Born in 1896 in
Tunapuna, Trinidad and Tobago (then a colony of the
British West Indies), Waddell moved to
Harlem, New York, with his wife in 1923 and studied at
Columbia University; he aspired to practise medicine in Trinidad, which meant he needed a medical degree from the
British Commonwealth. He then moved to
Halifax, Nova Scotia, and became one of the first Black physicians to graduate from
Dalhousie University in 1933. He was one of the only physicians who provided
house calls to the
Black Nova Scotian communities of
Africville,
Beechville,
Hammonds Plains, and
Preston; he usually did this by borrowing cars from people and many patients could only pay him with chickens and eggs. He additionally helped administer
polio vaccines to these communities during an outbreak in the 1930s. Waddell was also involved in
civil rights movements; in the 1930s, he helped to
desegregate a swimming pool at the
Halifax Common after one of his children was asked to leave. He also helped to raise money for Ethiopia following
its invasion by
Fascist Italy. In 1946, Waddell treated
Viola Desmond following her arrest for sitting in a whites-only section of
a cinema in
New Glasgow, and additionally wrote letters to the provincial and federal government to try to get the conviction overturned. He was a funder and contributor to
The Clarion, a Black newspaper. == Legacy ==