Dr. Mimi Belmonte
Montreal in the mid-1920s was a city full of promise for young Mimi Belmonte, the only child of a French Canadian mother and Italian father. Growing up near McGill University, she often took evening walks with her father through the leafy campus. “That’s where you’ll go one day,” he would confidently tell her. But in the summer of 1940, the future dimmed with the sudden death of her mother. One month later, Italy declared war on Great Britain, and Mimi’s father was sent to an internment camp. Though only 13, Mimi re-sponded by throwing herself into her studies. When her father returned ten months later, she was overjoyed. Speaking of him nearly 70 years later, Dr. Belmonte’s face lights up. “He wasn’t bitter about being sent to the camp,” she recalls. “All he said was, ‘that’s what happens during wartime.’ ”
Shortly after their reunion, Mimi’s father enrolled her at the High School for Girls, where she discovered a love of science. When a favourite teacher asked what she would do after high school, she admitted that she wanted to be a doctor but thought she couldn’t, “being a girl.” Dr. Belmonte grins, “My feminist teacher looked me straight in the eye and said very firmly, ‘You can do whatever you want.’ I still remember it like it happened yesterday.”
In 1952, following undergraduate studies at McGill and summers spent as a technician in the hematology lab of the Royal Victoria Hospital, Dr. Belmonte received her medical degree from McGill. It was during her internship on the children’s ward at the Royal Vic under the watchful and supportive eye of Dr. Jessie Boyd Scriver that her interest in pediatrics blossomed, though she remembers that “small babies scared the living daylights out of me!” She started her pediatric training at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and became inspired by Dr. Laurie Chute’s work with diabetic children. Towards the end of her training, a stint as resident at the world-renowned Joslin Clinic in Boston solidified her desire to focus on diabetes. She returned to Montreal, where she made it through the arduous Royal College Fellowship exams in pediatrics, after which she received a full-time appointment at the Montreal Children’s Hospital.
Not wanting to confine her work to the hospital and having enjoyed her time at several summer camps for children suffering from chronic diseases, including diabetes, Dr. Belmonte made it her mission to found Quebec’s first camp for diabetic children. By 1958, she was well on her way to realizing her dream with the help of a number of Montreal endocrinologists and a small team of caregivers. That summer, 20 young diabetics were made welcome at Camp Jackson Dodds in the Laurentians. The children were accompanied by Dr. Belmonte as camp doctor and by nurse Dorothy Ainger, who would continue as Dr. Belmonte’s summertime assistant for a quarter century.
Dr. Belmonte is the recipient of numerous honours, including the Humanitarian of the Year award from the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International and a Lifetime Achievement award from the Montreal Children’s Hospital. In 1999, she was named a Member of the Order of Canada.
Four years later a permanent property was obtained on Lac Didi in Ste-Agathe-des-Monts, and Camp Carowanis was born. In the words of Dr. Alan Ross, a founding member, thousands of children have spent happy summers there, “learning to swim and dive and sail while learning to live with their disease and with each other.” This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Camp Carowanis, and Dr. Belmonte couldn’t be prouder. “The weeks I spent at camp with those kids were the happiest times of my life.”
Retired since 1998, Dr. Belmonte stays busy with bridge and Italian classes. She takes delight in her travels and friends, and does regular volunteer work for her church. She has also kept abreast of the progress of the McGill University Health Centre, and is espe-cially pleased with the Shriners’ planned presence on the Glen Campus. Although no longer directly involved in the day-to-day activi-ties of the hospital, she helps out where she can, as evidenced by a recent planned gift of life insurance made to the McGill University Health Centre Foundation towards the greatest needs of the hospital. “I have no children and never married,” she says. “It made sense to give back to the institution that helped shape my life.”
Dr. Belmonte is the recipient of numerous honours, including the Humanitarian of the Year award from the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International and a Lifetime Achievement award from the Montreal Children’s Hospital. In 1999, she was named a Member of the Order of Canada, which, she says, “my dad would have been most proud of.” Although pleased with the honour, she is quick to point out that “there are so many others just as, or more, deserving than I am. I’m the product of wonderful parents, teachers, colleagues and family members. I couldn’t have gotten anywhere without their support.” Looking back at a career that has touched the lives of so many children, she says, “It was hard work, but it was rewarding.”
