Division History, 1978-1997

Dr. Bill Whitelaw was working in Montreal, funded by a three year investigative grant with the promise of a job at McGill and funding for external training. It was a comfortable position for any specialist early in his career. Until a letter arrived from Guenter in Calgary asking Whitelaw to consider joining their growing medical school.

“I already had a job,” Whitelaw reminisces. “So, I wrote him a letter back saying the interview would be a waste of money. I put the letter in my coat pocket and promptly forgot all about it.”

Weeks went by and the letter stayed hidden inside his coat. When he finally found it, he relayed the story to a friend, still intending to drop it in the mail. “Never turn down the opportunity to interview for a job,” he recalls being told. “It’s his (Guenter’s) money, so let him spend it!”

Whitelaw vividly remembers touring the school in that first meeting with Guenter. The research labs were locked but as they peered through the windows, he says it seemed like acres of open space, vacuums and hoses just waiting for eager researchers with big questions to answer.

Whitelaw took the job, but not before heading to Edinburgh on McGill’s dime (and blessing) to get more clinical experience in respiratory medicine. A Toronto grad with a PhD from McGill – already one of the top three respiratory physiology research centres in the world – and a grant from the Medical Research Council of Canada, meant Whitelaw was an ‘in’ person that Guenter knew could help authenticate Calgary’s developing program. “He was our blue chip,” says Guenter.

Soon the Foothills had an operational pulmonary function lab, a functional ICU and an outpatient clinic with enough patients to give future trainees exposure to a wide range of lung diseases. Guenter, Whitelaw and Shaw compiled every piece of supporting evidence they had for the application package and, in 1978, the University of Calgary’s Respiratory Medicine training program was approved.

The medical school hadn’t become a Safeway, after all.