DR. SHARON LEE WOOD DAUPHINEE

1941 - 2025

1941 - 2025 After a seven-year struggle with dementia and motor apraxia, Dr. Sharon Wood Dauphinee passed away peacefully, at Passamaquoddy Lodge in St. Andrews on March 31st, with her husband of 58 years, Dale, at her bedside. She was a kind and welcoming person who was never rattled by any challenge or opportunity in her work or in life. Her sons adored her. One son said: "Mom was always so cool about everything!" And she was. She was an active parent who spent all of her vacation and weekend time in physical and sporting activities with her "three boys": hiking and hill-climbing, skiing (downhill and cross-country), swimming, skating, camping, scouting and golfing. She took her sons on some of her "lecturing" trips, nationally and overseas. An awesome seamstress, she hand-made her own wedding dress and her five bridesmaid's gowns, and later on her sons' Halloween costumes! Socially she loved to host 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. A talented cook, all recipes were willingly shared. Professionally, she was a superb neurological physiotherapist and a gifted teacher which led her to pursue advanced studies at McGill in the 1970s. Later, in the 1980s working with her many graduate students, she established herself as an expert on the design of rehabilitation research studies, served as a role model for many hundreds of McGill physiotherapy students and became an internationally recognized lecturer on stroke care who pioneered and promoted how to use of the quality of life as an indicator of successful outcomes for medical, surgical and rehabilitation treatments. Born in Halifax, NS, to Dorothy Rea (Landels) and Donovan Arthur Wood on May 7, 1941, she spent her childhood living across Canada as a Bank Manager's daughter, 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. She attended Dalhousie University from 1958-1960, where she met her husband to be and after achieving honours grades in Comparative Anatomy and Organic Chemistry, she transferred to McGill to study Physiotherapy. Graduating with a Diploma in PT in 1962, and 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 Association of Physiotherapy. Following a two-year sojourn working in the US, she quietly returned to Canada in 1966 as a senior therapist at the Montreal Neurological Institute and joined Dale, her college boyfriend, while he finished his post-graduate training across the street at the Royal Victoria Hospital. They were married seven months later in St. Andrews, NB, which she called her "centennial" project. In 1969, McGill offered her clinical teaching position, and she used the opportunity to finish her Bachelor's degrees in both Science and Physiotherapy and a teaching certificate. After having her children, she finished her MSc degree in Physiotherapy Education and a PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics with first class honours in which she studied outcomes of team care for victims of an acute stroke. With her sons in college and working, the next three decades of her life were an amazing period of clinical research by a clinical physiotherapist: 136 peer-reviewed empirical publications and over 240 articles, technical reports and scientific presentations. McGill granted her tenure in 1984 and in 1990 she was promoted to full Professor in three departments: Physiotherapy, Medicine and Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Additionally, her community contributions included serving on two Task Forces on Whip-Lash Injury and Occupational Back Pain in Quebec, advising numerous collaborative research projects in Canada, the US and Europe, being a member of the Canadian Stroke Research Network from 1988 to 2014, and a member of the Canadian Ernest Manning Innovations Awards Selection Committee in Calgary for 16 years. During her 45 years at McGill, Sharon held leadership posts as the Director of the School of Physical and Occupational Therapy at McGill University, was McGill's first Associate Dean of Medicine (Rehabilitation) and served as a Senior Scientist in the Divisions of Clinical Epidemiology and Geriatrics in the Department of Medicine at the Royal Victoria Hospital Research Institute and later the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC). In the 1980s, she established the School of Physical and Occupational Therapy's clinical epidemiological research tract within its PhD program and was renowned for her Graduate Course on Measurement in Rehabilitation. She successfully supervised thirty-three MSc and PhD candidates and sat on the oversight Committees of 25 others in Canada and Europe. Sharon and her students were successful in receiving over eight million dollars of competitive operating grants from Canadian, American and Quebec Research Institutes. In consequence, in 1996, she received the Enid Graham Lecture Award and Life Membership of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association, and she was one of two Physiotherapists to be elected as Charter Fellows of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2006. In 2015, she was awarded McGill's Global Alumni Award of Merit for Distinguished Service in Rehabilitation. She served on the Boards of the McGill University Health Centre, the Foundation for the Advancement of International Medical Education and Research (FAIMER) in Philadelphia, Passamaquoddy Seniors Lodge in St. Andrews, NB, Projet Strategique Innovant (in Montreal), the Health Assessment Laboratory in Boston, and was a Board member and President of the Health Outcomes Trust in Boston. She was a founding member, Board Member and President of the International Society for the Quality of Life Research, which honoured her as a Life Member in 2018. Between teaching semesters, she travelled widely, lecturing 80 times in 15 countries on five continents, and held 33 international Visiting Professorships. She and Dale wrote on the importance of evidence in health sciences education policymaking and collaborated on projects in Canada, the US, the UK, the West Indies, Switzerland, Germany, Serbia, Australia, Kazakhstan and in Hong Kong (the Ideal Assessment Collaborative). In 2012, she and Dale retired to St. Andrews, supporting local initiatives, playing golf, hosting family and grandchildren, visiting friends in Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Europe until illness began to limit her cognitive and motor skills and COVID-19 sadly isolated her from all but immediate family and local friends. Survived by her life partner of 66 years, Dale; sons, Christopher Brent Dauphinee (Chantal Vincent) of Bocabec Cove, NB, and Trevor Wood Dauphinee (Kelly Grey) of Toronto; brother, William Donald Wood (Jean) of Truro Heights, NS; grandchildren, Marshall Logan (Lo), Samantha (Sam); Alexandra (Lexie); nephews, Michael Shoup and Derek Wood; nieces, Margaret (Peggy) Bias, Laura Shoup and Brianne Cookson; her close friend, Marilyn Short; and numerous cousins and their families. Predeceased by a brother, Merrill Liske Wood; sister-in-law, Dr. Diana Dauphinee Shoup; niece, Deborah Shoup; an infant granddaughter; in-laws, Helen and Wilfred Dauphinee; and her parents, Dorothy and Donovan Wood. 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, and latterly, the nursing staff and the activities team at Passamaquoddy Lodge for their kindnesses and care. In her memory, friends of Sharon can consider gifts to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, or to McGill to the Sharon Wood Dauphinee Lectureship in High-Quality Care. 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 Nova Scotia where the Dauphinee family settled in 1753. Online 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).