Curiosity and persistence: They’re the twin traits that have guided Dr. James Raeside over a lengthy career that first brought him to the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC) in 1958 – a career that continues even decades after his official retirement in 1992.
And they’re traits that sustain him as he reaches age 100 this week. This past January, Raeside co-authored his latest research paper – a study of steroid chemistry in sport and animal production – published in the journal Reproduction just months before his birthday.
His centenary will be celebrated during an event to be held May 21, 2 p.m., in OVC’s ECLA 3708.
Raeside was 32 when he joined OVC’s then-department of physiological sciences. He set up a lab to study livestock hormones at a former research station located roughly where Stone Road Mall now stands.
He and his colleagues moved to today’s Department of Biomedical Sciences after OVC became part of the University of Guelph, established in 1964.
Raeside’s near-lifelong interest in animal reproduction and endocrinology developed around age 12. In the late 1930s, he spent Saturdays working on a farm near his home in Scotland’s Ayrshire County. Cattle and horse breeders occasionally brought stud animals to the farm.
“It was interesting to see, and it stuck with me,” says Raeside, who was named University Professor Emeritus upon retirement in 1992.
Born in Saskatoon in 1926, he moved to Scotland at age nine with his Scottish-born parents and two sisters. He completed a B.Sc. at the University of Glasgow in 1947. After teaching for two years in animal husbandry at the University of Saskatchewan, he pursued graduate studies on the progesterone hormone at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
He lectured at Massey University in New Zealand and was a researcher at McGill University in Montreal before joining the Ontario Veterinary College in 1958.
Throughout his lengthy career, Raeside has studied how hormones – notably estrogens and the metabolites derived from them – control reproductive behaviour and pregnancy in livestock, including cattle, pigs, sheep and horses.
He has published more than 100 journal and conference articles on hormones in livestock and human health in publications including the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Biology of Reproduction, the Journal of Endocrinology, and Reproduction, Fertility and Development.
Focusing on horses, Raeside looked at estrogens in the fetoplacental unit, or interactions between the developing fetus, the placenta and the pregnant mare. These interactions involve the production and regulation of hormones that help maintain pregnancy and promote fetal growth and development.
Raeside’s biochemical studies in cattle in the 1950s led other researchers to develop assays for progesterone in blood, including the blood of horses. He also looked at forms of estrogen in stallions, which helped address the puzzle of how stallions retain their masculinity despite high estrogen secretion.
For producers and breeders using in vitro methods, understanding steroid hormones is critical for timing of breeding efforts, both to ensure conception and to avoid embryo loss.
“To prevent embryo loss, you have to know what’s going on in normal pregnancies,” says retired biomedical sciences professor Dr. Keith Betteridge, a sometime journal co-author with Raeside.
Betteridge, also University Professor Emeritus, led Raeside’s 2018 nomination for the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Symposium on Equine Reproduction.
In his nomination, Betteridge wrote, “Raeside’s comprehension of steroid molecules is encyclopaedic, dynamic and three-dimensional, enabling him to relate structure to function in ways that few of us can.” He also credited Raeside’s “ceaseless intellectual curiosity, incisive questions, insights derived from experience, ineffable good humour and boundless energy.”
One nomination supporter called Raeside the “guru” of steroid hormone production in horses and “the grandfather of an area which is central to the whole subject of equine reproduction.”
Raeside was a charter member of the Society for the Study of Reproduction and the Southern Ontario Reproductive Biologists.
An OVC article published in 2016 to mark his 90th birthday said Raeside routinely walked up and down the Gordon Street hill to campus each day. He still lives in his apartment near the Speed River.
How does he feel about turning 100?
“Mixed feelings,” says Raeside, who says he enjoys “remarkable health” apart from arthritis, hearing loss and a temperamental bladder. “I’m so grateful for what others have done to get me here. I’m thankful I’ve been able to enjoy life this long.”
He and his wife, Margaret, had four children who all attended Queen’s University: David, Janet, William and Marnie. (David died at age 28 in a car accident).
Raeside credits much of his longevity to what he calls “a good head start.” His mother lived to about 94 and his father to 83. “I read a paper in the January issue of Science saying they estimate that 50 per cent of long living is genetic,” he says.
What about lifestyle? Moderation is key for Raeside, who avoids prepared foods and “sips” rather than “drinks” his evening dram. “I have a bowl of porridge in the morning. On weekends I let up and have All Bran and raisins and watch football.”
That’s British football for Raeside, a former soccer player and coach and still a diehard Manchester United fan. “They were in the doldrums for many years but I’m still watching them,” he says.
This year, the team is in third place in its division, a promising sign for Raeside. “I’m looking forward to next year.”
