The gift began with a patient in his mid-70s, whose colon cancer surgery found could not be removed. His own family doctor had kept a print of The Doctor in his office, and he passed a copy on to the medical student caring for him: Nancy Tozer, MD 1978.
Tozer opened a family practice in Pointe-Claire, Que., in 1980 and hung the print across from her desk for the rest of her career, retiring in 2018. When U of T could not accept it as an in-kind donation for space reasons, the Medical Students' Society advertised a reflection contest through a student Facebook group, and Tozer chose among three finalists.
She picked Greg Dance, a second-year MD student at U of T's Mississauga campus who studied neuroscience and mental health at Carleton University and worked four years as a part-time first responder. Nearly 50 years after it first changed hands, Dance plans to pursue psychiatry and hang the print in his own future practice. “It’s not just about being good at the medicine – it’s about connecting with patients,” he says.
Reported from A new future for ‘The Doctor’: How a painting united two generations of U of T MD students, by Heather McCall (U of T Alumni News, September 4, 2026).
More from the original reporting: alumni.utoronto.ca/news/how-painting-united-two-generations-u-t-md-students