It was a well-lived life marked with academic success, travel, community, a family to be proud of, and an Order of Canada to boot.
Roy Shephard died at the Sea to Sky Community Hospice on Feb. 27, at the age of 93.
He will be missed by many far and wide.
For many folks in Brackendale, he was a fixture.
His daughter Rachel notes that as his health gradually faded, Shephard still went out in all weather for a daily walk around Brackendale.
At the coffee shop, Bean Around The World, he would enter with his trusty walker. He became such a regular that he gained his own button on the till — #18, "Roy's coffee.”
“He remained grateful for the beautiful surroundings and the kind neighbours who stopped for a chat as he did his rounds,” Rachel told The Squamish Chief.
The day before his passing, on Feb 26, Shephard wrote out the important markers of his life.
Early Days
As a boy in London, he liked “pick-up games of cricket and soccer, sailing a small boat, playing miniature golf and not very productive fishing in a small pond,” he wrote.
The Second World War brought fears that London would be invaded, so his family found shelter in the small village of Colwyn, which was spared the horrors of war.
Academic success came early for Shephard. He did so well in “grammar school” that he earned a scholarship to medical school at the University of London.
After graduating in 1952, he went to the Cardiac Department of Guy’s Hospital in central London, where his main responsibility was the cardiac catheterization of “blue babies” in preparation for “the new vogue of open-heart surgery.”
His research on these children provided material for a Doctorate in Physiology.
He then joined the National service, serving as a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force.
He was stationed at the Institute of Aviation Medical in Farnborough, where he carried out research on pressure suits, which enabled pilots to survive at altitudes as great as 70,000 feet in the event of cabin failure.
He married Muriel Cullum in 1956.
The pair ended up in Cincinnati, where he worked as an assistant professor in the Public Health Department of the University of Cincinnati.
His main duty there was to study the effects of air pollution on the elderly residents of nursing homes.
The couple later went back to England, where Shephard studied methods of protection against nerve gas.
It was during this time that his two daughters, Sarah and Rachel, were born.
In 1964, the family followed Shephard’s career to Toronto, where he was a professor of physiology.
There, he was charged with encouraging the general population to engage in adequate amounts of physical exercise to optimize health. For these efforts, he was later given the Order of Canada.
“He established Canada’s first doctoral program in exercise physiology and mentored countless scientists in the field,” reads the Government of Canada announcement of his award.
In 1989, Roy and Muriel moved to Squamish to be near their daughter Rachel.
Brackendale bound
As with us all, Shephard was more than the sum of his milestones and career parts.
There are the meaningful little things that are big on reflection.
“On first arrival, Brackendale seemed a little remote,” Shephard wrote.
But the couple soon made a happy life for themselves.
Shephard said he enjoyed participating in the choirs directed by Veronica McPhee and Ian Brown at the United Church, the walking group for seniors led by Joyce Baroni, the conversational French classes led by Judy Vetsch, the concerts organized by the Howe Sound Performing Arts Society and the “perpetual warm welcome” at events organized by Thor and Dorte Froslev at the Brackendale Art Gallery.
After their father had a cancer scare, Rachel began a new tradition with him of “monthly birthdays,” marked by a delicious homemade cake.
These much-anticipated events were a highlight in his calendar for over 20 years.
Welcomed his girls into his world
His daughters recall that as they were growing up, their dad loved his work as a professor, and it was often difficult for them to pull him away from his scientific articles and papers.
But over the years, they found a couple of sure-fire enticements.
“He could never refuse the offer of a game of ping-pong, a walk to the local 7-11 for a Mars bar, or hearing the strains of a favourite hymn or number from a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta coming from the piano,” Sarah wrote to The Squamish Chief.
As he travelled the world for conferences, he would always find beautiful dolls wearing exquisite traditional clothing to bring home for his girls.
His way of interacting with his daughters was to invite them to share in his world.
“He loved gardening, so he gave us each a small garden plot and pocket money for seeds so that we could sow and tend flowers too. He avidly collected stamps and enjoyed having our help when he sorted the new ones that had come in from colleagues from all over the globe ... He loved music and patiently taught us to read music ... We were also welcome in his workshop and were given — dreadfully blunt — little saws and scraps of wood to join in as he worked on his projects around the home."
Sarah noted that her father imparted his values and ethics on his girls.
Sundays were spent in church.
As an exercise expert, he was a firm believer in the value of physical fitness, so the family always walked to and from service.
But he always embraced new ideas, his daughters noted.
"We daughters grew up in the 70s and 80s and became involved, as did our Mum, in the women’s movement," Sarah recalled. "As Dad became aware of the inequalities we were facing, he became a feminist too, making a point of seeking out qualified women to hire as professors in his department and rewriting many hymns and prayers for his church congregation so as to be inclusive.”
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**Please note that this story has been corrected since it was first posted to say that the Shephards moved to Squamish in 1998 not 1988.
