Dr. Fahima Osman arrived in Canada in 1989, with her parents and 6 younger siblings, when she was 11 years old. They were accepted as Somali refugees. She is the eldest of now 9 children. At the time she helped take care of her younger siblings, while pursuing her dream to study medicine. She always knew she wanted to be a doctor, but she was told time and time again that she could not be accepted at Medical School since it is too difficult to become a doctor. She studied hard to keep her A+ average and eventually applied to McMaster Medical School. Fahima remembers the day when she and her Mom went to the mailbox to collect the mail. The day was June 4, 2001, when she opened the letter of acceptance to study what she had aspired to all her life. She screamed with joy and hugged her Mom. The next big day for her was May 14, 2004. Fahima Osman had earned the right to put the two long-dreamed of letters before her name. In that moment, the Somali refugee, whose parents had no formal schooling, whose father nearly drowned trying to flee a life of poverty and whose high-school guidance counsellor once warned her not to aim so high, will become an original : the first Canadian-trained Medical Doctor in Toronto’s Somali community. Her goal was to become a surgeon in Canada and also to volunteer in Somaliland, the former British Protectorate that became part of Somalia, only to break away after her family had left.
