Dr. Marion Powell talks about WCH’s Dr. Marion Hilliard’s influence

An interview with Dr. Marion Powell talking about WCH’s Dr. Marion Hilliard’s influence on her career.

Duration: 2:01 minutes.

[Title card reads: Dr. Marion Powell talks about WCH's Dr. Marion Hilliard's influence] [An older woman wearing a pink blouse and a black blazer is seated in front of a gray curtain. She is speaking to an interviewer who is off camera.] I interned here in the late 40s and at that time I guess my mentor or somebody that meant a tremendous amount to me as a role model was Marion Hilliard. And she taught us how to fit diaphragms in the outpatient clinic which was in the old house on Grenville, and we were really given a different approach to the whole of women’s healthcare than we had ever had as undergraduates. I think that the women, the women of Women’s College Hospital were very much leaders in the field of women. They were concerned about women; they were concerned about when they would have their next baby. Marion Hilliard used to go up to the university and talk to the graduating class at Victoria University about what to expect when they got married. They were a pretty naïve group of young women back in the, or we were, back in the 30s and 40s and 50s. And Marion Hilliard had started sex education classes at the university in, she was doing that when I knew her in the late 40s. And she was very sympathetic with women who didn’t want any more children. Women’s College was more liberal in its approach to women’s fertility and women’s reproduction than any of the other hospitals. I can remember the, some of the stories, or I can remember some of the women that were admitted, single women who had come to some of the women doctors their identity was kept secret. Their marital status was never discussed, who were treated very sympathetically and there was more understanding I think of women by the women who were on the staff back in the 30s and 40s and 50s.