Volume 9 • 2022 • Issue 1

Remembering Dentistry Leaders Dr.Gundega Kravis-Kaufmanis Dr. Gundega (Gundy) Kravis-Kaufmanis passed away on October 23, 2021. D r. Kravis-Kaufmanis was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1932. When she was 12 years old, her family escaped their war-torn homeland on a fishing boat, sailing across the Baltic Sea. They settled in Jönköping, Sweden, and lived there for six years as refugees before the family moved to Canada in 1950. Dr. Kravis-Kaufmanis graduated from the University of Toronto’s faculty of dentistry in 1956. When she was admitted to the program, in 1952, she was one of the only three women in the class. After graduation, she practised dentistry in Toronto until 1964, when she moved to Ottawa to accept a position as head of the dental program of the Ottawa School Board. In 1973, she became registrar of the National Dental Examining Board (NDEB) of Canada and subsequently served as the NDEB executive director, a position that she held until her retirement in 1994. She was a fellow of the International College of Dentists (ICD) and the American College of Dentists (ACD). Throughout her life, she was an advocate of doing things “the right way” and never feared asserting her position. In her retirement years in Victoria, British Columbia, Dr. Kravis-Kaufmanis remained actively involved in dentistry. She was a founding member of the continuing education program “Self-Learning, Self-Assessment” (SLSA). She was also an avid reader of the classics, loved to garden and was very fond of the opera. Her community involvement included sitting on the board of the Pacific Opera Victoria, one of the most influential opera companies in Canada. Dr. Kravis-Kaufmanis is predeceased by her husband of 64 years, Rusins, and survived by her children, Anna Edels and Eric Kaufmanis, and her three granddaughters, Sophie, Rayna, and Juliana. Graduation photo (University of Toronto, 1956) Dr. Kravis-Kaufmanis in a dental office in the early 1960s 38 | 2022 | Issue 1 Obituaries