Physician, medical researcher, outdoorsman. Born Nov. 7, 1930, in Sand Point, Ont. Died Aug. 23, 2011, in Sudbury of cancer, aged 80.
I wonder what the parents sorting their kids' Halloween candy would have made of it. It had to have left a scent – perhaps more.
That Oct. 31, at least 30 years ago, Philip Andrews juggled candy-issuing duty at the front door with attempting to rush through skinning the largest beaver he had ever seen. The skinning took place in the family garage. The animal had just been harvested after spending several days expired, in a trap, in unseasonably warm weather on land my family owned about an hour west of Sudbury.
Phil was determined not to waste the animal and its vast pelt, even if it needed attention at once and his wife, Mimi, was out taking the kids trick-or-treating. It was a bad night for Phil, for the pelt and presumably for the costumed kids who received candy from him that evening.
Phil probably shouldn't have taken on that skinning job. But he was known and well-respected in Northern Ontario for accepting difficult assignments and meeting them with incredible resolve. Trapping was just a hobby of sorts. So, too, was farming. Ditto for fishing and magazine journalism. His greatest professional achievements were in health care.
Phil was raised in Timmins, Ont., by his parents, Austin and Vita Andrews. In 1955, he graduated from the University of Toronto's faculty of medicine. He obtained his written fellowship in otorhinolaryngology in 1961 and practised his specialty in Sudbury for 40 years. He was a former chief of staff at the Sudbury General Hospital, former president of the Sudbury and District Medical Society and an honorary life member of the Ontario Medical Association.
He was also noted internationally for original research he conducted into nasal cancer. This arose from his care of mining-industry workers in the Sudbury area who developed cancer after working in a local sinter plant.
An incredibly devoted physician, Phil dearly wanted at least one of his five children (Peter, Michele, Sarah, Monique and Phil) to follow him into medicine. That never came to pass. But he was terribly proud of his children, his 12 grandchildren – who each called him Doc – and of his loving marriage to Mimi. That perfect, patient, warm partnership reached its 50th anniversary on the day of his funeral.
Among his other accomplishments was helping to found the Sudbury and District Boys' Home. He also authored a series of magazine articles about underappreciated heroes and anti-heroes from Canada's medical past. His prolific home garden annually yielded scores of early, ripe tomatoes, many of them donated to a downtown Sudbury soup kitchen.
He also sold what must have been among the largest and worst-prepared beaver pelts ever at the North Bay fur auction one year.
Phil Andrews is Philip's son.