Dr. Bill Whitelaw, 1978–1997
Medicine was not a career Bill Whitelaw considered when he started an honours physics degree at UBC in 1959 despite having a father who was a leading Vancouver internist and a professor of medicine. After two years, Bill transferred to the University of Toronto, following his parents when his father accepted an academic position there. In his last year of physics he decided to apply to medical school, eventually selecting McGill because he had never lived in Montreal.
During his third year of postgraduate medical training, Whitelaw applied for an international assistance program that McGill started in Kenya. He lost out to future medical leader, Peter Paré, but the idea of using his medical skills in a developing country had already grabbed hold. Together with his wife, Jenny, they went through the New York Times Almanac’s summary of almost every country in the world. Their top pick was Uganda, although they had no idea if there was work there or how to find it.
Jenny was the Dean of Medicine’s executive assistant at the time. The Dean overheard her telling colleagues what she and her third-year internal medicine resident husband wanted to do. Fortuitously, one of his best friends, Kris Somers, a brilliant clinician, was the head of cardiology in Mulago Hospital, Kampala. Before long, the Whitelaws were on their way to Uganda where Bill could learn tropical medicine and cardiology and assist with teaching and patient care.
After a year in Uganda, Whitelaw began pursuing his PhD at McGill’s Department of Physiology, studying the function of respiratory muscles and the control of breathing with Joseph Milic-Emili. During his third and final year Whitelaw, who had just secured funding to go to Edinburgh for additional clinical training in respiratory medicine, received a letter from Clarence Guenter in Calgary inviting him to consider a job. Whitelaw, who already had plans to return to a McGill faculty position was about to turn Guenter down when Milic-Emili suggested there was no harm in meeting Guenter and hearing him out. One look at Bill’s face upon his return told Jenny the couple was heading West. Clarence Guenter is a very hard person to say no to.
While in Edinburgh, Guenter asked Whitelaw to check out how intensive care was evolving in the UK, since Calgary was going to open a four bed unit. There were only two ICUs in the UK, a choice between Glasgow and London. Two weeks in St. Thomas Hospital in London gave him some ideas from the brilliant, ingenious eccentric who had single handedly invented and constructed all the monitors and intravascular pressure sensors for a fifteen-bed ICU and was managing all the cases by himself.
Whitelaw finally arrived in Calgary in 1976 with his signature neckties to join the small group of clinicians with a special interest in respiratory medicine at the Foothills Hospital. After setting up his research lab, he worked with Guenter to obtain Royal College accreditation for the pulmonary postgraduate training program.
An accomplished researcher, clinician and educator, Whitelaw became a logical yet resistant choice to take over from Guenter as head of Respiratory Medicine. After accepting, he carried on in the position for 19 years, during which he helped to build and foster a collaborative group of respirologists at the Foothills Hospital that eventually spread to the entire city.
Whitelaw wrote several classic articles on diaphragm structure and function. He spent several years working with Karen Rimmer, who trained in clinical respiratory medicine and in respiratory muscle research. Their technique of placing small recording needle electrodes into the intercostal muscles that run between the ribs allowed them to understand the activation of different muscle types during the breathing cycle. On separate occasions, while running tests on themselves, both Whitelaw and Rimmer managed to collapse their own lung by placing the needles just a little too deep.
After turning over the Division Head reins to Bob Cowie in 1997, Whitelaw helped Peter Cruse, a Professor of Surgery, develop the modern Calgary history of medicine program at the Faculty of Medicine. Whitelaw retired from the Faculty in 2007.