Dr. Ron Stewart: Physician. Medical pioneer. Teacher. Whirlwind. Born Oct. 11, 1942, in Sydney Mines, N.S.; died Oct. 21, 2024, in Halifax, from leukemia; aged 82.
Ron StewartCourtesy of family
Ten days before he died, Ron Stewart hosted an ice-cream social to thank the staff of the Halifax palliative care ward in which he had spent the previous five weeks.
That it was taking place on his 82nd birthday was both coincidence and necessity. Ron was sleeping more every day. He had already outlived his doctors’ most optimistic predictions and the 11th was a Friday; people would be off over the weekend. Adopting his slightly formal clinician’s tone, he had said it “might not be wise” to wait until Monday, “but I don’t want it to be about my birthday.”
Son of a Cape Breton coal miner, a Dalhousie medical school grad and the first of his family to go to university, Ron was named in 2023 to the Order of Canada’s highest level. The citation begins, “Fondly known as the father of emergency medicine, Ronald Stewart has improved the lives of countless individuals.” The “fondly” speaks to how he was not just respected but loved by his scores of friends and – he would roll his eyes to read this – fans.
Even he marvelled at the arc of his life – or as he would put it, at how lucky he was to have landed in places and times where he could help to make important things happen.
The nutshell version can read like hagiography in overdrive, the stories he so relished telling almost too wild to be true: The near-fatal car accident in a Cape Breton snowstorm, from which the young doctor took a year to recover. The coveted residency in emergency medicine in Los Angeles, where he dodged occasional gunfire, treated Charles Manson and trained an early generation of the city’s paramedics. In 1970s L.A. and later in Pittsburgh (where a dramatic bridge rescue added to his minor Hollywood celebrity as medical adviser to the TV show Emergency!), he cajoled hospitals and government agencies into building teams of highly trained first responders equipped with modern ambulances, helicopters and medical equipment. In L.A., he literally wrote the book on paramedic practice, working into the night over several years to create a four-volume manual with stick-figure illustrations. You can find it in a Smithsonian archive.
He moved home to Nova Scotia in 1989 and soon wound up in politics. In a single term as MLA and health minister, he pushed through major reforms to health care, including a modern ambulance system.
After politics, Ron taught at Dalhousie medical school. He travelled the world training, consulting and researching prehospital care; advising the Clinton administration on health policy; lobbying to ban landmines and restrict smoking, and sending (sometimes escorting) medical students to staff a clinic in Niger.
For most of his life, he lived a bit like a monk in the simplest housing, often shared with others. He ate in hospital cafeterias and at friends’ tables. He donated most of his money – well over a million dollars – to Dalhousie. He was occasionally wistful about missing out on a “regular life,” but said he was married to medicine, and that was that.
His lateness was legendary – he rushed into and out of meetings, meals, parties and visits, battered trench coat flapping, always just coming from that last thing or heading to the next. But once he arrived, you had his total attention.
In his so-called retirement, he was developing a retreat for paramedics on family land in his beloved Cape Breton when he received a terminal cancer diagnosis. It eventually pulled him back to Halifax for treatment and support. Ron’s version of “slowing down” included a speaking schedule, diner lunches or visits with friends and colleagues, and finishing a memoir, Treat Them Where They Lie, with writer Jim Meek.
While Ron was in palliative care, friends scheduled bedside visits to avoid lineups – not always successfully.
In November, more than 300 people from around the Maritimes and the United States came to Dalhousie to celebrate Ron Stewart. He had overseen much of the planning for that, too, and had said with a grin, “This is gonna be fun, all of you together. I wish I could be there.”
Susan Newhook is a friend of Ron Stewart.
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