Amy Montour is on a mission to encourage aboriginal students to get an education and
never give up on themselves.

On Friday, May 20 Montour will graduate from McMaster's Michael G. DeGroote
School of Medicine with 179 fellow new physicians. The ceremony will see the
graduation of 352 students from Faculty of Health Sciences programs including
midwifery and Bachelor of Health Sciences.

“I have almost a burden to encourage young mothers and young people to just
keep going,” she said. “And if you fall down, and you make mistakes, you pick yourself
up, dust yourself off and get going. You don't give up.”

A member of the Six Nations community, Montour is acutely aware of the high
dropout rate among aboriginal students. A high school dropout herself, she married
and divorced twice while still young. At 25, she found herself with three children, no
education and no money to look after them.

She decided that she had had enough. The first thing she did was get her high
school equivalency, then spent a year at Six Nations Polytechnic in a course called pre-
health sciences, obtaining the necessary requirements for university.

She went on to both bachelor and master's degrees in nursing at McMaster, then
entered the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine after encouragement from nursing
professor Dr. Cottie Ofosu, who was aware of the shortage of aboriginal doctors. Now
36, Montour is the second-oldest student in her graduating class.

Montour will receive her medical degree during convocation ceremonies at
Hamilton Place.

Mountour says that, throughout medical school, her parents were her rock,
financially and emotionally. “I feel when I walk across that stage that it is really for them.
It's like saying 'I'm sorry and here I have made it up to you.'”

In July Montour begins the two-year family medicine residency program at
McMaster, possibly spending an additional year in emergency medicine. Her plans are to
eventually work as a family doctor on the Six Nations Reserve, specializing in care of the
elderly. She is currently a member of the Aboriginal Hospice Palliative Care Services
Committee for the Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network.

Because McMaster welcomes mature students, Montour said her age wasn't a
barrier to making good friends with younger students. “It wasn't really a problem except
that they were closer to their science backgrounds than I was,” she said. “I learned a lot,
even about being a mother and how to interact with a younger generation. I met a lot of
people with really good hearts who only want to be good doctors.”

Also at the Friday convocation, Jack Gauldie, Distinguished University Professor at
McMaster University and professor emeritus of the Department of Pathology and
Molecular Medicine, will receive an honorary Doctor of Science degree.

Raised in Hamilton, Gauldie is recognized as a pioneer in gene therapeutics and an
international expert in the molecular regulation of inflammation and immunity. He is
co-founder of McMaster's Centre for Gene Therapeutics, founding director of the
Institute for Molecular Medicine and Health and inaugural holder of the John
Bienenstock Chair in Molecular Medicine.