Jennie Smillie Robertson Daniel Mario Shattenburg

alt=An image of the road leading up to a large, multi-story brick building. A tree is in front. The Women's College Hospital in Toronto that Smillie helped found as the Ontario Medical College for Women. Jennie Smillie Robertson (February 10, 1878 – February 26, 1981) was a Canadian surgeon, the country's first female surgeon who performed the country's first major gynecological surgery.

Born to farmers, she worked as a teacher to afford tuition for medical school before enrolling at the Ontario Medical College for Women which merged into the University of Toronto medical school during her time there. Due to a lack of options in Toronto, she completed her training in the United States. In 1911, she helped re-found her alma mater as today's Women's College Hospital after no Toronto hospital would let her perform surgery. She died at age 103.

Early life and education Smillie was born on February 10, 1878, on a farm outside of Hensall, Ontario, to Benjamin Smillie (1839–1886) and Jane Smillie (née Buchanan; 1849–1906) as one of several children. Smillie attended public schools in Hensall and later in Seaforth. She showed interest in medical science at an early age. As an adult, she told another female doctor and friend, "I was only 3 when I first thought about being a doctor. I heard of a woman missionary doctor. When I was 5 I asked my mother if women could be doctors. She told me they could and from then on I knew that is what I would do."

Career Medical internships in Canada were difficult for women to obtain; In 1910, she returned to Toronto to begin her practice but was not accepted by any doctor for surgical training. Thus, she went back to Philadelphia for six months of intensive training under another female surgeon, which included a week where she oversaw a surgical ward, an experience which she credited with building her confidence. She performed abdominal and gynecological surgeries until her retirement in 1948. and was politically active in liberal causes, at one point serving as president of the Women's Liberal Association. Smillie Robertson died in a nursing home in Toronto on February 26, 1981, at the age of 103 and is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto. However, early civil rights activist Viola Desmond was chosen to be the first woman—and black person—to be honoured in this way.

In 2023, Halifax artist Jo Napier completed a portrait of Smillie Robertson, which currently hangs in the waiting room of the gynecologic oncology clinic of Halifax’s Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre.