C. Stuart Houston


C. Stuart Houston was an American-born Canadian physician, professor emeritus of medicine in radiology, award-winning ornithologist, historian, and writer. He was awarded the 1990 Eisenmann Medal and was made an officer of the Order of Canada in 1993.

Biography

Houston's parents Clarence J. Houston and Sigridur Christianson Houston jointly operated a general medical practice in Watford City, North Dakota. In 1928 the family moved to Yorkton, Saskatchewan, where Houston's parents started another medical practice. He was born in Williston, North Dakota and after completing his secondary education at the Yorkton Collegiate Institute, Houston earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Manitoba and graduated there with an M.D. in 1951. In 1951 he married Mary Isabel Belcher and the two moved to Yorkton, where he joined his parents' medical practice. He practised medicine from 1951 to 1955 in Yorkton, studied internal medicine and pediatrics for the academic year 1955–1956 at Saskatoon's Royal University Hospital, and practiced from 1956 to 1960 again in Yorkton.
In 1960, Houston moved with his family to Saskatoon where he began training in diagnostic radiology at Saskatoon's Royal University Hospital. With the support of a George Von L. Meyer Memorial Scholarship, he later studied for a year in affiliation with Harvard Medical School at Children's Hospital Boston. He joined in 1964 the department of diagnostic radiology at the University of Saskatchewan, where he became a professor in 1969 and retired in 1996 as professor emeritus. He was head of the department of medical imaging from July 1982 to June 1987.
Houston and his wife Mary banded about 155,000 different birds from about 200 different species. They made about 3,100 recoveries. He also holds records for the most bandings of turkey vultures and great horned owls. Mary Houston banded 5,385 Bohemian waxwings, which in 2017 was more than the next three competitors combined. Houston and Farley Mowat once worked together banding birds and Mowat sent him a field guide.
Houston is the author or coauthor of more than 250 articles in medicine or the history of medicine. He wrote three chapters for the book Pediatric Skeletal Radiology. He is the author or coauthor of over 500 publications in ornithology or natural history. He edited three books about the Franklin expedition, based on the diaries and paintings of midshipmen George Back and Robert Hood, and naturalist John Richardson. Stuart is the author or coauthor of several other books, including Birds of Saskatchewan. His wife Mary would often improve his prose after he wrote a first draft of the facts.
Stuart and Mary Houston had three sons and a daughter.

Selected publications

Articles on history of medicine

*

Articles on medicine

*

Articles on ornithology

*

Books

  • *
  • *
  • * with Merle Massie:
*