When Jessica Dunkley was 10 years old, her aunt gave her a life-altering gift: a plastic anatomy doll. She spent hours taking it apart and putting it back together, fascinated by the complexity of the human body. As she reassembled the doll, she decided that she would one day wear a white jacket, a dream that she called a “fantasy” for much of her life.
In 2010, fantasy met reality when Dunkley graduated medical school as one of University of Ottawa’s Extraordinary Women, which celebrates female trailblazers at that institution. The moment she accepted her degree, she became the first deaf Metis doctor in Canada. Only residency stood between her reality and the fantasy that inspired her as a child.
But the road to residency has been a long one.
