Focus online: Turning tragedy into triumph: Thomas Shearer Stewart, BCL 1908
Left blind by a botched eye operation at the age of 16,
Thomas Shearer Stewart nevertheless graduated from the Faculty in
1908, winning the Faculty鈥檚 gold medal award for academic
excellence. His granddaughter, Lesley Stewart, tells his remarkable
story.
Thomas Shearer Stewart was born in Prince Albert, located in what
were then the Northwest Territories, on October 25, 1882. Following
the sudden death of his father, William Stewart, in 1884, his
mother returned with her three young children to Montreal, where
she remarried nine years later.
As a young boy, Tom had injured his right eye and, in 1899, when he
was 16, he severely injured the same eye. A doctor was summoned to
the family鈥檚 country home in Beaconsfield but, much to the horror
of Tom鈥檚 family, the surgeon removed the good eye, leaving Tom
totally blind...