Colonel Peter Lewin, MD, FI' 79
Explorer, paediatrician, medical archaeologist, soldier, humanitarian and dear friend
Link to Curriculum Vitae

It is with a heavy heart that I announce the death of Colonel Peter Lewin, MD, FI' 79. Peter died of cancer on June 7, 2005 in Toronto and was buried at Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cemetery on June 10th.

A Memorial Service was held for Peter on June 17th at Massey College, University of Toronto which was attended by a huge adoring crowd from the Canadian Forces Medical Services Branch, the University of Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children all of whom came to pay their final respects to this outstanding man who contributed so much to Canada, field sciences, medicine and exploration. On behalf of The Explorers Club William Jamieson, Duane Robertson and I attended.

Peter and I first met in 1988 when we were both stationed in Toronto at Land Forces Central Area HQ as Reservists. Peter at the time was the Senior Medical Officer for the Army in Ontario. While I always liked his sense of humour it wasn't until we had a chance meeting at the former Canadian Forces base in Lahr, Germany that we became close friends. I had just returned from a peacekeeping assignment in Cyprus and Peter had just completed a NATO medical officer's conference in Heidelberg when we ran into each other in the Lahr Officer's Mess. Earlier in his career Peter had been stationed in Germany with the Canadian Forces so he knew the area well and he took me on a tour of the nearby Black Forest region.

When my son Jonathan was born I made sure that Peter became his paediatrician. Peter worked at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. It was Peter who introduced Jonathan to both Canadian Aboriginal Art and to Egyptology. Peter was the first person to introduce Canadian Aboriginal art to Germany. Having grown-up in Egypt during the Second World War Peter developed a fascination in Egyptology and he developed the concept of performing autopsies on Egyptian mummies to see the types of diseases which were common in ancient Egypt. Peter's picture hangs on the wall of the Egyptology Department of the Royal Ontario Museum. When Jonathan was younger he got a big kick out of seeing his doctor's picture on the ROM's wall.

It was Peter who sponsored me into The Explorers Club and who introduced me to Bill Jamieson. The three of us would later decide to revamp the Canadian Chapter and from January 8, 2003 until January 1, 2005 that is what the three of us did.

Six weeks ago Peter called me and told me that he had completed all of the required work on his end to bring about an affiliation between The Explorers Club and the Royal Canadian Military Institute. During the conversation he told me that he was an inpatient at Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto's cancer care facility. His voice sounded very week, and it broke my heart, but as was the norm with Peter he told me not to worry.

Peter was buried in a ceremony that combined Jewish religious traditions with a formal Canadian Forces burial complete with Piper, Bugler and Honour Guard. His grave was shaded by a large maple tree, and the scene
was serene with the piper playing traditional Scottish hymns and the bugler sounding the Last Post. Repeatedly I bit the inside of my lower lip to keep the tears that were trickling down the side of my face from breaking into a
steady stream. Keeping with Jewish tradition, family and friends filled Peter's grave with shovel-fulls of earth, since your life begins with your family it is to end with your family and friends closing your grave. Peter
helped save Jonathan's life when Jonathan was five-weeks-old, so it was only fitting that Jonathan help close Peter's grave.

Peter was unique, and while he'll live on in our memories, that small void that his death left in my heart will never be filled.

Joseph G. Frey, F.R.G.S., FI' 02
Chairman, Canadian Chapter, The Explorers Club

Professor Anthony Williamson, FE' 61

It was over the past week (June 7th, 2005) that Dr. George Burden, MI' 03, our chapter's Atlantic-Quebec Region Chair, reported to me that Professor Anthony Williamson of Memorial University in St. john's, Newfoundland had died. I had only met Tony once and that was at the Club's 100th anniversary dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria last year. Good-humoured, I recall him telling me that even though he had been a Fellow of the Club since 1961 the centenary ECAD was the only one he had ever attended. At Memorial University Tony specialized in human geography with an emphasis on the Inuit of Labrador. Following our meeting in New York I had the opportunity to communicate with Tony on a couple of occasions and he mentioned that he was going in for cancer treatment and that he planned to recover in The Bahamas. Unfortunately Anthony succumbed to his illness and with his passing goes our last member in Newfoundland.

Joseph G. Frey, F.R.G.S., FI' 02
Chairman, Canadian Chapter, The Explorers Club

Robert Cheetham Randall, 1908 -2004

AVIATOR

At 96 years of age Robert Cheetham Randall passed away in his sleep on December 11, 2004, nine months after the passing of his beloved wife Hilda.
        Robert (Bob) Randall was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, to Arthur and Edith, on November 2, 1908, a year before Robert Perry made it to the North Pole on foot. Bob grew up in Saskatoon and on completion of high School became a mechanic. His early interest was speed and he started out racing motorcycles in his spare time.
        In 1928 he found a new interest – aviation. He joined the newly-formed Saskatoon Aero Club and first soloed on May 25, 1928. As with most professional aviators on either begins as a bush pilot or in the military and Bob’s career began as a bush pilot flying out of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, into the Lac La Ronge area of the Canadian Shield. For a while he became a barnstormer and occasional instructor and it was at this time he met his wife-to-be Hilda Bard. They were married on August 16, 1930.
        In 1934 Bob took a job in the Yukon with Brooks Aviation flying a Fairchild 71 before moving to Northern Airways. In 1935 Bob was chartered to fly supplies and make photographic flights over the unmapped St. Elias mountains. The Charter was with the National Geographic Society, led by famed alpinist and explorer Bradford Washburn. In recognition of his contribution  Robert Randall was elected to the National Geographic Society in 1935.
        A change in the Randall’s life took place in 1937 when Bob joined Mackenzie Air Services and moved to Edmonton where he flew mainly into the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. In this same year a Russian flyer and his five companions went missing on a Trans-Polar flight and Bob was the first pilot to begin an aerial search mission, flying the 600 miles between Aklavik NWT and Point Barrow Alaska. For this effort  he was elected a member of the prestigious Explorers Club in 1939, nominated by such eminent explorers as Vilhjalmur Stefansson, C.J. McFarlane and Sir Hubert Wilkins.
        The Randal family, by now numbering six (three sons Robert, Howard, John and daughter Beverly) saw Mackenzie Air Services, through a series of acquisitions and mergers, become Canadian Pacific Airlines in 1941. Bob was too old for active military service but he continued flying commercially during WW II and in 1952 the family moved to Vancouver where he advanced in seniority with C.P. Air and  captained the first commercial flight “over the pole” in 1955, flying a DC 6B aircraft from Vancouver to Amsterdam via Sondestrom, Greenland. Bob’s flying career took him to the Orient, South Pacific and Europe and he ended his flying career in November 1968, having accumulated 31,000 flying hours,  flying a  stretch DC 8.
         In July 1973 Robert C. Randall was named a Companion in the Order of Icarus and in the same year was inducted into Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame. From 1973 until the early 2000’s Bob and Hilda traveled and were deeply involved with the Sports Car Club of British Columbia harking back to Bob’s love for speed and mechanics.
        With Bob Randall’s passing one of the last links with early aviation in Canada is lost. During the first half of the 20th century many diverse people in the Candian North shared their reliance on bush pilots such as Bob Randall, who connected their countless remote settlements and camps with the outside world. That Bob Randall ended his career flying a state-of-the-art jetliner is a remarkable achievement by an extraordinary man.

Murray Larson

Norman (Sam) Elder

As the Chair of the Canadian Chapter, it came as a shock to hear that Norm Elder, founder of our chapter in 1979, died on Wednesday October 15th, 2003 in Toronto. I only met Norm on one occasion earlier this year, so I really didn't know him well, but every one that I've ever spoken to about Norm always spoke of his love of life and in a positive way of his eccentricity. Norman was a graduate of Upper Canada College, the University of Western Ontario and the University of Toronto. He was the Curator of the Norman Elder Museum, which included unusual artifacts that he collected from his many travels around the world. He undertook expeditions to Papua New Guinea, the Amazon, the Congo, the Arctic and most recently Madagascar. He represented Canada at the 1959 Pan-American Games where he won the Gold and Bronze medals in the Equestrian events. He also represented our country at the 1960 and 1968 Olympic Games. Norman will be missed by all.

Dr. Elizabeth (Betsy) Nicholls

We are very sad to announce that Betsy Nicholls of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology passed away on October 18. A friend and colleague for almost thirty years, Betsy started working at the Tyrrell Museum in 1989. Born in 1946 in California, she moved with her family to Australia at an early age. As a twelve-year old, she wrote a letter to one of the earliest and most famous members of the Explorers Club, Roy Chapman Andrews. His kind response encouraged her to follow her dream to become a vertebrate palaeontologist, in spite of her gender. After taking her first degree at Berkeley, she moved to Canada in 1969 with her geologist husband Jim Nicholls. She became well known for her studies on fossil turtles, dinosaurs and marine reptiles, and successfully collected specimens in the foothills of the Rockies and along the Red Deer River for the University of Calgary. After completing her doctorate, her research interests focused progressively more on marine reptiles. A Rolex Award gave her the ability to collect a gigantic, whale-sized icthyosaur on Pink Mountain in British Columbia. In spite of the incredible hardness of the rock, she persevered and brought the skeleton back to the Tyrrell Museum for preparation and study. Survived genetically by two daughters and academically by several excellent graduate students, Betsy was well respected and loved by friends and colleagues around the World. A memorial service at the Tyrrell Museum on November 1st was attended by more than 200 people from across Canada, the United States and Australia. Betsy was a member of the Explorers Club.

Philip J. Currie
Eva B. Koppelhus
November 1, 2004