Overview:
Yvette Bonny, a Haitian Canadian pediatrician, counts among her honors being the first to perform a bone marrow transplant.
Born in 1938 in Haiti, Yvette Bonny moved to Canada in 1962 and established herself as a doctor of pediatrics. Bonny rose through her profession to become one the first Black women doctors to practice in Quebec, professor of medicine at the Université de Montréal and, in April 1980, the first to perform a bone marrow transplant on a child.
As head of the pediatric bone marrow transplantation unit at Montreal’s Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont until 1998, Bonny performed all the transplants herself. The operations proved to be a significant development in the treatment of children’s ailments, such as leukemia and sickle cell anemia.
Bonny has received many awards and distinctions including the Order of Canada and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.
The child who received the first bone marrow patient, Sonia Sasseville, later became a nurse at the same hospital.
Bonny was married to the geographer and Arctic explorer Pierre Gadbois, who died in 2010, and with whom she had a daughter, Nathalie. Bonny also supported young people from different cultural communities living in Montreal, including young Haitian immigrants, and children suffering from cancer and their families.
Source: Wikipedia/Canadian Blood Services