Francis Scrimger, known to his students as Scrim, graduated from McGill University in medicine before World War I. He volunteered for overseas service in the Canadian Army Medical Corps at the outbreak of war and was posted to the western front. Almost immediately Scrimger found himself in the heat of the Second Battle of Ypres, where his bravery won him the Victoria Cross. His life, fortified by his war experience, was governed by an unbending sense of responsibility, to the benefit of his patients but sometimes to the detriment of the effectiveness of his teaching at McGill.