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Photo: Canadian Council on Animal Care |
The Faculty of Medicine has lost a long-time faculty member who made a lasting contribution to the University and to the entire Canadian research community. Dr. Harry Rowsell, a member of the Department of Pathology for more than two decades, was best known as a founder and the first executive director of the Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC).
Dr. Rowsell died at the beginning of February following a brief illness and an ongoing struggle with Parkinson’s disease. He leaves behind his wife, four children and a large extended family, as well as a legacy of professional and public service that enhanced the lives of doctors, veterinarians, and scientists across the country. Not least of all, he would be satisfied to know that he had likewise enhanced the lives of the many animals that play a large part in the work of medicine and the biological sciences.
Born in Toronto in 1921, Dr. Rowsell obtained a degree in veterinary medicine at the Ontario Veterinary College after serving in the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II. He spent 15 years in the veterinary school at the University of Guelph investigating circulatory diseases affecting humans and animals, then went on to teach at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in the University of Saskatchewan before arriving at the University of Ottawa in 1970.
In the late 1960s, he was at the forefront of a movement to establish national standards for the way in which animals could and should be used in research. This activity created the CCAC in 1968, with Dr. Rowsell becoming its executive director for the next 24 years.
The current director of the Animal Care and Veterinary Service at the University of Ottawa, Dr. Marilyn Keaney, was Dr. Rowsell’s last student in laboratory animal medicine and she worked with him from 1982 until he retired. “I will remember him for his compassion for all, humans and animals alike, and his unwavering support and encouragement during the years of learning under his tutelage,” she said.
Dr. Rowsell was the founding chair of the University’s Animal Care Committee, Dr. Keaney noted. That committee, which continues to this day, served as the blueprint for the CCAC program and the concept has been exported around the world.
“It must have been his understanding of scientists and the biomedical research process, along with a keen sense of our inter-relationships with animals, that gave him the inspiration for how a Canadian program for standards for the care and use of experimental animals should work,” says Ernest Olfert, director of the University of Saskatchewan’s Animal Resources Centre, who worked with Dr. Rowsell in a number of different capacities throughout his career.
Through the application of moral suasion rather than any specific legislation, CCAC has determined the treatment of animals in universities and laboratory facilities all across the country. With an eye toward the welfare of those animals, the council defined the need for their use in ever more strict terms, so that their number was never more than absolutely necessary to achieve a research goal. CCAC guidelines, which continue to be revised and updated, are also highly regarded by similar agencies in other countries.
“Harry Rowsell the person was a gentle man,” says Olfert, “and full of boundless energy and enthusiastic interest in all aspects of animal care and welfare, with an amazing capacity to comfortably interact with people at all levels — from the animal care technicians whose daily work involves the care of the experimental animals, to the senior scientists and bureaucrats who develop and carry out science policies.”
Dr. Rowsell was repeatedly honoured for his work, becoming the first veterinarian invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a variety of fellowships and professional awards were named after him. From his perspective, the greatest honour was an opportunity to effect a major positive change on Canada’s scientific landscape, a journey he said he would gladly undertake all over again.
“I will always be grateful to have been part of a unique and almost unbelievable experience,” he observed on the occasion of CCAC’s thirtieth anniversary in 1998. “The road to progress will continue and hopefully all those involved will have the freedom, the innovation and creative spirit I was privileged to express.”
