At Christie looking East	At Clinton looking West

Dr. John Gerald (Gerry) FitzGerald, the founder of the Connaught Laboratories in 1914 (now Sanofi Pasteur Ltd.) and the School of Hygiene at the University of Toronto in 1925, developed a domestic source of anti-rabies vaccine in 1913, after three years of international training in Bacteriology and Pathology. This success leads him to attempt to develop a domestic source of diphtheria anti-toxin at one fifth the cost of imported serum. Impatient with the U of T Board of Governor's reticence to sanction its production and free distribution throughout Canada, he "borrowed $3000 from his wife's inheritance, built a rudimentary stable at 145 Barton Avenue. in December 1913 and stocked it with lab equipment. He bought five horses bound for the glue factory for about $3 each and hired a technician. The dangerous painstaking process of making diphtheria antitoxin involved injecting a horse with small, incremental amounts of poisonous diphtheria toxin -lethal enough to kill several humans but not a horse-which would mix with the animal's blood and build up immunity over time. The human antitoxin would then be obtained from the white blood cells in blood drawn from the horse."

Dr. FitzGerald named the first "decrepit old nag.Crestfallen, for its sad eyes." It was from Crestfallen that the first successful domestic antitoxin for diphtheria was produced, saving thousands of children from a disease that was then a leading killer of those under fourteen.

Gerry FitzGerald, through Connaught Laboratories, facilitated the "at cost" production and distribution of insulin with Banting and Best.

The original Barton Street stable building was restored and is at the Sanofi Pasteur Ltd. site at Dufferin and Steeles as part of its company's heritage museum of pharmaceuticals. The selected lane runs behind the site of the original stable.

• What Disturbs Our Blood; A Son's Quest to Redeem the Past; by James FitzGerald, Random House Canada, 2010, pp.234-239.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvy3Cb9CHhQ
• The Troubled Healer; by James FitzGerald, University of Toronto Magazine, Special Historical Issue; Spring, 2002, pp.86-93.
• The Troubled Healer; by James FitzGerald, "The Medical Post", Sept. 5, 2000.
• A Prescription for a New Economy; by Anna Mehler Paperny, "The Globe and Mail", Saturday March 8th 2011, Section M, "Globe T.O."

"Gerry Fitzgerald Drive" borders the property of Sanofi Pasteur Ltd., thus may not be acceptable to the city as a "duplicate" if used to name the lane (though it is spelled incorrectly). "Fitzgerald Mews" exists near Coxwell and Kingston Road.

Reference materials are also with Ed Janiszewski.