Maurice McGregor was a cardiologist, professor, researcher and mentor.Courtesy of family
When Maurice McGregor graduated from high school, his father sat him down for a pragmatic talk about the future. The fact that young Maurice had not been the smartest of students did not preclude him from pursuing a career in education, law or medicine because if only the smartest were able to take on positions of authority, the world would be in a lot of trouble.
The son chose medicine because it was a field that sparked his curiosity. And, coming from a family of fierce pacifists who were all aware that a new world war was on the horizon, he wanted to be able to take part as a healer who would not have to maim or kill others.
Many years later, on the occasion of his 101st birthday, Dr. McGregor was interviewed by Ashton McCormick, then the youngest student at Michaelhouse, his high school alma mater in South Africa. Asked what advice he had to share, Dr. McGregor’s reply was simple and concise.
“You can waste life or live it,” he said.
A cardiologist, professor, researcher and mentor, Dr. McGregor, who spent most of his career in Montreal, died at his home on Aug. 4 of complications related to Parkinson’s disease. He was 105 years old, a man whose life spanned the Great Depression, a world war, the civil-rights movement, technological leaps in medicine and mankind reaching the moon.
Always a stickler for form, he held expectations of others that mirrored those he had for himself – to do their utmost and always complete projects on time and with flair. He chose his words as carefully as he wielded a scalpel in surgery, and many of his students always called him “Dr. McGregor” or “Sir,” even when they became colleagues and successful in their own right.
“I never addressed him or referred to him by his first name,” Allan Sniderman, a cardiology professor at McGill University, told a packed chapel at Dr. McGregor’s celebration of life. “But while he could appear austere and reserved, in reality, he was always personally concerned and caring, always warm and supportive. He stood by me when I was lost and celebrated with me when I found my way.
“Whatever I and my colleagues have accomplished in our research is due in large part to his support,” he continued. “Solving or resolving [an] issue mattered, not his ego or mine.”
His daughter, Margaret McGregor, who followed both her parents into medicine (her mother, Margot Becklake, was a renowned pulmonologist and epidemiologist) spoke of her father’s strict moral compass and his tendency to be curious and questioning without judgment.
From 2006 to 2009, father and daughter both served on the board of Canadian Doctors for Medicare, an organization dedicated to bolstering the health care system against encroaching privatization and the development of a two-tiered system that would allow the wealthy to buy private health insurance.
“It was wonderful to meet in the middle with him,” Margaret McGregor recalled. “Our conversations ranged around how to get the best bang for your dollar. He knew that money was limited and that for each new technology we invested in, there would be a cost, such as one less nurse on a floor. He believed deeply in national health care, but he was always pragmatic about finding some kind of balance.”
Dr. McGregor was a noted cardiologist, but was just as adept at driving a tractor through fields and mounds of dirt.Courtesy of family
Maurice McGregor was born on an orange farm near the South African village of Rustenburg on March 24, 1920, the second of Frank and Ella (neé Mills) McGregor’s two sons. His parents met in South Africa after emigrating from England at the end of the First World War; his father ran the farm while his mother, a teacher, had done all the work necessary to be awarded a chemistry degree from Oxford but was prevented from getting one because of her gender.
She put her scientific knowledge to use in the 1920s, when female members of the family were asked to make marmalade for workers in gold mines. The first product, overseen by her sister-in-law, was awful, but she used her scientific knowledge to tweak the recipe, and “McGregor Marmalade” became a bestseller.
For the first eight years of his life, young Maurice was home-schooled, then, for several years, he was sent to a boarding school that was close enough to the farm for him to come home on weekends and for holidays. He helped out on the farm, too – a boy who would become a renowned cardiologist but was just as adept at splitting wood and driving a tractor through fields and mounds of dirt.
Upon entering high school, he joined his older brother, Hugh, at Michaelhouse, more than 600 kilometres southeast of Rustenburg. Despite his father’s unstinting appraisal of his intellect, Maurice was a good student who went on to earn his medical degree at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in 1942. Afterward, he joined the war effort as a medical officer with the rank of captain in the South African Medical Corps, the British 8th Army and the U.S. 5th Army.
Although he did not have to bear arms, war and triage taught him important and disturbing lessons for he often had to decide who lived and who died. It was a balancing act – priorities weighed one against the other – that would guide him for the rest of his life.
Following the war, he continued his medical training in internal medicine and cardiology at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg Hospital and then in London, England, where he worked at three medical institutions, including the National Heart Hospital.
It was in London that he met and married Dr. Becklake, a fellow South African. The couple yearned for home, for the stark vistas that went on forever and a population that needed specialists, but upon their return in the early 1950s, they were confronted with the ugly reality of apartheid – institutionalized racism and segregation that had been introduced in 1948 as a way to guarantee the dominance of the minority white population.
This was not the country they remembered from their youth. All their lives, they had believed in peace and equality for all and now, South Africa felt cold and dangerous. The couple would go into the townships surrounding Johannesburg to drive Black residents into the city because they had so far to travel to get to their jobs, but each time, they risked being arrested by white police officers simply because the skin colour of the passengers in their car was different from their own.
So, in 1957, with their children, James and Margaret, in tow, they moved to Montreal, where Dr. McGregor was tapped to create a cardio-respiratory service with two of McGill’s teaching hospitals, the Royal Victoria and Montreal Children’s. Although it was the middle of winter, and they did not speak a word of French, they were undaunted, purchasing a large home in the Town of Mount Royal, where they were known for their generosity and seasonal house parties. They took their children on ski trips, introduced them to the Maritimes – and always, they returned to visit family in South Africa, where apartheid continued to sharpen their sense of right, wrong and injustice.
From 1966 to 1972, Dr. McGregor served as McGill University’s dean of medicine. It was a turbulent time, with virulent protests over the introduction of national health insurance, and there was even a doctors’ strike. Although he did not understand why there was such a fuss over something that was so needed, his ability to cut through to the heart of an issue and listen to all sides helped mitigate the situation.
As a researcher, he contributed to the understanding of pulmonary hypertension and coronary ischemia, where blood flow to the heart is restricted by clogged vessels, blood clots or a sudden artery spasm. He was the author or co-author of more than 180 medical publications while he was also a keeper of detailed diaries and wrote many letters and op-eds.
In 1984, the couple returned to South Africa because the University of Witwatersrand had asked Dr. McGregor to become dean of medicine and he thought he could make a difference. Even though apartheid was still in force, it was facing robust opposition; during his three-year tenure, the number of Black medical students increased from 10 per cent to 30 per cent of the student body, while the five hospitals affiliated with the university were desegregated after he pressed their directors to do so.
Upon his return to Montreal in 1987, Dr. McGregor, now a professor emeritus at McGill, was tapped to become the inaugural director of a ground-breaking provincial council that evaluated health technologies, including equipment, drugs and supplies, coming on to the health care market – the first such council in North America. His work was so well-received that in 2014, the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health created the Dr. Maurice McGregor Award to honour those who came after him.
In 2001, the provincial government made him a Chevalier of the National Order of Quebec, while in 2010, he was named to the Order of Canada. And in 2020, in honour of his 100th birthday, McGill announced that its cardiovascular research day would now be known as the Maurice McGregor Cardiovascular Research Day.
Dr. McGregor leaves his children, James and Margaret, their spouses, four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
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