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L aval University, located in

historic Quebec City and known as the oldest cen-tre of education in Canada, is home to the country’s first French-language medical fac-ulty, founded in 1848.

With its reputation rooted in the rich clinical tradition of French medicine and the latest advances in North American scientific medicine, the univer-sity’s Faculty of Medicine holds an enviable position among the country’s medical schools for its research boom over the past 20 years.

The Department of Rehabil-itation, one of 15 departments within the faculty, offers programs in speech-language pathology, physiotherapy, and occupational therapy. The teach-ing and training in these programs are carried out exclu-sively in French. Students enrolling in the baccalaureate-master’s degree in occupational therapy program require excel-lent mastery of French, accord-ing to the university’s website. But perhaps even more unique was Laval’s choice in leadership for its 43-year-old occupational therapy program. Born in English-speaking Canada and raised in Australia, Dr. Andrew Freeman arrived on campus in 2007 when he was hired as an assistant professor in the rehabilitation department. “Over the years, I had grad-ually met people working at Laval. I would ask them what was happening in the occupa-tional therapy program to see if there was a fit between the research work I was doing and

the work being done there. Even-tually, my peers were encourag-ing me to apply.”

Five years later, Dr. Free-man is now an associate profes-sor within the same department and in July 2010 became the director of the occupational ther-apy program – a position left vacant when former program

director Line Robichaud tragi-cally became ill and passed away, leaving big shoes to fill. “It was a little unusual to know there would be a future vacancy because of Line’s ill-ness, but it became evident she was unlikely to return to her role as director. Looking back, I real-ize I have inherited her legacy,” he says.

Dr. Freeman also says he never would have predicted he

would become a bridge in the French/English occupational therapy worlds, especially since he considers his French-speaking abilities to still be a “work in progress” and most of Laval’s programs function entirely in French.

“I learned French along the way. In addition to my wife

being from Quebec, living in a thriving French community in the Yukon also helped,” he says. Despite French not being his native tongue, Dr. Freeman was one of only a few choices for the director role as at the time of Madame Robichaud’s passing the program was going through a generational transition with many of the senior team nearing or at retirement age.

“I suppose you can say life

takes funny turns sometimes, but this opportunity has been noth-ing but a privilege. I have worked on both sides of the bridge and now I am able to play a small role in linking the Eng-lish/French occupational therapy worlds together,” he says. Dr. Freeman’s career in oc-cupational therapy started in Australia where he lived with his family. In 1984, he obtained a bachelor of occupational therapy from the University of Queens-land in Brisbane. He then worked as an occupational therapist at several Brisbane-area hospitals including: Royal Bris-bane Hospital; Royal Children’s Hospital; Mater Children’s Hos-pital; and Princess Alexandra Hospital.

But, in 1989 he decided to put his career on hold to travel the world. Ironically, his travels would lead him back to the country of his birth – Canada. In-trigued by the north, Dr. Free-man says he embraced an opportunity in the Yukon and ac-cepted a position as an occupa-tional therapist and clinical services coordinator with the Child Development Centre in Whitehorse. Four years later, in 1995, he took on the role of occupational therapist with the territory’s Department of Educa-tion.

After another four years of clinical experience, Dr. Freeman says the time was right to return to school to work on his master’s degree. By then he had married and the couple moved to Lon-don, Ontario where he enrolled in the master of science in occu-pational therapy program at the