Yorkton Stories
A podcast hosted by Dick DeRyk about people and events, past and present, in Yorkton, Saskatchewan Canada, sponsored by Harvest Meats and Grain Millers Canada.
Yorkton Stories
Sigga Houston: the purposeful life of a pioneer doctor
Dr. Sigridur (Sigga) Christianson Houston and her husband Dr. Clarence Joseph (CJ) Houston operated a medical practice in Yorkton for nearly 50 years, after a year in Watfort City, North Dakota. Both were graduates of the University of Manitoba College of Medicine.
In their practice in Yorkton, she had a well-known and well-deserved reputation to make babies thrive, which brought mothers and children from a hundred or more miles away.
What most people at the time did not know was this: when she graduated medical school in 1925, she was only the fourth woman of Icelandic descent to become a doctor, and the first Icelandic-Canadian woman to achieve that. Although we haven’t been able to verify this, she was very likely also the first female doctor to practice in Yorkton.
Not to forget about the secret she kept for most of her life. Or the Icelandic bean soup recipe. And on our website at www.yorktonstories.ca you will also find almost 90 minutes of 8mm film shot by CJ recording the life of three generations of the Houston family from 1936 to 1976, including scenes and events in Yorkton.