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Paul Louis Landrigan.Courtesy of family

Paul Louis Landrigan: Husband. Father. Grandfather. Medical pioneer. Born Aug. 5, 1925, in Everett, Mass.; died March 30, 2019, in Halifax, of pneumonia; age 93.

The last thing Paul Landrigan said was “I want to go home.” Home meant Sturgeon, PEI, and the community that helped an impoverished boy become a medical pioneer. Paul was born the fourth of five children to an American father and Canadian mother. At age 2, he lost his father in an industrial accident in Everett, Mass. Paul’s mother took her children home to PEI and bought a small farm, where he shared a bedroom with his flatulent brother Joe and a pig in a barrel of brine. He became such a troublemaker, the whole neighbourhood was shocked when he got accepted to medical school.

Paul attended Saint Dunstan’s University in Charlottetown on a scholarship but the U.S. military soon drafted him, as he was still a citizen. When he tried to enlist, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and returned to PEI to convalesce at the sanatorium where he became interested in medicine. He completed his undergraduate studies and was admitted to Dalhousie University Medical School. His brother Joe loaned him the $26 to secure his placement. His brother Larry helped him scrounge his tuition fee from friends. By third year, Paul was broke, so he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force to finance his education.

At a Dalhousie frat party, he met Mary MacNeil and the young OR nurse eventually agreed to a date. When Paul learned Mary planned to head west, he bought a solitaire, met her in the foyer of the nurses’ residence, got on bended knee and said, “You’re not going.” They married in 1953, the year he earned his MD.

In 1954, his internship completed, they welcomed their first child (six others followed) and Paul moved his family to RCAF Station Greenwood, N.S., for three years of service. While there, Paul joined medical teams that descended 3,300-foot mine shafts to assist in the Springhill mining disasters of 1956 and ’58, receiving commendations for his heroism. He also stood unprotected, 10 miles from ground zero, as a medical observer for the Canadian Air Force during a 1958 atomic bomb test in Nevada. He likened it to watching a second sun rise out of the Mojave Desert. Years afterward, he had five cancerous lesions removed.

Paul earned a fellowship to travel to England, where he learned new techniques in bronchoscopy and became one of Canada’s first respirologists. For the next five years, he was Atlantic Canada’s only physician performing this diagnostic technique. He also founded Dalhousie Medical School’s respiratory division and taught there, and established Atlantic Canada’s first pulmonary lab. His students, patients and colleagues recall his patience and compassion, late nights on duty and the flights he cancelled to attend to the sick.

Before medicare, Paul provided free care to the poor and Catholic clergy, and was eventually knighted by the Catholic Church for his community service.

Paul was also a generous and tolerant father. Once he piled six kids into a station wagon for a road trip while Mary stood in the doorway, smiling and waving goodbye. KC and the Sunshine Band screamed, “That’s the way I like it,” full blast, for most of the 11-hour drive to Mont Ste. Anne, Que. His family fondly remembers their many trips to the Island and the red earth and blue sky their father always called home.

Glenna Jenkins and Gary Landrigan are Paul’s children.

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Lives Lived celebrates the everyday, extraordinary, unheralded lives of Canadians who have recently passed. To learn how to share the story of a family member or friend, go to tgam.ca/livesguide

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