Obituary of Sharon Lee Wood Dauphinee
A woman who confidently set precedents that liberated fashion mores for women in the 1970s and then for three decades beginning in the 1980s, became a world leader by developing better measures of patients’ quality of life after both surgical and rehabilitation treatments as indicators of the reintegration of patients into normal living activities. Yet in her youth, she was full of fun as a dancer or snare drummer, or as a cheer leader and basketball player, but also excelled as a talented seamstress and as an accomplished cook and generous hostess. For over 60 years she was Dale’s affectionate partner and later a ‘cool’ mother for two sons. Active in outdoor activities as a golfer, hill-climber, hiker and skier, she was ‘fit’ and known for her physical strength. Professionally, she was devoted to rehabilitation and improving patients’ quality of life through her research and by travelling abroad as an outstanding speaker. For most McGill PT students, she was a mentor and role model for 45 years who never talked about her successes. She let her many papers and presentations define her reputation as an international collaborator and professional leader.
After a seven year battle with dementia and motor apraxia, Dr. Sharon Wood Dauphinee passed away peacefully at Passamaquoddy Lodge in St. Andrews NB on March 31st with Dale, her soulmate and husband, at her side daily. A superb neurological physiotherapist and a gifted, natural teacher, she began graduate studies in her thirties and became an internationally accomplished clinical researcher and academic. She was a kind and welcoming person who was never rattled by any challenge at work or in life. She loved hosting friends and family at two table dinners at Thanksgiving and Christmas and was known to open her home for her students and colleagues whenever there was a celebratory occasion. One son said it well: ‘Mom was always so calm and organized about everything!’ And so she was.
Born in Halifax NS to Dorothy Rea (Landels) Wood and Donovan Arthur Wood on May 7, 1941, as a bank manager’s daughter, she spent her school years living across Canada including Portage La Prairie, Ottawa, Hamilton and eventually St. Andrews NB, where she graduated from Vincent Massey High School with honours, leading New Brunswick in home economics. After two years at Dalhousie and honours grades in Comparative Anatomy and Organic Chemistry, she transferred to McGill to pursue Physiotherapy. She graduated with a Diploma in PT in 1962. After interning in Hamilton and Halifax, she worked as Staff Therapist at the Victoria Public Hospital and Polio-Clinic in Fredericton until 1964, during which time she was the President of the NB Physiotherapy Association.
After a sojourn practicing in Florida, she returned to Canada and Dale, her college amour, in 1966, to be a senior therapist at the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) while Dale finished his post-graduate training next door at the Royal Victoria Hospital. Together again, they married on the 14th of January 1967 in St. Andrews NB. She called it her ‘centennial’ project. In 1969, McGill offered her a clinical teaching position and, in accepting, she agreed to finish her Bachelor’s degrees in Physiotherapy and Science and to complete her teaching certificate. Always a keen student, while teaching and having her children, she next completed her Master’s degree in Physiotherapy Education and began a PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics for which she studied the outcomes of team care for acute stroke. She obtained her PhD from McGill with first class honours. With her sons in college, her next three decades were to be one of the most productive periods of interdisciplinary clinical research by any physiotherapist of her generation in North America: 136 peer reviewed empirical publications and over 240 articles, technical reports and scientific presentations. With major research grants, McGill granted her tenure in 1984 and in 1990 she was promoted to full Professor in three disciplines: Physiotherapy, Medicine, and Epidemiology and Biostatistics. In addition, she was appointed to Task Forces on Whip-Lash Injury and Occupational Back Pain in Quebec, conducted numerous collaborative clinical research projects in Germany, Serbia and Switzerland, was a core member of the National Stroke Network in Canada from 1988 to 2014 and served as a member of the national Ernest Manning Innovations Awards Selection Committee in Calgary for 16 years.
By the time she retired, Sharon had been the Director of the School of Physical and Occupational Therapy (SPOT) at McGill (twice), the first Physiotherapist to be appointed to the Dean of Medicine’s Faculty Council, McGill’s first Associate Dean of Medicine (Rehabilitation) and had served as a Senior Scientist in the Divisions of Clinical Epidemiology and Geriatrics in the Department of Medicine at the Royal Victoria Hospital’s Research Institute and later the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC). At the SPOT, she co-established its clinical research tract and its PhD program in Physical and Occupational Therapy. She was renowned for her Graduate Course on Measurement in Rehabilitation and successfully supervised thirty-three MSc and PhD candidates and sat on the Committees of over 25 others in Canada and abroad. Sharon and her students were successful in receiving over 8 million dollars of competitive operating grants from Canadian, American and Quebec Research Institutes. In 1996 she received the Enid Graham Lecture Award and later a Life Membership of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association. She was the one of two Physiotherapists to be elected as Charter Members of the new Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2006. She sat on the Boards of the McGill University Health Centre, the Foundation for the Advancement of International Medical Education and Research (FAIMER) in Philadelphia, the Passamaquoddy Lodge in St. Andrews NB, Projet Strategique Innovant in Montreal and the Health Assessment Laboratory in Boston. She was a Board member and President of the Health Outcomes Trust in Boston and a founding Board Member and later President of the International Society for the Quality of Life Research (ISOQOL). ISOQOL made her as a Life Member in 2018. She travelled widely lecturing eighty times in fifteen countries on all continents and held thirty-three international Visiting Professorships. She and Dale co-wrote a frequently cited article on the importance of evidence in health sciences education and they collaborated on educational and assessment projects in Canada, the USA, the West Indies, Switzerland, Australia, Germany, Serbia, Hong Kong (HQ of the Ideal Assessment Collaborative for the Near East and Asia) and Kazakhstan. After McGill made her Professor Emerita in 2010, she retired to St. Andrews in 2012.
Survived by Dale, her life partner; sons Christopher Brent Dauphinee (Chantal Vincent) of Bocabec Cove NB and Trevor Wood Dauphinee (Kelly Gray) of Toronto; brother William Donald Wood (Jean) of Truro Heights NS; grandchildren Marshall Logan (Lo), Samantha (Sam); Alexandra (Lexie); nephews Michael Shoup (Jennifer) and Derek Wood (Michele), nieces Margaret (Peggy) Bias, Laura Shoup and Brianne Cookson (Greg) and many cousins and their families. Predeceased by brother Merrill Liske Wood; sister-in-law Dr. Diana Dauphinee Shoup; niece Deborah Shoup; her in-laws Helen and Wilfred Dauphinee and her parents, Dorothy and Donovan Wood. Due to current social and travel stresses, a celebration of her life will be held at a later date. She will be laid to rest in Lunenburg, her favourite place to visit in NS, and where the Dauphinees settled in 1753.
The family wishes to thank Dr. Brian Peer of the St. Andrews Wellness Centre, Dr. Elizabeth MacDonald and the staff at St. Joseph’s Memory Clinic (Saint John), and latterly, the nursing staff and the activities team at Passamaquoddy Lodge for their kindnesses and care. In her memory, friends can consider gifts to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, or to McGill in support of the Sharon Wood Dauphinee Lectureship in High-Quality Care.
On line condolences to the family or donations can be made at www.humphreysfh.com
Arrangements have been entrusted to the care and direction of Humphrey’s Funeral Home, 20 Marks Street, St. Stephen, NB E3L 2B2 (506-466-3110).
