Dr. Richard Leigh, 2013–2016
Richard Leigh was born in Windhoek, Namibia when it was still referred to as ‘South West Africa’ but governed by South Africa. South West Africa had been a former German colony and continued to have a strong German influence. As such, Leigh learned German from his playmates before he learned English from his South African parents. Leigh entered medical school in Cape Town in 1982, graduated at the top of his class and took a one-year internship at Frere Hospital situated along the country’s east coast. There he met his future wife, Margaret Kelly, a first-year internal medicine resident.
Conscription into the South African Defence Force sent Leigh to a rural ‘mission’ hospital in Maandagshoek (Monday’s Corner), near the Kruger national park for two years. Along with another doctor, Leigh ran the 200-bed hospital doing obstetrics, anesthesia, surgery and minor orthopedics along with a daily lineup of ambulatory patients. Despite being on call every night for 15 months he also found time to establish a much- needed TB service.
The release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 saw the end of conscription and Leigh’s service time reduced by six months.
Maandagshoek prepared him well for his next role—a one-year posting as a Senior House Officer in pulmonary/critical care and cardiology before starting internal medicine training and subsequently a fellowship in pulmonary and critical care in Cape Town. There, he and Margaret, who changed her subspecialty training to pathology, were married.
A pulmonary mentor, Eric Bateman, encouraged Leigh to head overseas for advanced training. Bateman had just returned from a sabbatical with Jim Hogg in Vancouver, so he encouraged Leigh to consider Canada rather than the more conventional UK destinations. Serendipitously, EJ Moran Campbell (a founder of McMaster Medical School and inventor of the Venturi mask) was visiting Cape Town and wanted to see a rugby match. Leigh, an avid rugby fan, gladly offered to accompany him. That happy social occasion led to an introduction to Paul O’Byrne and Freddy Hargreave, and a subsequent training opportunity for Leigh with their internationally renowned pulmonary research team at McMaster. Leigh and Kelly packed up and landed in Hamilton in 1997.
After several years, opportunities for both Leigh and Kelly were increasingly limited in South Africa. They explored opportunities across North America, including offers from Mayo Clinic, National Jewish Health in Denver, and UCSF. However, retraining, board certification, and visa issues resulted in them both choosing PhD studies and a longer-term stay in Hamilton.
In the spring of 2003, Leigh was having one of those frustrating weeks in the lab: his PhD experiments weren’t working, and a future in Hamilton was not as certain as it once had seemed. Prodded by his wife, Leigh decided to reach out to Bob Cowie in Calgary, who he knew by reputation from South Africa. Leigh emailed Cowie enquiring about opportunities for two South African trained specialists in Canada. Unbeknownst to Leigh, the Respiratory Research group in Calgary had recently posted a position for a clinician scientist. Cowie replied within the hour saying Leigh was just the sort of person that Calgary was looking for.