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Dr. Lindsay McNiven Lawson graduated from the ³Ô¹ÏÍø in 1968 with an honours BSc degree in biology. She was the only UVic graduate that year, and one of only 50 graduates nation-wide, to receive a four-year $5000 scholarship from the National Research Council, which she used to study physiology at McGill University. She chose physiology despite the fact that her true passion was medicine because she had been advised by a female medical graduate that being a practicing physician was incompatible with married and family life. As she neared completion of her MSc in physiology, however, she reconsidered her career choice and applied to study medicine at McGill University. During an interview prior to her acceptance she was asked by a senior faculty member if her husband approved of her choice. In years to follow she delighted in recounting that she had shocked the interviewer by telling him it was her husband who encouraged her to apply.

Dr. Lawson graduated in 1974 with her medical degree and the Wood Gold Medal awarded for the most outstanding clinical performance achieved by a student in the two-year clerkship period.
Following her residency in Internal Medicine at Rutgers University, Dr. Lawson served her residency in respiratory medicine at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, where she devoted her entire 33-year career, which included the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Her expertise was recognized by the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine which promoted her to the rank of Clinical Professor of Medicine, awarded her several honours for her excellence in teaching and referred to her as a master clinician.

Dr. Lawson retired in 2010 to Victoria where she died in 2022 of myelofibrosis and was mourned among others by her husband of 54 years, her three children and five grandchildren.