Joan (Belcher) Budd

Joan Budd (Belcher) was born and grew up in Western Manitoba. After high school she attended Winnipeg Normal School and taught public school. She then joined the R.C.A.F. Women’s Division, and served first in Yorkton as an M.T. driver and then at the West Coast in Filter Operations.

After the war in 1946, she was accepted at OVC. Following graduation in 1950, Dr. Belcher did an MSc in Virology in Wisconsin and then came back to Guelph to do service work and research in mink. Joan married Dr. John Budd, a Marine Biologist, in 1957 and moved to Manitoulin Island. After his death in 1961, Dr. Joan Budd came back to Guelph to work with mink. She later switched to fish pathology in the Wildlife Diseases Department.

Joan is the Class Rep. and sercretary/treasurer for OVC ’50. She celebrated her 95th birthday this month (Nov. 2006)

ALUMNI- IN-ACTION ORAL HISTORY
Dr. Joan (Belcher) Budd
Ontario Veterinary College, 1950
Interviewed by Florence Partridge
March 20, 1990
P This interview with Dr. Joan Budd is being recorded by Florence Partridge on March 20, 1990, for the University of Guelph Alumni Association, Alumni-in-Action, Oral History Committee.
Joan, I think you registered at the OVC in 1946. Will you tell us, please, something about your life before you came to the OVC? Where you were born? Where you grew up? Where you went to school? Things like that.
B Well, I was born in Marydale, Manitoba on my father’s homestead. I went to school in Marydale, which at that time was fairly advanced because it was the consolidated school. We went to school in vans - drawn by horses, of course. Wheels in summer and sleighs in winter. Then the school was made into a one-room school, and I had got to the stage where I should have gone to high school, but I spent one more year at this school with the help of a teacher who wasn’t trained in high school, to get my first year in high school. And then I went to the closest town, which was 17 miles away, to work for my board and go to high school.
P So you boarded in town while you went to high school and worked in the home. When you graduated from high school, what was the next route?
B I went to Winnipeg Normal School and got my Teacher’s Certificate to teach in public school. I taught in rural schools for something like 12 years, I think.
P And did you find that a satisfactory profession?
B Well, it was interesting from the standpoint of – it was an interesting job, certainly, or profession – but the pay wasn’t very good because it was the time of the depression; but one was happy to have a job at that time, anyway. Then, when the war came along, I joined up in the R.C.A.F. Women’s Division. They wouldn’t take me at first because I didn’t have a great deal of training in things that they wanted for Officers, but they managed to take me in the Motor Transport Division because I could drive, and from there I went into Administration. And they wiped that out, so then I went out to the West Coast in Filter Operations.
P And, where did you do your Air Force training?
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B In Toronto, at Jarvis. Where the old Jarvis Collegiate there is and then, before I got into Administration, I went back for another course. Both of those were in Toronto.
P So, then, most of your service time with the Air Force was on the West Coast?
B No, I was at Yorkton as an M.T. driver and then I went to Paulson, which is near – both of those are near my home in Manitoba – and then I was shipped out to the West Coast to Pat Bay, Victoria, and Prince Rupert, and back down to Vancouver.
P Now, you said Filter Operations, what exactly is that?
B That was where the phones were. People with phones were round a table, and what you did – you had messages from people who were up the coast with radio telephone and they would tell you when a plane, or whatever, was overhead, or they had something on the radar – and you would plot it on the table. And the people who were doing the filtering sat up above and looked down at this table, and would decide what this was in terms of whether it was likely to be enemy or something like that. And then they phoned over to Vancouver – this was in Victoria – phoned over to Vancouver and, if it was necessary, they put up the planes.
P Well, that would be very interesting and very demanding work. You’d have to be – it would be very exacting.
B Oh yes. You had to be careful, certainly – and we worked shifts, of course.
P Did you live in barracks?
B Yes. Actually they were partly an old house in Victoria, and partly barracks that they had put up for us.
P I see. Well, then, at the end of the war, what was your next move?
B My next move was to apply to get in to OVC.
P And why did you decide you wanted to come to OVC?
B I had decided I’d like to be a veterinarian when I left high school but I wrote and I got a very discouraging answer - and also I had no money! So, I went into the sort of usual thing that girls went into – either nursing or teaching.
P But, at that time, not many girls were going into OVC. Had there been other girls before your year?
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B Oh yes, yes there had. I think we were something like the 14th, 15th and 16th – there were three of us in our year. Something like that, in the ‘teens anyway, to graduate.
P So, then you went in with a group of people who had been in the Service.
B That’s right. We were nearly all ex-service. The three girls were ex-service as well – all from R.C.A.F.W.D. – Women’s Division.
P Did you have any difficulty being admitted at this stage?
B I had to write a very convincing letter and I found out afterwards that the other two girls had used their local politicians to get them in. But I was quite proud of myself, I got in on my own.
P I see. And what were your expectations of this course. What did you see as the future, after you had completed your OVC course?
B I suppose I thought that I would go into, probably, Large Animal Medicine, or something like that – but really, at the back of my mind all the time, I think I had been thinking about I would like to work with mink. And this was because my brother had a mink ranch and I knew something about mink.
P Oh, I see. I was going to ask - why did you zero in on mink? Now, what then were your first impressions when you came to the campus? Had you been in Guelph before?
B No. I expect I took a taxi up to register. And I got into a line-up which I thought was the right line-up. It turned out it was the line-up for OAC – three of us from our year turned out were in this line chatting away, and we didn’t realize until we got almost up to registration that we were in the wrong line! The rest were all down at OVC. So that was my first impression. Other than that, I don’t remember anything much except that, you know, you sort of are a bit strange – and I lived in MAC in the Annex at MAC Hall.
P Did the other two girls live there too?
B Yes, they did. And the Aggie girls lived in the same part as we did.
P Coming from the Prairies, what did you think of Ontario?
B Well, I had been in Ontario before, and I think the thing that struck me most was the beautiful trees. These lovely Elm trees and the cedar fences, and that sort of thing.
P This would be in September, a little before the leaves had turned, I guess.
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B Yes. We walked across campus, scuffing leaves, I remember, from the Maple trees here.
P So, having got registered and established in your living quarters, presumably then, classes started. Can you remember any of your Professors who made a particular impression on you?
B Not particularly at the beginning. I suppose Dr. Jones and Dr. Schroeder were two that seemed to – I think they made an impression on the whole class. They were returned people too, of course. And then, Dr. Macintosh was our Class President – Honorary President - so he always had a soft spot for us too. Dr. Vicky Brown, of course, we always called Tricky Vicky. And I don’t remember, you know, anything in particular. It was sort of a continuation of the thing that we had been through, with masses of people around all the time, and we had a fair amount in common – all of the returned people. Not all of our class were Veterans, but certainly the majority were. There were 127 of us altogether, and there might be five or six, I suppose, who weren’t Veterans.
P Had there been another class of Veterans admitted at the Christmas before?
B Yes. 1949 – that were admitted part at Christmas and then part in the beginning of the year – early September, I guess. Theirs was a sort of a fractured year because of that but ours all came in at the same time.
P What were the facilities – what was the lab equipment like? What were classrooms like?
B Well, they were crowded, of course, and they’d had to enlarge most of the classrooms because of these big classes – well, ’49 was ahead of us, of course. But, well, not having had experience with anything else, I think we accepted it pretty well. And certainly the faculty really bent over backwards to accommodate these big classes and get us through.
P In your first year, would you have any surgery? What kind of lab work did you do?
B I think first year, the only lab work, probably, we had was Chemistry – and that would be across the road and Zoology at OAC. They had the lab in Zoology. And then we had Anatomy, of course, which was a lab with horses, at that time.
P Did you deal with live horses?
B Oh, No. They were formalized carcasses. There were several of us on each horse, so the place was pretty crowded but, I think it was - I’m not sure - but I think it was upstairs in what later became the Pathology Lab.
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P Outside of classes, did the students – can you remember any pranks that were perpetrated – or were you a too serious group to get involved in anything like that?
B I think we were fairly serious. I can remember that the - 1948 I guess it was - when we were not quite as serious as we were, undertook to have us wear these caps and ties, and so on, and I think they were going to do other things but our class dug our heels in, and that was that.
P So that was your initiation? How were you as female students accepted by your fellow students?
B I think they made no difference at all, as far as I’m concerned. There wasn’t any hard feeling at all, I’m sure.
P And no patronizing or…
B No, no.
P Well, perhaps that was in part due to the fact that they were mostly returned people and had been accustomed to working with women in the Services?
B Oh yes, partly that was true. And they were all a little older too, I think – or most of them were a little older.
P What about the faculty? Did they accept you also?
B They seemed to, yes. In the classrooms we were just in alphabetical order and so that meant we were scattered throughout the class. I think everybody accepted us as a team.
P What about extra-mural activities? Any social events that you remember – any parties?
B Well, we used to go to the dances that we put on and enjoyed those. Also, all of us, I think, were on the Executive at one time or another, so we helped with the planning and that sort of thing.
P Where were the dances held?
B The first one I remember was held in what was our classroom, which was the – really had been a hallway – you know, a big hall for congregating classes before that. And the one thing I remember about that was, when they were putting things back together, a skeleton on a horse which was on the platform at the end of the
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room got somehow pushed through Andrew Smith’s portrait - and we were not very popular for that and the class had to pay for the reparation there.
P Well, Andrew Smith was a horse man, wasn’t he? He didn’t want the contact quite as close that! Did you have much to do with the City of Guelph?
B Very, very little. Except the pubs, probably.
P Your living quarters were on campus, your classes were on campus…
B We ate on campus, our social life was on campus.
P But you did occasionally attend the pubs!
B That’s right. And, oh well, we might have gone to a movie occasionally, I guess, but I don’t remember very much of that either.
P And did you have summer employment in between – the years?
B Oh yes. The first summer I went to Winnipeg and worked with a veterinarian. In fact, I worked with a female veterinarian, Ann Laidlaw, who is now Ann Isa. She had graduated in OVC’45, I think.
P And did she have a Large Animal Practice?
B No, small animals. She worked with another veterinarian who owned the practice but she was the one that I worked with mostly. I enjoyed the experience very much. I lived with a friend of mine from home, and we did a little bit of roaming around Winnipeg, and so on. So, it was a very good summer. And, I think I distinguished myself by being the only student that this veterinarian, the owner of the practice, had ever had who gave a bonus to at the end of the summer.
P Well, that was certainly a triumph.
B I guess so, in a way. It was probably twenty bucks!
P At least it was an acknowledgement! Then, in other summers?
B I worked at the Lab at OVC with Dr. Legroco. In the second summer, I think that was. There were quite a number of us working around at that time, so we got together in the summertime.
P What kind of work were you doing? Research?
B No. Well, I suppose - mostly it was something to do with mastitis and - I can’t really remember – milk testing and things like that. It was very routine, anyway.
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P And did you do that for the next two or three summers?
B No. That was the first summer & second summer. The third summer I worked with Edith Williams in Toronto in her practice.
P That was a Small Animal Practice?
B A Small Animal Practice, yes. We had to go out in a practice and the fellows went into the government labs for meat inspection, but the girls weren’t allowed to go in meat inspections.
P Can you remember your graduation?
B Yes. It was in Hamilton at one of the hotels there – I don’t remember the name of the hotel. I suppose part of it is pretty grey now but I can remember we were all gathered together, and then went through the process of giving out prizes and this sort of thing at the banquet. And then, of course, there was a dance afterwards.
P And what about your convocation?
B Oh! Yes, we wandered across the campus as they still do. I don’t remember very much about it, other than that.
P Who was the officiating person? Would it be Sir William Newmark still?
B I don’t think so, but it might have been. I don’t really remember.
P So, now you’re graduated from OVC. What was next move?
B Oh, I applied and was accepted at Wisconsin as a graduate student in Virology.
P This was immediately after your graduation?
B Yes. I didn’t even get home between graduation and going – because they wanted me right away. Just before that had happened, Dr. McNabb - in the middle of exams - Dr. McNabb called me in and wanted me to go somewhere down the States to work on poultry. Dr. McNabb was the sort of person you didn’t refuse unless you – really – had a lot of nerve!! I refused!
P Had you, at that time, already applied to Wisconsin?
B I think I had, and I was not about to give it up. So, my life could have been different if I’d gone into poultry probably.
P I’m sure it would. What was your area of work in Wisconsin?
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B I worked in the area of Virology. Wisconsin, at that time, just had graduate students. I shared a room about a quarter the size of this room with Micky Savan and Tony Mueller from Norway. We got to be quite good friends. In fact, I would never have got through Graduate School if it hadn’t been for Micky Savan, probably.
P Well, I’m sure Micky will be pleased to hear that! So, you were then for one year, or two?
B No, I was there for – I went there, I guess, in June. Must have been the end of exams – probably June - and left the following end of August. So I was there for fifteen months – something like that.
P And your work then was more or less centered on research.
B Yes. Oh yes. Getting my thesis out.
P And following completion of your Master’s…?
B I applied, and was accepted to go back to OVC to work on research in mink.
P So, your work at OVC then was centered again on research, with the mink.
B That’s right. Dr. Kennedy – Dr. Arnold Kennedy – was here then and he did the teaching of the courses at that time. I worked at that until he left and then I took over the whole thing. I can’t remember what year that was. I was teaching and, of course, there was clinical work involved too. I did the clinical work while he was there, anytime he was away. And then I got married in 1957 and left.
P Were the many mink ranchers in the area at that time?
B Yes. There were large numbers. Not far away. Lots of them in St. Mary’s and around that area. A number around Guelph, and Waterloo and Kitchener.
P Where did you meet your husband?
B I met him through Dr. Fry, who was at that time sort of in charge of the research at the South Bay Mouth Station, the Fisheries Research Station there on Manitoulin Island. He suggested that, perhaps, we could work on feeding freshwater fish to mink. They wanted to get a market for freshwater fish and I was in the mink business. I don’t remember the connection of how he got to hear about me. Probably through Dr. Jones, I would think. And John Budd was sort of second-in-charge at the station at that time. We met over the project, I guess.
P So, did you go up to Manitoulin then to work on this project?
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B No. I didn’t go up ‘till after the first year of working on the project - and then I did go up to see how the fish were being prepared, and this sort of thing. They also had a meeting every year to sort of review the work that was being done in various areas of the Province. This was Provincial. I attended those and gave my report each year.
P So, was your husband a veterinarian?
B No. He was a biologist, fisheries biologist.
P Then, you married and went to Manitoulin? And you weren’t engaged in the project on the Island?
B No. I did a little work on the Island with people who were working on snowshoe hares. I was catching hares and taking blood samples, and this sort of thing, and doing postmortems on hares. This was just a project on my own sort of - to help out people who were working here in Zoology on the hare project.
P Where did you live on the Island?
B I lived about two miles out of South Bay Mouth right on the bay. I still have a place there.
P Had your husband – you built the house?
B Yes. That was – well, it was in the process of being built, you might say, because we worked on it for the next five or six years. It still isn’t finished!
But the roof was over it!
P Did you find a great difference in living conditions when you went up to the Island?
B Yes, I did. I missed people a great deal. The people that I’d worked with, and so on. You know, you spend a lot of time with the people you’re working with. I missed that, quite a bit. And, of course, the speed was slower. I’d go to the grocery store thinking that I would, you know, rush in and get my groceries and go home. Well, you didn’t do that. You had to chat. So, everything was very much slower. And then, of course, I got involved in local social things and so on, too.
P When you say you – when you went to the grocery store you chatted – of course, that was your way of meeting people, wasn’t it?
B Oh, yes. Sure. And the way of getting news of the community and so on.
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P Was there a large native population still on the Island?
B Yes, well, but not in South Bay Mouth. There was quite a large population in Wikwemikong, and actually the Wikwemikong Reserve extends to the Southern part of South Bay so we looked across on the Reserve but it was almost without anybody in that part of it.
P Did the native people work with your husband in providing fish or anything of this kind?
B Well, yes. They used to buy smelt from the Indians and they also had one of the Indians who did live just across the water from South Bay Mouth. He was on the staff for a while as a fisherman. Little Joe he was called.
P Well, that would be an interesting change of pace. At what point, then, did you return to Guelph?
B I returned to Guelph in 1962. I had already promised that I would come back. I promised Larry Smith that I would come back because Tom Pridham was away and he was doing the mink work and would I come back for a few months. I had already promised that I would, with my husband’s consent. But then, while we were on a trip to the American Fisheries Society he died, so I came back and carried on in the mink business. I found it very difficult. I suppose partly because I was grieving but also because I’d been away from the whole thing for five years. In five years, a lot of things happen.
P Yes. I wanted to ask you about that. About changes that had taken place.
B I think the changes were mostly things that I would have followed had I been in the business all the time but there were – well, there were new drugs and different research. New research, of course, had gone on which I knew nothing about.
P Yes. I suppose there would be a lot of new equipment out?
B Yes, there was some, at least. I don’t know how pertinent it was to the mink industry – but probably some.
P By 1962 there was probably some talk of the University of Guelph being formed. Were you aware of that at the time when you came back?
B I don’t think I was at the beginning probably, if I was I don’t remember it but yes it must have been going on then and the other thing that was different of course was that there was a Wildlife section now at OVC with Dr. Laars Karstead in charge of that. I worked in the fur bearing part until Tom Pridham came back from, doing his Masters. About the same time or shortly thereafter the new Wildlife and Vet Microbiology building was completed and we moved into that which made a big difference of course because I was out in one of the old army buildings before that.
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P Yes, the little addition in which the library is now that had been built years before hadn’t it - the brick addition?
B I’m not sure what stage that came in it must have been not too long before because I don’t think it was there when I left in‘57.
P So your work now was centered on fur bearing animals?
B It had been until Dr. Pridham came back and then Dr. Karstead suggested why don’t you start looking at fish as a animal, so that’s when I started and I got in touch with people I knew in the ministry and did a survey of trout farms and picked up animals and picked up fish and did postmortems on them and so on looking for various types of pathological lesions and so on and so I’d get some familiarity with it. Then I went down to West Virginia to a laboratory down there which had a virologist and a pathologist and various other people there who had been working on fish and I stayed there I think for about two weeks, getting myself familiar with fish diseases and getting to know the people in the field too.
P So your work then was a centered on the diseases of fish rather than with the breeding of fish?
B Oh yes. Well, people in zoology of course were well established in the area of fish farming and that sort of thing and actually Professor McDermott had done quite a lot on the bacterial diseases of fish too.
P I see. It seems strange that OAC and OVC being such an inland school should be specializing in fish.
B Well, of course we have the great lakes which are full of fish and many other rivers and lakes.
P Yes. So you continued then to do research. Were you doing any teaching as well at that time?
B Yes. I started lectures in fish diseases and also I did diagnostic work. Mainly the diagnostic work was with aquarium fish. You’d be surprised how many people at that time were keeping fish which you wouldn’t think about perhaps.
P Yes, and really in a serious way I mean if their guppies died they didn’t just throw them out.
B No, that’s right and even if they just have one little fish it meant something to them. It was a pet fish.
P You mentioned getting to know the people in the field. Did you attend conferences and did you have any interesting travel throughout the country for your work?
B Yes, I belonged at that time I suppose and perhaps a little previous to that I belonged to the Wildlife Disease Association and that encompasses all wild animals including fish and I became interested in the association, helped with the editing of their journal the Journal of Wildlife Diseases because Laars was the editor and he was
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away part of the time so I carried on. Also, I attended the meetings and gave papers on the work that we were doing and that would be anywhere in the United States or Canada. I didn’t get overseas on that at all, but I did go overseas on my sabbatical in 1975. I took part of the sabbatical to go to Sterling in Scotland where they had a large fish diseases unit there in connection with the University of Sterling as a quite an interesting place there and so I got a lot of traveling in then, there with them as they went around on to various fish farms and this sort of thing.
P I see. Then when did you retire from the OVC?
B I retired officially in 1976 but I stayed on working part-time mostly being there most of the time finishing up work and doing various things. Also, helping in the spring for a number of years with interviewing students for admission to OVC. I think my last year at that was probably 1980.
P We didn’t ask if you noticed any changes then, with the development of the University of Guelph.
B Yes, I think it was summed up by Dr. Schroeder when he said “the honeymoon is over.” Things didn’t come quite as easily and money was scarcer and that sort of thing.
P Do you think this was only because of the development of the University of Guelph or was it a general thing throughout the University system?
B I think it was general, but it did make a difference certainly from being part of Agriculture to being part of a big University certainly.
P There had been quite a lot of building at the back of the OVC. Did this discontinue with the advent of the University of Guelph?
B No it continued, because Pathology was built after it became a University filling in between the building which was the VetMicro and Wildlife Diseases and the rest of OVC there.
P Yes, it certainly seemed to be a period of great expansion all over the campus so I would assume that OVC was included.
B Yes, and I think that the live animal building was probably built during that time as well. Probably the clinical research building too. Those were all reasonably new buildings about that time.
P Did you have any exotic animals among the fish population? We think of elephants being brought to the OVC.
B No, not really anything very exotic except lovely coloured fish of course but in the wildlife area and I help out there occasionally we did have some things like iguanas and I can’t think of anything else right now. We had an iguana around for awhile. I don’t know how exotic those are now but snakes and that sort of thing came in. We had people keeping snakes there for research purposes and they’d occasionally get out which was just a terror to the ladies who were looking after our housekeeping, but they were harmless little snakes.
P When we were talking about professors, was Schofield there during your time?
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B Oh yes, yes. He used to invite me to tea occasionally - which one couldn’t get out of very well. One would have like to have got out of. [laugh]
P Did he invite you to any of the dinners when he used the lab animals?
B No, I didn’t get in on that, but I used to wonder about his tea cups. He would take them down from a high shelf and maybe shake out a spider or something like this. [laugh]
P Were there any other professors whom you look on now as having been sort of characters in that time?
B Yes, Tommy Batt of course and I think Dr. Bain was in his own way too, although I got along very well with him and also he was very good to students. He used to invite them home. I don’t think that Norma knew they were coming always but he would invite them to his home.
P In what way did Dr. Batt qualify as a character?
B Oh well, he wouldn’t speak to us. He didn’t speak to me even after I had graduated. He never spoke to me, in the halls or anywhere - never spoke to me. I was a female student, well a student still I guess.
P Did he speak to others?
B Yes. Some of the secretaries he spoke to.
P I see. Did you make friendships among the students in your own class? Lasting friendships which continue to this day?
B Oh yes. I wouldn’t say they were close friends really but we still correspond at Christmas time, that sort of thing. Quite a number of them I still keep in contact with. I’m secretary of the class anyway, secretary/treasurer but I do keep in contact personally with a number of them.
P This year I think you were celebrating a special reunion.
B That’s right, our 40th.
P Yes, and do you expect many people to come back?
B Yes, we have up to present we have a total of - this is members of the class and spouses or friends a hundred and twenty one. There may be more yet, because a number of them who’ve said they hope to get there maybe will.
P What is your relationship with the University of Guelph Alumni Association? Do you, find that they are useful in keeping in touch with your classmates?
B Yes, I have relinquished some of my keeping in touch to them because they have it on the computer now. There was a time when I had difficulty getting anything from them but I’ve overcome that now and I find that I give them any new addresses I get and I hope they give me the ones they get. I don’t always get them but I can, if I ask. They’ve also been very helpful in sending out newsletters for us, especially for this reunion. I’ve come to know the people I guess a little bit more.
P Did you make lasting friendships among the faculty also?
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B Yes, not close. Well I suppose Larry Smith and Helen Smith were the closest friends I made among the faculty. He was head of Pathology and Bacteriology at that point before he went to Saskatoon and became Dean at Saskatoon and I sort of lost contact a bit then - and the Shroeders - I still see them occasionally.
P I don’t think we elaborated very much on the changes in facilities when from the time when you first left the OVC until you came back again on staff. Had the lab equipment improved had the general classroom situation improved?
B I suppose it had to a certain extent, but I don’t remember a great deal of change. Certainly some of the classrooms had changed, I know that, but it wasn’t anything that really struck me, I guess, and the lab equipment wasn’t all that different.
P Perhaps there had been greater changes in large animals.
B Oh yes, and since then of course there have been more, and also in Pathology now. It’s a totally different place from what it was when it was in small quarters.
P Well you started out wanting to work with mink and you accomplished that and then switched to fish. Do you feel that the OVC prepared you adequately for your career?
B I think they did. I’ve heard some comments from some other of my classmates who thought they didn’t, but I can’t see that they didn’t, because most of our class did very well in the world of Veterinary Medicine and if they hadn’t been prepared they wouldn’t have been able to. I thought they prepared us very well and it’s certainly always up to the individual to carry on where you want to go and I think you can go as far as you want or as you’re able probably more likely able.
P Well, certainly of course you did feel that you needed to do graduate work but OVC had prepared you for that?
B Oh yes. I had no trouble getting into graduate school in Wisconsin.
P Well, are there any other activities or events or comments that you would like to make?
B I think the Arboretum is a great addition to the campus in Guelph.- probably because my interests lie in that line. I think the people that I have left in my department are top notch. I think that the probably the whole of OVC has gone a long way ahead of what it was, of course when we were students.
P Yes, when you were students it was the only veterinary school in Canada?
B No, there was one in the University of Montreal. But now of course there is one in Saskatoon and one in Prince Edward Island at Charlottetown.
P Yes, and OVC has provided a lot of the staff for those two schools
.B That’s right, and graduates whether they were staff at OVC or not. The graduates from OVC are well represented.
P Yes, so you feel then that OVC had lived up to your expectations?
B I think so. I don’t know what my expectations were in the beginning but I think they did very well for me. I’m a great OVC fan of course.
15
P One thing that we neglected to mention Joan was your maiden name, Beltcher. So, at the beginning then we were talking about Joan Beltcher and later we’ve been talking with Joan Budd.
B Yes.
P Well, thank you very much Joan this had been very interesting talking with you. I’m - I certainly hope that you continue to enjoy your retirement and your contacts with the OVC and with the University of Guelph Alumni.
B Well, I’m sure I shall.
P Thank you.
[End of interview]