Nudged from the Sidelines: A Journey of Discovery in the Rainforests of Africa and Indonesia

Rick Quinn graduated from the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph, Ontario, Canada in 1981. Following several years of general practice, he returned for a residency and graduate work in ophthalmology at the University of Guelph. He completed a Doctorate of Veterinary Science in Ophthalmology and became a board-certified veterinary ophthalmologist in 1996.

Following five years of teaching veterinary students, residents, and graduate students, he returned to private referral practice in 2002 and managed eye problems in his animal patients until retiring from clinical practice in 2022. Rick is an adjunct Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.

He has served on both the Canadian and global boards of the Jane Goodall Institute and is the co-founder and a director of Docs4GreatApes, a Canadian wildlife charity active in providing scholarships for African veterinarians to pursue training in wildlife medicine and conservation. He has trekked the rainforests of Africa and Indonesia photographing Great Apes and is the author of Just Like Us—a Veterinarian’s Visual Memoir of Our Vanishing Great Ape Relatives.

Rick is currently pursuing a post-graduate degree in International Relations at the University of Cambridge in the UK. He and his wife Diane, a family doctor, have four adult children.