Pat Woodford was often told women were not suited for science. She proved them wrong | Canada Voices

Patricia Stirling Woodford: Environmentalist. Activist. Traveller. Matriarch. Born Aug. 18, 1935, in Toronto; died Nov. 20, 2025, in Guelph, Ont., of complications from pneumonia; aged 90.

Pat Woodford pioneered the way for women in science, hockey, environmental activism and bird banding.

She was born Patricia Page and, with her brother Bob, moved around a lot growing up as the family followed her father’s career in government. When her Grade 1 classroom only had one set of books to read, Pat did not see the point of reading, but when she moved for Grade 2, there were shelves of books, so she quickly taught herself to read and write in cursive.

Pat excelled in sciences and enrolled at the University of Toronto for chemistry. She was told that women were not able to understand sciences and she should shift to social studies. But Pat refused and was one of two women to graduate with a degree in chemistry in 1958.

After completing teacher’s college, she applied for jobs teaching high-school science, but was told that women were not suited for teaching science. Again, she did not give up. Pat became a popular chemistry teacher at George S. Henry Secondary School in North York and then ran the chemistry department at Bathurst Collegiate in Toronto.

Pat played hockey in the 1940s when there were only six girls teams in Toronto. Playing on the U of T team, she was known as “Goal a Game Page.” Later in life, she supported her daughter, granddaughters and great-granddaughter as they played hockey. Attending PWHL Toronto Sceptres games was a highlight of her last few years, she could not believe a professional women’s hockey league happened in her lifetime.

Pat met Jim Woodford at grocery store in 1952. (He jokes that he first saw Pat standing behind a “reduced for quick sale” sign and he could not pass up a good deal.) Jim took Pat birdwatching in Thickson’s Woods to see the spring warblers – it was like a being immersed in a flying rainbow of colours. She was soon hooked on bird watching, and Jim. They married in 1958, halfway through Pat’s year at teachers’ college.

The couple bought a house in North York and a few years later welcomed two daughters, Beth and Lynn. Pat stayed home with the girls until they started school, then returned to work while Jim, a writer and author, stayed home with the children.

Pat fought against the use of pesticides that were harming wildlife and in 1960, she co-founded the Long Point Bird Observatory with Jim and their friend Dave Hussell. The couple spent many weekends there and once, when Lynn was only a few months old, became so focused on banding birds that they left their baby in the large Heligoland trap. When someone asked, “Where is the baby?” they rushed back and found her happy and surrounded by birds.

Every summer, Pat and Jim took their daughters camping across Canada. They kept it up – despite the girls’ car sickness – to infuse their children with a love of nature and the outdoors.

Pat told her children that they could be anything they wanted to be and showed them how to care for others by taking in strays, from cats to friends and family: anyone who needed a safe place to land during a hard time. But when she was annoyed, she would not say what was wrong. Her children had to figure it out while listening to her disgruntled sighs in the background.

Pat was never without her pink lipstick and was proud that she looked younger than her years. She climbed Kilimanjaro on her 50th birthday. She went on a canoe trip to celebrate her 80th birthday. She was an avid cross-country skier and completed a 25-kilometre race in her 80s and won for her age division. She travelled to all seven continents, led hiking trips on Baffin Island and canoed the Winisk River in Northern Ontario as part of a breeding bird survey.

Grandma Pat was so proud of her grandkids and great grandkids and bragged to her friends that her older grandchildren wanted to spend a weekend with her baking or sewing. She continued fighting to save the planet, even writing a letter to the premier to give him a piece of her mind (with data to back it up) just a month before she died.

Pat taught her family to fight for what you believe in, live your life fully and love unconditionally.

Lynn Woodford is Pat Woodford’s daughter.

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