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Friday, December 23, 2016

Seasonal Greetings

Every week my cleaning lady laments how fast the time flies. It really does fly, no doubt about it. Doris Lessing said in one of her novels that this is an age-related thing, related also to the way our concept of time as the fourth dimension is linked to to the three dimensions of length, breadth and depth. You should read her thoughtful comments for yourself -- if my memory is reliable you'll find them in The Golden Notebook.

So I'll paste here the "Annual Report and Seasonal Greetings" that I fired off by email to family members and friends scattered around the world --

Seasonal Greetings and Annual Report, 2016

Greetings to my family, friends and neighbours! 
2016 has been the quietest year of my life yet, so I have very little news to report. I gave up driving early in the year, and once a week a ‘Personal Care Worker’ drives me to the neighborhood supermarket, on a hunt-and-gather expedition. Most of the rest of the week I spend in my comfortable apartment, surrounded by beloved books, many of which I’m rereading. My daughter Rebecca and her husband Richard call in to see me several times each week, and cook a tasty meal for me on one of these visits.  A lady from Abbottsford House (our neighbourhood community centre) comes weekly to cook another excellent meal. My sons David and Jonathan phone me several times every week, and visit me when they come to Ottawa. I hear from my grandchildren too, often enough to know we are plugged into each other’s circuits. 

 In emails I’ve mentioned the children’s story I began writing in 2014.  I’d forgotten all about this story until I was reminded by finding a mention of it in my beloved Wendy’s diary for 1962.  I made up this story to relieve the boredom our two toddlers, Rebecca and David, complained about on a long sea voyage back to Australia in1962 after a year in London.  Somewhere in the Indian Ocean, between the Red Sea and the Western Australian coast we ran out of children’s books to read to them. The kids mutinied when I suggested reading Winnie the Pooh to them yet again. They demanded that I make up a story.  Remembering the parrot that sat on the shoulder of Long John Silver in Robert Louis Stephenson’s adventure story Treasure Island, I made up a story with that parrot as the leading character.  I didn’t write it down in 1962, and when I began to write it in 2014, the characters came to life in my head and took over their story.  Soon I had a story of about 35,000 words, about the length of Treasure Island.  It’s been great fun to write this story.  Now I’ve found a publisher, who is helping me to identify an illustrator.  Unless there are unforeseen hitches, this book should be published in about 6 months. It’s suitable for children aged 8-12, and I’ve had favourable feedback from several children in this age group, who’ve read it. The story is being published by Friesen Press, will be out in 5-6 months; the main holdup is finding an illustrator — a story for 8-12 year old children must have pictures! I might have found an illustrator now, and if so publication time should be shortened.

In September I had my 90th birthday. I was born in 1926, the same year as Fidel Castro, Marilyn Monroe, and our lady sovereign Queen Elizabeth II, among other distinguished people. We had several celebrations, including a spectacular one at the medical school when former students and colleagues said and wrote all sorts of kind things about me.  I have a PDF record of this event, a sort of ‘festschrift,’  and will be happy to send this to you if you’d like to see it. 

Have a very happy solstice, Diwali, Hannukah, Christmas, and/or seasonal festival of your choice!

Yours ever,

John

Saturday, December 17, 2016

Select a poltroon to lead ... and stand clear

The poltroon the American electors "selected" to lead them for the next four years hasn't taken office yet, but is already demonstrating his unfitness for the high office of president of the United States, and de facto leader of the so-called free world. 

The quotes around 'selected' indicate my incredulity that this has happened.  It would only be possible in the undemocratic nation that USA is. Hilary Clinton got 2 1/2 million votes more than Trump, but thanks to the undemocratic nature of the 'electoral college' system -- a classic example of gerrymandering at its worst --  Trump secured an overwhelming victory.

Trump has selected a cabinet that can only be described as far-right. Its highest priority seems to be to undo the very modest steps Obama took to make governance in the USA more even-handed. Some appointments, notable the next ambassador to Israel, bode ill for the wider world far beyond the Arab-Israeli conflict.

I'm glad in a selfish way that at 90 years of age, I won't have much longer to lament the parlous plight the world faces. But I'm apprehensive about the instability Trump is inflicting on the world, even before he takes office.  

Sunday, December 4, 2016

Crows

Crows are known to be very intelligent birds. Scientists who study animal behaviour have demonstrated this by applying problem-solving tests, in which crows out-perform all other species and breeds. Observing their behaviour through the picture windows of our apartment, Wendy and I, and a visitor we had that afternoon, were astonished late one winter afternoon about 15 years ago, when a vast procession flew past.  It was a gathering much too large to fit the collective noun, a murder of crows, which fits a small group gathered in a tree, cawing away at one another, chattering about the latest crow gossip. No, what we saw that late winter afternoon, was more like a convention of all the crows in Eastern Ontario and West Quebec.

I've seen similar large gatherings a few more times since that first one which caught Wendy's and my attention, the latest today, when I saw squadrons of crows converging towards a destination just east of my apartment building, out of sight from my windows. I think they came down to roost in the big trees alongside the Canal. As on previous occasions I'd estimate the numbers must have been well into the tens of thousands, perhaps even more.  

I hope scientists who study animal behaviour will soon develop ways to communicate with crows and other intelligent species, like porpoises and whales. We have much to learn to them -- and they have much to learn from us!

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Cloud Messenger

In many ways, my friend Karen Trollope Kumar is like another daughter. She is in the same age group as my kids, and over the decades of our friendship, as I've followed the course of her life, and the lives of her husband Pradeep and their children Sonia and Raman, I've felt sometimes as if I am part of her family and she, Pradeep, Sonia and Raman, are part of my family. It is a warm, loving, and privileged relationship that I treasure almost as much as I treasure the family ties that bind me to my children and grandchildren. 

Karen is a gifted writer, perhaps in part a genetic endowment (she is descended from Anthony Trollope); and my friendship with her originated in part through my admiration for her writing. As a Canadian medical student (at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia) Karen went to Lucknow, where she met a handsome young Indian physician. After a 4-year courtship, conducted like Wendy's and mine, largely in letters back and forth, Karen and Pradeep were married in India, in a traditional Hindu ceremony. After their marriage they practised for about 11 years in rural clinics in the Himalayan foothills. Throughout their years in India, Karen wrote to me often, beautifully written letters about their life and work.Then they came to Canada, and Karen joined the McMaster University family practice department. She wrote her MA and a PhD in medical anthropology, on her work in India. Then, encouraged by me and others, she wrote a lovely memoir, Cloud Messenger, about her life and work in India.  Throughout several drafts of this book, I've offered occasional advice and suggestions which Karen has generously acknowledged in the published book which has just been produced by Friesen Press. I'll be promoting this book, and doing my best to boost sales.

Fidel Castro 1926-2016

My distinguished contemporary Fidel Castro died last week. Cuba is rightly mourning his passing, but Cuban exiles in Miami, many allied with the corrupt criminal gang led by the arch criminal Battista, are rejoicing at the death of a man they regarded as a tyrant, and slavering for a renewal of their opportunity to pillage and rape their homeland. It's hard to get an impartial view of Cuba. American perspectives are warped by their paranoid hatred of communism. Amnesty International has published evidence of political repression, with suppression of dissident political views, but the situation would appear to be no worse than in many other non-democratic nations, and indeed better than many.

Fidel Castro transformed health and education in Cuba, elevated his small, isolated nation to a leading position in the rank order of health indicators and educational achievement not only in the region but also in the wider world. Moreover, he exported Cuban health workers throughout Latin America and parts of Africa, where they did much to improve health, set educational standards and helped establish public administration free of graft and corruption. Above all, Fidel Castro and his government stood up to the economic embargo and enormous might of the USA for half a century, so his David versus Goliath struggle evokes reluctant respect and admiration even from enemies. He had the respect and friendship of many social democratic nations in Europe, as well as here in Canada

Wendy and I had two splendid holidays in Cuba. It's a beautiful country with a graceful old capital city, Havana. This is rightly listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  But it is dilapidated,  and widespread repairs and renovations are urgently needed. I've met and interacted with Cuban health workers and staff members of the excellent medical school and school of public health. They impress me greatly. It is most regrettable that Cuba has been the victim of the mindless American "anticommunist" paranoia. History would be very different if successive American administrations from Eisenhower onward had reached out a helping hand to Cuba, rather than doing their utmost to bring the regime down. On the other hand, it's refreshing to visit a nation free of American fast food outlets, golden arches, pizza huts and the like...

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Periodic madness resurgent

I associate the phrase 'periodic madness' of the American people with John le Carre. I have a feeling he may not have coined the phrase but he certainly used it. It resonates, and it has historical and contemporary relevance. It has been a profoundly destructive force, responsible for the civil war, Prohibition, the paranoid world view that regards all left of centre political opinions as communist, therefore tainted and candidates for rejection. A diverse range of movements illustrate its perennial relevance, perhaps none better than 'right to life' versus 'freedom of choice' which stand in stark opposition to each other. The Right to Life movement attracts supporters who do not shrink from committing murder in support of their cause, as well as destruction, including bombing of family planning clinics, suppression and censorship of education on human reproduction. On the same wave length is visceral hatred of scientific evidence that refutes and disproves the arguments made in support of their cause. Their cause is associated with right-wing political causes.

All these and many other factors, notably the political economy of the USA and disaffection with the established order of society, consolidated into a movement powerful enough, irresistible enough, to elect Donald Trump as 45th president of the United States. It's far too soon to predict the ultimate outcome but the election was tantamount to a revolution. It isn't just my innate pessimism speaking when I say that I can't see anything good or desirable coming from this presidential election. On the contrary, I can see many possibilities for bad and undesirable consequences both for the USA and for the world as a whole.

Monday, October 31, 2016

A festschrift

Early in the summer, we had a double celebration, the Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine was upgraded to a School of Public Health. For political reasons it was named the School of Epidemiology, Public Health and Preventive Medicine, SEPHPM for short. At the same time, we had a slightly premature celebration of my 90th birthday, which we called a festschrift. It was a delightful celebration, at which former students, colleagues, and family members said and wrote all sorts of pleasant things.  

Here is a record of the festschrift. It begins with my brother Peter's reminiscences, and concludes with my own memories, greatly condensed from my memoirs.

[Unfortunately the PDF of the festschrift will not transfer to my blog]

Monday, October 17, 2016

Lehonde Lucas ('Frosty') Hoare, MB, BS, FRCS, FRACS (1926-2016)

The sad news reached me a few days ago, that Frosty Hoare has died. He was my medical school class mate, my good friend from 1944 when we first met, a regular at our Sunday tennis parties when we got our lawn tennis court operating in 1946, and my 'best man' when Wendy and I married in 1957. His wife Betty, also a regular at the Sunday tennis parties, was Wendy's matron of honour. Whenever we were back in Adelaide after we left, we almost always dropped in to see them on our return visits, and Frosty came to visit us in Edinburgh and in Ottawa.  It's true to say that our lives were intertwined. He was one of my oldest and closest friends. His death reduces to a small handful the ranks of the 49ers, the 1949 graduates from the University of Adelaide medical school.

He made his medical career in surgery, set off to train in the UK very soon after we graduated at the end of 1949.  I remember a pub meal with him and Frank Bell, another class mate and embryonic surgeon, in London in 1952 or 1953. Both envied my suntanned skin -- I'd just returned to London after a back packing holiday in Europe -- and although I never mentioned it, I envied them their postgraduate diplomas and their certainty about the career paths they had chosen. In the early 1950s I didn't yet know what I wanted to do with my life.

Frosty knew what he wanted to do and set about doing it with commendable determination. He realized, for instance, that as a consultant surgeon the entire state was his bailiwick, not just the metropolitan area,  and that it would be useful to be able to fly to remote rural regions. Accordingly he took lessons, learnt how to fly himself so he could fly to rural consultations.

He and Betty lived quiet, unassuming lives. Whenever Wendy and I saw them, for instance at a class reunion in 2005, they retained their youthful good cheer.

The photo shows our wedding group on 14 February 1957: L-R: Frosty Hoare (best man) John, Wendy, Betty Hoare (matron of honour)
wedding group.jpg


Monday, September 26, 2016

Status

Here's a summary, lazily copied from an email to Wendy's nieces and nephews in New Zealand:

Thank you very much for the birthday greetings.  I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that I’ve survived so long, but it does seem to be a reality, not a figment of my imagination.

We had an impromptu celebratory dinner 2 days before my 90th birthday, when David was in Ottawa, testifying to a senate committee, and another on my actual birthday, when we were joined by my youngest grandson, John Last junior, a very interesting young man, and his lady love, Emily Beresford. A third party had to be cancelled when the hostess’s Mum, aged 96, had a bad turn(she’s OK now, I’m happy to report). Two parties were at least one more than I deserved!

I’m in good condition. I gave up driving a few months ago, on the principle of ‘quit while ahead’ — i.e. before I harmed others and myself, by driving with impaired judgement, as tell-tale dents and scratches on my car’s body-work revealed. I rely on family and a weekly ‘personal care worker’ to ferry me hither and yon, and this is working well. Otherwise, no serious complaints.  If I develop any distressing irreversible ailments, it’s comforting to know we have a system in place in this enlightened country of Canada now, akin to those of Switzerland, Holland and Belgium.  But I hope I won’t ever have to make use of this, that a gentle, natural exit from this life awaits me at some future unspecified time. Meantime, I’ll soldier on, or plod on, making the best of things as I cope with a dozen or more chronic disabilities,  all minor and endurable. 

Two bits of unfinished business are to lick my memoirs into publishable shape, and to find an illustrator and publisher for my story for children.  The memoirs run to about 130K words, and need to be cut to about 80K.  I summarized them in a post on my blog, on June 11.  I have indeed had a very interesting, worthwhile life, much of it shared with my beloved Janet Wendy, whom I miss more than words can express. She plays a prominent part in my memoirs, which gives me a powerful incentive to lick them into shape and publish them.

There's much more I could add, but the above summary covers all that matters.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

90 years old today

I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that I’ve survived so long.
I’m in good condition, living alone since Wendy's death. I gave up driving a few months ago, on the principle of ‘quit while ahead’ — i.e. before I harmed others and myself, driving with judgement impaired, as tell-tale dents and scratches on my car’s body-work revealed. I rely on family and a weekly ‘personal care worker’ to ferry me hither and yon, and this is working well. If I develop any distressing irreversible ailments, it’s comforting to know we have a system in this enlightened country of Canada, akin to those of Switzerland, Holland and Belgium. But I hope I won’t have to make use of this, that a gentle, natural exit from this life awaits me at some future unspecified time. Meantime, I’ll plod on, making the best of things as I cope with a dozen or more chronic disabilities, all minor and endurable. 
This morning the phone has run red hot, and my email inbox is stuffed with greetings from Oz, NZ, Europe, UK, USA and Canada.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

"Have you read any good books lately?"

The question, "Have you read any good books lately?" can be a useful conversation-starter.  Or it can be an excuse to display one's erudition.  I hope it's the former, but even when it is, much depends on the meaning of "good" in the context of the subsequent conversation. Let's say that "good" means thought-provoking, well-written, cogently argued, witty, a useful contribution to discussions about the human condition, or some combination of some or all of these and other qualities.  It can also be used as one criterion to identify classes of fiction, to distinguish literary fiction from Harlequin romances, whodunnits, westerns, Young Adult fiction, science fiction, etc. Serious literary critics focus their attention on serious, or what is often described as "Literary fiction." They rarely define what they mean by this term, but many could probably parry the question with the same rejoinder offered by a judge who had to assess a literary work accused of being pornographic. Asked to define pornography, he replied that he could not define it, but could recognize it when he saw it.  In the same way, I like to think I can identify literary fiction, and offer convincing examples, although I'd be hard pressed to define it.

From time to time I've flirted with the question, or tried to answer it in posts on my blog.  Here is another attempt.    Consider three currently popular authors, P D James, John le Carre, Alexander McCall Smith. Are their works literary fiction? All have been interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel.  I regard being interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel as one of the indicators that a writer creates literary fiction. I regard the works of P D James, John le Carre and Alexander McCall Smith as literary fiction. The first two are on many other people’s lists; Alexander McCall Smith is on my list because he is a philosopher-ethicist, and rather frequently he smuggles tricky ethical problems into his otherwise light-hearted stories.

Eleanor Wachtel is one of the brightest stars in CBC's excellent firmament. Years ago I used to make sure I had no other commitments from 3-4 pm on Sunday afternoons, tune the radio to CBC Radio One, and listen "live" as her conversations with writers came over the air. I rarely do this now, because these interviews are available as podcasts, and many of the best ones have been published in books: Writers and Company, More Writers and Company, Original Minds, and most recently, The Best of Writers and Company, published a few months ago. If you love books and reading, and want to get better acquainted with some of the best living writers, dip into any of these collections. No.  I defy you just to dip in. You won't be able to stop until you've read the entire collection. Several of the writers she has interviewed have volunteered the opinion that they have never encountered an interviewer as good as Eleanor Wachtel.  On the Sunday of the Labor Day weekend, she reprised her interview with Nuala O'Failan, the most Irish of modern Irish writers who, at any rate in this interview, demonstrated the uniquely Irish combination of hilarious, high-spirited comedy and heart-breaking personal tragedy. Her family history illustrates by example the common Irish tragedy of family social pathology, inability to form and sustain loving relationships with other members of the family.  Alcohol dependence plays a role too, as does the distraction of precarious employment. Eleanor Wachtel captured all this and much more in a 50-minute interview.

That interview isn't among the 15 in The Best of Writers and Company. Perhaps Nuala O'Failan doesn't rate high enough on the scale of excellence (which raises another interesting and useful question:  Is it possible to "rate" the excellence of literary works on a linear scale? I don't believe it is).

The subjects of Eleanor Wachtel’s 15 best interviews include Nobel Laureates, Booker Prize winners and other literary luminaries, promising young comers, and writers who are interesting for various other reasons. They include Jonathan Franzen, Doris Lessing, J M Coetzee, Hilary Mantel, Orhan Pamuk, Seamus Heaney, Toni Morrison, Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, Zadie Smith, and others. I’ve named some of the authors she has interviewed. She has also visited countries and regions of the world where she has interviewed representative authors whose interviews I particularly enjoyed, but all are worth reading. In correspondence with her I’ve suggested that she could do more of these regional clusters, and I hope she will.


If there are readers of Ottawa Review of Books who are not yet acquainted with these collections of interviews, I encourage you to get acquainted. Eleanor Wachtel is without doubt one of Canada’s leading literary luminaries. She will bring you into close contact with some of the most interesting writers now plying their art and craft.

Sunday, July 24, 2016

A milestone I'd be happy not to pass

Yesterday a long, eventful, pleasurable phase of my life passed into history: I sold my car, so from now on, other people drive me about.  I'm just a passenger. As the dealer drove my car away, I watched fondly as my personalized licence plate, LASTONE disappeared around the corner.

I quit while I was ahead, before I had any serious accidents, before I put other other road users and myself in harm's way. The body work of my car had a few dents and scratches due to minor errors of judgement when parking, not to violent encounters with other cars. Those dents and scratches are the tell-tale evidence of age-related decline in my judgement of distance, warning signals I probably ignored for a few years longer than was wise.

I've been driving since I was about 14-15 and have innumerable happy memories, as well as a tiny handful of unhappy ones. Memories of exploring Scotland and England, Canada and USA, Australia and New Zealand, from behind the steering wheel (actually, a less than perfect perspective because the driver must watch the road and traffic on it, not the scenery). Yet I was able to see much spectacular scenery in many parts of the world, often pausing on our travels so all of us in the family could admire it. 

There's another set of memories too.  I belong to the generation that conducted courtship in the privacy of a car. I did a bit more: I met the love of my life when I picked up a pair of young women who were hitch hiking, as I've related more than once in earlier posts on this blog. Those memories too are very pleasurable, and I'll treasure them along with all the other pleasurable memories I can call upon. I forget who said it and forget the elegant phrases in which the sentiment was couched, but I'm finding as many others before me have found, that a large part of what is pleasurable about growing old is in the life of the mind and all the memories stored in the mind. My long, eventful, worthwhile life has allowed me to accumulate rich tapestries, vast continents of meaningful memories. Almost all of them are happy memories. Either only a tiny minority are unhappy, or I am blessed with the capacity to remember happy events and times,to forget and suppress  unhappy ones. I am profoundly grateful for this fact.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Another Bastille Day

Bastille Day. I've had several memorable Bastille Days. In 1954 near the end of a back-packing holiday in Europe I'd looked forward to the final highlight, being in Paris for the Bastille Day festivities. But all the festivities were cancelled, even the floodlit fountains in Place de la Concorde darkened. The French had suffered a major military defeat: the Viet Cong had over-run the fortress of Dien Bien Phu.
In 1977 I flew to New York to sign the contract for my first go as editor of the huge reference textbook of public health, now known as Maxcy-Rosenau-Last. But electrical storms caused massive power outages. I had to walk up 37 flights to the luxury suite the publishers had reserved for me, and -- worse -- had to walk down next morning in total darkness; and a luxury lunch at a posh restaurant was off too, replaced by strip steak and luke warm root beer from a barrow outside the NY Public Library on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. I signed that first contract on Bastille Day 1977.

Friday, July 8, 2016

Memorable road trips

Last weekend's CBC Radio program "Fresh Air" included a segment on memorable and scenically spectacular road trips. I fired off an email reinforcement, mentioning a few of my own trips. 
Here's what I said:

The discussion about road trips reminded me how fortunate I’ve been.  In rough chronological order the most memorable have been the drive from Canberra to the south coast highway, and on to Sydney along a lovely coast past Sublime Point and Bulli Lookout, to Botany Bay — the rest of the drive into Sydney though heavily built up industrial areas is not as pleasant.

From Loch Lomond back to Edinburgh in our VW camper van, over the pass called Rest and Be Thankful. The first time we did this we couldn’t see much because of thick misty rain, and the journey was memorable mainly  for aromatic dog farts and carsick toddlers. Fortunately my wife and I made that trip again many years later, without carsick kids and farting Labrador puppies, on a sparkling sunny day when we could admire the scenery, which is some of the loveliest in Britain.

Ottawa to Cape Cod through upstate NY, across Lake Champlain then along the Interstate through Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The drive through Vermont and New Hampshire must be one of those rare excursions on which a busy expressway passes through such beautiful scenery.

Finally, perhaps most spectacular, several other trips in our VW camper van from Edinburgh to Northern Italy via the Rhine Valley and the Swiss Alps. Fortunately 5 years in Edinburgh gave us — our kids really — a chance to visit  some of the castles on both the left and right banks of the Rhine.  Adults like my wife and I thought most of the castles were rather over-rated but our 3 preteen kids loved them.
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In the course of my long and interesting life I've enjoyed innumerable road trips in many parts of the world: UK, Europe, North America, Colombia, South America, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, India, Sri Lanka. I must dust off my fading memories and write a coherent account of them. I won't attempt to say which is the 'best' of them, still less try to rank them in order according to any criteria. I can timidly offer the opinion that rail travel is often better than road, at any rate in much of Western Europe, and in Japan.


Thursday, June 16, 2016

Bloomsday

Bloomsday. June 16. For once I've remembered to commemorate it on the actual date, June 16, the date in 1904 that Leopold Bloom, Stephen Daedalus, Molly Bloom, and the other characters in James Joyce's great novel did all those mundane and memorable things in Dublin. I spent an hour or two in their company this morning and came away as convinced as ever that Ulysses is one of the greatest novels in the English language, perhaps the very greatest. When we lived in Manhattan in 1978-79, one of the book shops we frequented had a reading on WNYC of the entire novel, all the way from "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan..." to "yes I said, yes I will Yes." It took all day and well into the evening, read by well known stage actors and radio personalities. Wendy and I went into that book shop mid morning, couldn't tear ourselves away until a very late lunch time. Ulysses read aloud is addictive.

Saturday, June 11, 2016

John Last writes: Haphazard memories.

(Adapted from my contribution in the commemorative Festschrift book)
Thank you all for all the kind and wonderful things you’ve said about me.

And special thanks, Mariella Peca, Jen Collins and others, for all your hard work organizing this celebration and assembling this anthology to commemorate it.

I’ve been described as a ‘living legend’ and as a ‘towering figure’ (this, obviously, by people who’d never seen me in the flesh). My daughter Rebecca used politically correct language to describe me as ‘vertically challenged.’

Having survived 90 years, I’m not, and never was, superstitious.  But I have had a very lucky life, no doubt about it. I chose a fortunate birth cohort, the babies born in 1926.  It’s the birth cohort of Fidel Castro, Marilyn  Monroe, Hugh Hefner of Playboy, and our lady sovereign Queen Elizabeth. Oh, and Winnie-the-Pooh came into this world in 1926.

Childhood before the 1939-45 world war was a time of innocence.  I explored the beaches and rock pools where the hills came down to the sea near Adelaide, and rode my bike through the orchards and vineyards behind the coast, in a bountiful land where the climate and weather were nearly perfect.  When the war came, cousins a few years older than I put on uniforms and disappeared. One never returned. His widow, a pretty young woman and her baby daughter, moved in with my uncle’s family. Wartime austerity was petrol rationing and gas producers, large bags of combustible gas on car roofs.

In the 1940s my brother Peter and I lived with our mother in a bungalow in the seaside Adelaide suburb of Glenelg.  This was a 25-30 minute tram ride from the city centre, and a 5 minute bike ride from a wide, sandy beach where we could swim in warm, calm sea from October to April. Our family was broken: our father, a country doctor who later became a surgeon and anatomist, walked out of his marriage to our mother when I was about 6 and Peter about 3.  Our mother was left to raise two boys on her own. Peter and I and many others agree that she did a superb job, equipping us with social graces, work ethic, and values that took us far in life.

Scholarships and bursaries paid for a first class education at St Peter’s College, an excellent boy’s school, and paid in full for tuition at the University of Adelaide where I started the medical course in 1944, at the age of 17. I intended to take leave from the medical course and join the army when I turned 18, but it was clear by then that the 1939-45 world war was winding down so it was unnecessary for me to join the armed forces and help to defend Australia.

There was a lawn in front of our home that was screened with chain link fencing after the war ended, and became a lawn tennis court. Here on Sundays my medical student friends, reinforced with several nurses, enjoyed tennis parties every weekend. Some of my happiest memories are of those tennis parties and of the celebrations we held as we passed milestones – the formidable examinations and practical tests of clinical skills in medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, etc. Birthday and engagement parties as the tennis players paired off in a process of assortative mating, punctuated an otherwise placid social life.

I graduated from medical school in 1949, and spent 1950 as an intern at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. At that stage and age I did not feel ready to settle down, so like many other young Australian doctors, I headed for the UK where I spent three years getting experience, mainly in internal and emergency medicine, in National Health Service hospitals in and on the outskirts of London. In 1952, I took the excellent postgraduate course mounted by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and lived in the lovely city of Edinburgh for several months; but I flunked the exams at the end of the course, partly because I chose a very difficult specialty, cardiology, partly because my heart really wasn’t in it. I was more interested in broadening my cultural horizons and exploring Britain and Europe in back-packing holidays.  I went to Paris in the spring of 1952 and fell in love with the City of Light. It was the first of many visits to Paris.

In 1954 I returned to Australia, traveling as a ship’s surgeon on a freighter carrying 12 passengers.  We sailed from Tilbury Docks to Tenerife in the Canary Islands, then nonstop down the west coast of Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Southern Ocean in the ‘Roaring Forties,’ to landfall off Kangaroo Island, South Australia – four weeks without a port. I look back on that sea voyage as one of the highlights of my life, a magnificent experience in every way. I love the sea in all its moods, saw all of them on that long voyage, and loved every minute of it. One way I'm lucky is that I don't get sea sick.

I joined the Western Clinic, a large suburban group medical practice in the western suburbs of Adelaide.  I greatly enjoyed family doctoring, was judged by my colleagues to be competent and capable. I was an active member of the nascent College of General Practitioners and began to tiptoe tentatively into research in the context of general practice. As much by accident as design, I began to study epidemiology.  I found it an exhilarating and exciting career path.

On Sunday September 25 1955, on my way to play golf, I picked up two young women hitch hikers, nurses who’d just finished a year at Princess Margaret Rose children’s hospital in Perth, one from Zurich, Switzerland, one from Christchurch, NZ. I was instantly attracted to the New Zealander: 5-10 minutes after we met I made a suggestion that changed our lives. They were on the wrong road for their intended destination; I should have dropped them at the next cross road.  Instead I abandoned my planned golf game, suggested that they change their plans, to let me show them some of the beautiful dairy farming and wine growing country south of Adelaide.  By the end of that magical day, after long conversations with the Kiwi called Jan Wendelken, also known as Wendy, I knew she was the maid for me.
Jan Wendelken and John Last
planning a better world, Yankalilla, S Aust, 1955.09.25


Our courtship began with 125 letters, mostly 8, 10, 12 handwritten pages, between October 1955 and May 1956, two or more letters a week, back and forth across the Tasman Sea between Adelaide and Christchurch. We never ran short of things to say.  Then she phoned me – a big deal, a huge deal in 1956, an international phone call – and we agreed that she’d come back to Adelaide, nurse at the Children’s Hospital, while we conducted a more conventional 20th century courtship.

Wendelken-Last Correspondence 1955-56 (125 letters, mostly 8-10 handwritten pages)

  
Signing the marriage registry, St Peter’s College chapel, 1957.02.14

We married on Saint Valentine’s Day 1957 and had 55 wonderfully happy married years of writing, research work, adventurous travel and multiple intercontinental migrations – we lived long enough to put down roots in Adelaide, Sydney, London, Burlington, Vermont, Edinburgh, Scotland, and Ottawa. Later there were sabbaticals: we lived in New York City for a year in 1978-79, and for several months in Canberra and Sydney in 1986. There was much other travel, holidays in Europe, trips back to Oz and NZ to visit our families, and working travel for me in Colombia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Pakistan, China and Japan as well as many places in UK and Europe.  Also, of course, much travel in Canada and the USA.  At times I virtually commuted back and forth across the Atlantic, to Geneva, Stockholm, London, and Paris.

Our early travels were by sea on freighters carrying 12 passengers – by far the best way to travel long distances across the world. From 1965 onward, we nearly always flew, enduring all the discomforts and petty anxieties of air travel.

We found enough spare time to produce 3 children, all of whom have interesting, worthwhile lives.
David, Jonathan and Rebecca
On deck, mid-Pacific,
January 1964

Jonathan, Rebecca, David
Burlington, Vermont,
January 1965


Wendy inspired me, breathed life into all my professional endeavors, encouraged my scholarly activities, all our travels. When our kids were grown up, she usually came with me on these travels, enriching them with her astute observations.

In 1960 I left the Western Clinic and our little family, Wendy and I and two toddlers, Rebecca and David, lived on my savings while I did the DPH, then had a most exciting year as a postgraduate scholar in the Medical Research Council’s Social Medicine Research Unit, based in those days at the London Hospital Medical College in Whitechapel, in the East End of London. My mentor was Professor J N (‘Jerry’) Morris. It was without doubt the most mind-expanding year of my life. I met and networked with the movers and shakers of public health sciences in the English-speaking world and beyond, absorbed ideas from them, occasionally contributed ideas of my own.

Alas, most of those wonderful women and men of public health science who were my friends, collaborators and colleagues, have preceded me into the great field study in the sky – have fallen off their perches before me.  That’s one of the penalties one pays for a long life: it could lead to a lonely old age if I hadn’t cultivated friendships with younger colleagues. (I’ve often said that I’ve kept my youthful enthusiasm by constant reinfection from younger colleagues).                                                                           

At the end of my year in the MRC Social Medicine Research Unit, we went back to Sydney and I joined the staff of the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at the University of Sydney. Intellectual life there was stultifying but I was lucky: before long I was saved from stagnation by an invitation from Kerr White, to join his research team at the University of Vermont. This was another mind-expanding year.  I met and got to know most of the leaders of epidemiology and public health sciences in the USA. But we were culturally at odds with some aspects of the American way of life.  Kerr White invited me to accompany him when he moved from Burlington, Vermont to Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland.  Fortunately I’d had another invitation, to become a top-scale senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. It took barely a microsecond to choose between Baltimore and Edinburgh.

We had five very happy, and for me, very fruitful years in Edinburgh. I landed on my feet, becoming principal investigator in several inter-related research studies for the Royal Commission on Medical Education. Soon distinguished visitors were coming to the Usher Institute of Public Health, not to visit the professor and director, but to visit me. I also began to get attractive invitations to leave Edinburgh, to relocate to other prestigious universities elsewhere in the UK or in the USA.

When I applied for two posts in Australia and was passed over in favour of well-connected local men, I began to take the US invitations more seriously.

The climax came in the summer of 1969. I was invited to take a cross-appointment between the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. Harvard is probably the best medical school in the world. Obviously I had to look this over very carefully.  I flew across the Atlantic once again and after several days of rigorous interviews, was offered and provisionally accepted this position.

There were some obvious snags. The position was soft-funded, not tenure-track, and politically fraught – and academic politics can be vicious. Housing in Boston and Cambridge was beyond our reach: we’d have to live in a distant suburb and I’d face a very long commute, 2 hours or more at the beginning and end of every working day. And neither Wendy nor I were enthusiastic about living again in the USA, where we felt out of sync with prevailing values.  I’d had another invitation, from the man who headed the department of preventive medicine at the University of Ottawa. This was a nonentity of a university, but my friend Wendell McLeod, former dean of the University of Saskatchewan, who was executive director of the Association of Canadian Medical Colleges, urged me to consider it: it’s got nowhere else to go but up, he said. You can do a lot to lift it up. This turned out to be a prophetic statement.

I flew from Boston to Ottawa on a hot and steamy summer afternoon. I’d been booked into the lovely old but dilapidated Bytown Inn, on the corner of O'Connor and Slater streets, long since demolished and replaced with a characterless modern high rise hotel.  I walked up to Parliament Hill, then around the Canal until I came to the Glebe -- very close to where I live now. It was nearly dusk by then. Parents sat on their front steps, sipping wine, while their kids played street hockey. The University of Ottawa was just across the Canal. I had an epiphany: this was the place! This would be a much better place to raise our kids than some far distant outer suburb of Boston or Cambridge!

So we came to Ottawa. It was a most happy choice.  Half a century later I look back with a sense of accomplishment, of successful educational innovation and experiments in which students eagerly participated.  Ably aided by capable staff, notably Anne Amberg, a social worker, I integrated hospital-oriented clinical experience and a community-based focus on support networks, acquainting students with the work of the social agencies in Ottawa and Eastern Ontario. I encouraged selected students to take a ‘gap’ year to travel and work in developing countries. I was appointed Canadian representative on the NIH Epidemiology Study Section, invited to become editor in chief of the massive American textbook of public health and preventive medicine, editor of a Dictionary of Epidemiology, and wrote or edited several other successful books as well as the Canadian Journal of Public Health.
With my two dictionaries, at APHA, 2007



Five editions of Public Health and Preventive Medicine
("Maxcy-Rosenau-Last") and other books I've written or edited 

 I consulted often for the World Health Organization in developing countries and at WHO HQ in Geneva. Looking back on it all, I feel satisfied with a worthwhile life, saddened only by my beloved Wendy’s death in 2010. But it was after 55 magical years; and I console myself with the thought that by letting her go first, I behaved as a gentleman should.  I feel great pride when I reflect on her accomplishments. She could dash off a poem or a short story in an hour or two, she painted some lovely pictures that decorate our walls; and her selfless altruism and service to others led to her
Wendy receiving Caring Canadian Award
from her excellency Adrienne Clarkson,
Governor General of Canada, 2003
richly deserved Governor General’s Caring Canadian Award. 


Along with family and friends I applauded enthusiastically that day. I’m sad that she wasn’t there to applaud at the investiture in 2012 when I was appointed an Officer in the Order of Canada.
Investiture May 2012, John admitted to Order of Canada as an
Officer of the Order, by His Excellency David Johnson,
Governor General of Canada

At our 50th (Golden) wedding anniversary banquet, 2007.02.14
Standing: Jonathan, Rebecca, David
Sitting: John, Wendy

                                           John and Wendy at 50th Anniversary Banquet, 2007.02.14