Long-overdue, New Canadian Optometry Schools in the Works

Blog vol 5.29. Long-overdue, New Canadian Optometry Schools in the Works

The Director of the School of Optometry at the University of Waterloo announced in November that Mount Royal University in Calgary is exploring the possibility of setting up an Alberta optometry school (Read more here). That has been coming for a while, with Waterloo being the only English language school of optometry in all of Canada.   Back in the day, there was much talk about a possible school at Victoria University, a western Canada option has been on the table for a long time. 

Since “back in the day”, our population has grown significantly, generally gotten older, and we all have been spending more time on screens and are using our eyes more than ever. The demand for eye doctors has gone way up, and even though Waterloo increased their enrolment from 60 to 90, it is not enough.  Many Canadian students go to American optometry schools, which is a great loss to Canadian optometric research and education.

The other problem is that areas outside the “Golden Horseshoe” and the greater Vancouver area have difficulty enticing grads to commit to their communities. When I was in optometry school in the 1980s, there was a quota for each region (a minimum), so every year 2 students from BC, 2 from Alberta, etc. with the Territories and even Northern Ontario having spots on the roster (I am a Northern Ontario lad). The theory was that these students would be most likely to return to these areas, and on the whole in my class this was true (I did not go back, oops). At some point these quotas were abolished, not sure if that’s a good thing or not?

So spread the education around. Western Canada for starters. This past week it was announced that another school is being considered for the Atlantic provinces, at UNB’s St. John Campus (See announcement here). 

Interestingly, the St. John Campus was the home of the first engineering program and the first faculty of computer science in Canada. It does sound a lot like University of Waterloo II, or perhaps it should be the other way around? Back in the sixties, the College of Optometry in Toronto was looking for a new home, and the Senate Committee at Waterloo recommended that the school be established on their new campus.  Geographically, east coast makes total sense.

I graduated from Waterloo in 1987 and completed a 1 year residency in Low vision there in 1990; my son, Peter, graduated from Waterloo in 2023. It is our hope that these investigations will result in the actual building of these new schools, and once they are established, all good for optometric care in Canada. 

A peak into the future- new frontier in optometry of lasers and treatments, exciting times! More on that later… 

Keeping you posted,

The good doctor