Category: Obit

A remembrance of J.D. Salinger (1919-2010)

Not having published a thing in almost half a century apparently hasn’t diminished the fame of America’s most reclusive writer. J. D. Salinger died in January at the age of 91, prompting some hopeful observers to wonder whether he left a vault full of manuscripts to be published posthumously. Born in New York in 1919…

Obit: Justice Paul Lamek (2001)

Remembered for his intellectual vigour and his great love of the law, Superior Court Justice Paul Lamek has died in Toronto at the age of 65. Lamek studied law at Oxford and began his distinguished career as a teacher of law at the University of Pennsylvania for two years and then at Toronto’s Osgoode Hall…

Obit: pediatric neurosurgeon E. Bruce Hendrick (1924-2001)

Dr. E. Bruce Hendrick, a renowned pediatric neurosurgeon who headed the neurosurgical division at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children for more than two decades, has died in Toronto after complications from abdominal surgery. He was 77. As Canada’s first full-time pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr. Hendrick operated on tens of thousands of children with head injuries, brain…

Obit: MPP Lorne Henderson (1920-2002)

Lorne Henderson, who represented the former Lambton riding in the Ontario Legislature for 23 years and served in cabinet for seven of those years, was a grass-roots politician who knew an astonishing number of his constituents by their first names. Raised on a farm in Enniskillen Township in southwestern Ontario, he was first elected to…

Obit: sculptor E. B. Cox (1914-2003)

From the Globe and Mail, 2003 E. B. Cox, a much-admired Toronto-area sculptor who prided himself on achieving artistic and commercial success without ever taking a penny in government grants, died last summer at the age of 89. E. B. was a young associate of some of the Group of Seven with whom he went…

Barney Danson (1921-2011)

Barnett (Barney) Danson, the Canadian politician and Cabinet minister, died October 17, 2011 at the age of 90. Born to a Jewish family in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood, Danson joined the Queen’s Own Rifles in 1939, rose to Lieutenant Colonel and lost an eye in the Battle of Normandy. He returned to Canada and joined his…

Obit: Roger Boisvert, internet pioneer in Japan

From The Toronto Globe and Mail, 2001 If it is true that part of Roger Boisvert’s phenomenal success as an internet pioneer in Japan may be attributed to his being in the right place at the right time, that luck failed him miserably on September 30, 2001. After taking a wrong turnoff on a Los…

Obit: Eric Armour Beecroft (1903-2001)

Eric Armour Beecroft, a Toronto-born political economist who worked for the U.S. Roosevelt administration during the Second World War and helped establish the World Bank, has died (2001) in Toronto of pneumonia. He was 98. Through a diverse and illustrious career that stretched from the 1920s through the 1970s, Prof. Beecroft held professorships at universities…

Obit: Dr. Nestor Yanga, Toronto SARS victim (1948-2003)

As the first doctor in North America to die of SARS, Toronto physician Nestor Yanga may have gained more prominence in death than by anything he had accomplished in life. He was a dedicated general practitioner, church volunteer and family man who was passionate about everything he did, according to friends. A former president of…