Historical vignette: Dr Charles Robson; pioneer Canadian pediatric anesthetist

Charles Robson (Figure 1) was born in New Westminster, British Columbia (now a suburb of Vancouver), in 1884 and graduated in medicine from McGill University in Montreal in 1913. Having interned and with some anesthesia training at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, he was sent overseas to work in a Canadian Army Hospital where he founded a school to train military anesthetists. Returning to Canada in 1919, he joined the staff of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto as chief anesthetist, a position he held until 1951 (1). During most of this time, he was the sole full-time anesthetist at the hospital; administration of anesthesia at this hospital was not limited to staff anesthetists until 1950 (1).