Canadian Society of Plastic Surgeons (CSPS) / Societe Canadienne des Chirurgiens Plasticiens (SCCP)

The first meeting of the Canadian Society of Plastic Surgeons was held at Queen Mary Veterans’ Hospital in Montreal on November 7, 1947.

Fulton Risdon, then aged 67, was elected the first president. Risdon was the father figure, the first in Canada to practice plastic surgery as a specialty. He joined Gillies and Kazanjian at the Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup, Kent (southeast of London) in 1916 and did facial reconstruction on Canadian, English, Australian and New Zealand soldiers, repairing the devastation caused by war. He returned to Toronto in 1919 to establish the specialty in Canada and was the only plastic surgeon in Canada until Stuart Gordon and Alfred Farmer returned from training in England in the 1930s. Surgery then broadened from facial reconstruction to hand, burn, cancer and birth defect surgery.

When war clouds darkened again in Europe and around the world, plastic surgeons were ready for the second time in a generation. Alfred Farmer directed the entire Canadian surgical war effort. Ross Tilley went to East Grinstead and Battle of Britain surgery, resurfacing faces, noses and hands and restoring hope to young men whose lives had changed forever. He worked in the newly built ‘Canadian Wing’ donated by the Canadian government while civilian Archibald MacIndoe from New Zealand operated in the unit next door. They worked as a team with Tilley putting pressure on the military and MacIndoe on the politicians whenever they needed something.