Connaught Labs

Our medical history guide covers where insulin was discovered. This page covers where it was actually made — a University of Toronto lab that started in a stable and ended up supplying vaccines worldwide.

From a stable to a diphtheria antitoxin lab (1914)

Founded in 1914 to produce diphtheria antitoxin, the operation was formally named Connaught Antitoxin Laboratories and University Farm in 1917, after the Duke of Connaught, Canada's wartime governor general — a name that, fittingly, referenced an operation that literally began using horses on a University of Toronto farm property.

Canada's sole insulin supplier for 60 years

When U of T researchers discovered insulin in 1921, Connaught Labs expanded to manufacture it — and starting in 1923, supplied essentially all of the insulin used in Canada for the next 60 years, a direct, practical extension of the 1921 discovery covered elsewhere in this guide.

Supplying Salk's field trial

Connaught's biggest global moment came in 1954: the lab produced all of the polio virus used in Dr. Jonas Salk's massive field trial of roughly half a million children across the United States, Canada and Finland, and went on to manufacture all the Salk vaccine distributed in Canadian schools. It later played a major role in producing Albert Sabin's live oral polio vaccine too.

Sold in 1972, still operating today

The University of Toronto sold Connaught Labs in 1972 for $29 million. It continues operating today as Sanofi Pasteur Canada — the same institution, more than a century removed from its stable-based origins, still manufacturing vaccines in the Toronto area.

Sources

• University of Toronto — History of the Connaught Fund
• Heritage Toronto — Search for the Vaccine
• Wikipedia — Connaught Laboratories