Ontario Veterinary College

The Ontario Veterinary College (OVC) is the oldest veterinary school in Canada. It is located on the campus of the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario. The OVC is one of five veterinary schools that offer the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, DVM program in Canada. The OVC was ranked 1st in Canada and 4th in the world for veterinary medicine by the QS World University Rankings 2015.

Originally called Upper Canada Veterinary School, the Ontario Veterinary College was established in Toronto in 1862, by the Scots Andrew Smith (veterinary surgeon) with some assistance from Duncan McNab McEachran, both graduates of the Royal School of Veterinary Studies at the University of Edinburgh. The college adopted the current name in 1867, the year of Canada's Confederation. McEachran was a staff member but he considered the admission standards and academic requirements to be inadequate. He left after three years, moving to Montreal where he helped establish Montreal Veterinary College.

The school's first classes took place at 188 King Street West in 1861 and then at Agricultural Hall at Yonge and Queen Streets in 1862. The first permanent site of the school was at Bay Street and Temperance Street in 1870 and University Avenue in 1914. By 1897, the college was affiliated with the University of Toronto and in 1908 it was acquired from Smith by the government of Ontario.

It later moved to Guelph, Ontario (1922) and severed its ties with the University of Toronto. The OVC became a founding college of the University of Guelph in 1964. The college moved to Guelph in 1922. In 1928 Miss E. B. Carpenter from Detroit was the first woman to graduate from a Canadian veterinary college. She was accepted to the school in 1923, one year after the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act allowed Miss Aleen Cust to complete her exams at the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. The first woman to graduate from OVC was Dr. G. E. Fritz from New York, the first Canadian woman to graduate from OVC or any other Canadian veterinary college was Jean Rumney in 1939 and the second was Edith Williams in 1941, also a graduate of OVC. Today the majority of Canadian veterinary school graduates are women.