the chairman of the committee offered me the Scholarship. I remember standing there, and I remember the colour and location of the telephone. It was a very important event for me, and an anchor point in my life, really. By that time, I had begun to be interested in biology and science. I had a family tradition of medicine – my grandfather and an uncle had been doctors – so I started taking the core courses at McGill that were required for applying to medical school. That was why I chose to take the first BM degree at Oxford, in physiology and medicine.
‘The Oxford course was hard’
I sailed over to England on the SS France with the other Canadian and the American Rhodes Scholars. Living in Oxford didn’t actually feel that strange to me. English Canada and England were not so very different, and I’d been in university for three years already at that point. I don’t really remember it being a very difficult transition. Back then, there were not so many activities focused around Rhodes House, although I do remember the Coming Up and Going Down Dinners, which were spectacular. So, apart from a few good friends among the Rhodes Scholars, my contact was mainly with my medical class and with the undergraduates at Worcester.
The Oxford course was hard. It was a lot of study, and it was a bit different from what a lot of Rhodes Scholars were doing, which was taking an interval in their education to study something different. My degree was relatively challenging, and it took up a lot of time, so I didn’t have that much time for other things, except for some sports. I played lacrosse, which I’d never played before, and that was both wonderful exercise and perfect training for the winter season of ice hockey. At the time, there was no ice rink in Oxford, so we had to travel to surrounding towns, and we could usually only use the rinks late at night. We’d often arrive back at three in the morning, and in those days, all the colleges were closed by that time. At Worcester College, there was a well-known route to climb over the wall. So, you’d take your hockey equipment and hockey bag and throw it over the wall, and then you’d climb in!
‘A lot of good energy’
I have to say that going back to McGill was a much harder transition for me than going to Oxford. It was a big let-down to go back to a normal course and not have the privilege of being a Rhodes Scholar. But I got through it, and three years later, I had my medical degree. It was during my rotating internship across different medical areas that I began to realise paediatrics really resonated with me. I enjoy the positive nature of working with children. There is a lot of good energy. When people learn that I’m a paediatrician, a lot of them – both medical and non-medical – will say, ‘You must find that so sad,’ but I don’t find it that way at all. It’s a privilege, and very satisfying, to practise what I know, to share what I can recommend and to help people get access to the resources they need.
About a third of the way through my career, I was working as the associate chair of paediatrics, and the chair at that time asked me to investigate the feasibility and pathway for creating a division of paediatrics. The paediatric specialists were working in different groups, with different missions. I found that by talking to the different groups and individuals, I was able to draw them together into a voluntary association. I became the first head of the General Division of Paediatrics, and I spent a lot of time and energy and focus on making sure that people had a collective identity and felt that they enjoyed the benefits of working together, as opposed to in competition or in isolation. Part of that was about mentoring new arrivals, and so, the groups came together and stayed together. It worked so well, and it’s something I’m very proud of.
For the last ten years of my career, my clinical practice has been in the field of what’s called social paediatrics. That began in child protection, and it’s now much more broadly in fields related to vulnerable populations. So, for example, a colleague and I provide medical care to children in foster care. I’ve also worked with a wonderful programme in Montreal for women who are in drug rehabilitation and their children. Recently, a group of us started offering clinics in schools in disadvantaged and underserved communities. Often, the children attending have never received any medical attention of any kind, largely due to cultural, social, and to some extent pragmatic barriers to care. One of the social workers described what we offer as ‘Cadillac care,’ which I was very glad to hear.
I’m coming to the end of my clinical career now. I’ve continued to work in academic research as well, in epidemiology, and am still publishing in that field. I’ve just been accepted onto Oxford Next Horizons, and I’m hoping to use the programme to transition to more of an advocacy type role, with an interest in not-for-profit organisations serving disadvantaged children and youth. I see so much good work done by voluntary organisations, NGOs and not-for-profits, but there is very little strategic oversight. I’d like to see whether I can participate and add some synergy to that effort.
‘So much of what we had was a gift from others’
At the 50th anniversary reunion of my Rhodes class, I could see how people had come out of the Rhodes Scholarship with education, skills and perspectives which served them well in their lives and helped them to serve others. So much of what we had was a gift from others, and I think Rhodes Scholars need to bear that in mind and consider giving at least some of that back to their community. Human beings don’t exist without community, and communities of quality, which are enriched by contributions and effort, are the best communities. As to the future of the Rhodes Scholarship, I hope its core values are maintained: choosing young people of exceptional promise and of public-spirited values, allowing them to further their education and life experience in Oxford, with all its richness and quality, and giving them the positive confidence to carry on and make a contribution.