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Lorenzo Phillipe (Phil) LeBlanc

Dad, surgeon, art lover, proud Maritimer. Born on Oct. 22, 1926, in Moncton, N.B.; died on April 10, 2014, in London, Ont., of Alzheimer's disease complicated by strokes, aged 87.

Lorenzo Phillipe LeBlanc, the fourth of 10 children in an Acadian family, was known as Bunzo to his family and childhood friends. He spoke only French until the age of 12 when the family moved to Saint John, N.B., for his father's work with Canadian National Railway. Young Phil was placed in an all-English school and quickly became bilingual.

On hearing that a friend was going to medical school, Phil applied for and was accepted into the University of Ottawa's school of medicine. His proud father pinned money to his jacket as he saw him off at the train station, the first in the family to go to university. Throughout Bunzo's life, his extended family would take major medical questions to him before final decisions could be made.

While at university, Phil met and married Clare Mahoney, a nursing student. After he graduated in 1953, they moved to Vancouver to start his internship, and a family. To help pay for his medical studies, Phil joined the Royal Canadian Air Force as a flight surgeon. This resulted in their three sons and four daughters being born in six cities in Canada and the United States.

After he left the military, the family moved to Detroit where Phil completed his surgical training. Then they settled in Guelph, Ont., where he started his practice. He was proud to bring vascular surgery to the city, and to help establish the city's first intensive care unit at St. Joseph's Hospital. He loved to teach nurses and paramedics in the nursing school and hospital, and to care for his patients.

In the late 1960s his marriage ended, and he moved to Windsor to take up a teaching position in Detroit. But after four years, he returned to Guelph with his new wife Diana, and their son Philippe, to resume his surgical practice. In 1979, he was dealt a deep blow when his 15-year-old son Danny died in a farming accident.

Phil's next 15 years were spent working and travelling, to China, Russia, Kenya, the Galapagos Islands and Europe. He also volunteered on surgical missions to Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Romania. After retiring in 1990 he continued to assist at surgery, providing help and advice to his daughter, Barbara, who had moved to Guelph as a surgeon.

Although Diana's health began to fail, limiting her mobility, she and Phil were still able to go for several months each year to their beloved cottage in Pointe-du-Chêne, N.B. He would putter in his workshop on a variety of projects, but always made time to talk. Days at the cottage were filled with laughter, many stories, visits with his eight grandchildren and other relatives and, of course, lobster dinners dripping butter.

In his last few years, Phil struggled with Alzheimer's, especially after Diana died in 2013. He became a very inventive storyteller, and his devotion to surgery was often intertwined in his delusions. But he managed to maintain his curiosity about people and life to the end.

Barbara and Jocelyn LeBlanc are Phil's daughters.

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