Norman Barrie Coward was a pediatrician and long-serving faculty member at Dalhousie Medical School. Born on 14 August 1905 in St. Thomas, the US Virgin Islands, he was educated at Colchester County Academy in Truro, Nova Scotia, before graduating from Dalhousie with an MD in 1928. He completed a two-year internship at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, and was a resident at Toronto's Riverdale Infectious Diseases Hospital and Bellevue Hospital in New York City. He then spent twelve months at children’s hospitals in London, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

In 1933 Coward joined Dalhousie’s Faculty of Medicine as a lecturer and clinical instructor in pediatrics. He was appointed professor and department head in 1958, also serving as Physician-in-Chief at Grace Maternity Hospital, the Halifax Infirmary and the Children’s Hospital. He retired from pediatrics in 1971, but continue in his role as Medical Director of Halifax’s Hearing and Speech Clinic, which he had helped found, until 1995. Dr. Coward died on 16 October 1997.