Dr. Keith Newton Drummond.Courtesy of family
Keith Newton Drummond: Husband. Father. Pediatrician. Nature-lover. Born May 6, 1931, in Dartmouth, N.S.; died March 29, 2020, in Montreal; of a heart attack; aged 88.
Keith Drummond was a shy man. Well into adulthood he would, occasionally, close the door on the only bathroom in a crowded household and rehearse conversations and arguments in front of the mirror. Sometimes, his wife Dorothy would hide behind the shower curtain and, when he was fully launched, slowly reveal her face in the mirror behind him. Both his bellowing scream and her laughter could be heard throughout the house.
Keith grew up on a dairy farm in Rosemont, Montreal, his ancestors having arrived in Montreal from Scotland in 1814. Keith was 14 when he met Dorothy MacLeod on a tennis court; she was 16. They would marry 10 years later, once he became a physician and she a nurse. One of the first things they did was to build a log cabin by hand in the Laurentians, ferrying the logs across a mile-long bay. This would become a sanctuary (without running water or electricity) every August for their five children and extended family.
After McGill medical school, Keith and Dorothy, newlywed with an infant in tow, went to Cleveland so Keith could complete a residency in pediatrics, followed by an intensive specialization in pediatric nephrology in Minneapolis. By the end of his five-year residency stint, he and Dorothy had had all five of their children: Robbie, Susan, David, Nancy and Jeffrey.
In 1964, Keith returned to Montreal to pioneer the field of pediatric nephrology in Canada at McGill. He published more than 200 scientific articles and became a full professor of medicine at McGill, its chairman of pediatrics, the chair of pediatric nephrology and also the physician-in-chief of the Montreal Children’s Hospital, where his gentle bedside manner with sick children, and their worried parents, was renowned. He preferred working with children because they rarely dissemble for sympathy – if they say they are in pain, they are in pain.
Keith worked hard and made time for his children. Before breakfast and school, he took them for a mile-long run and then spent 30 minutes bird watching with them. His deep passion for ornithology has been passed down through three generations.
Keith’s presence could be an odd mixture of detachment and empathy. When one of his children got a gash while exploring the world, Dorothy secured the child as he put in several stitches without anesthetic. He was once invited to teach sex-ed for his son’s Grade 6 class. At dinner that night, he asked David to recount what he had learned. When David dutifully began describing the sexual act, Dorothy quickly intervened.
Keith inculcated in his children an awe for the natural world. On vacation, he hauled home 10-pound rocks in his luggage – perfectly formed into balls over the millennia – from the Cornish coast. At the cabin, he marshalled his children to take boat rides to a sandbar, a mile down the lake, to gather buckets of a remarkable purple sand.
In 1976, when the separatist Parti Québécois came to power, Keith was determined to better understand French-speaking Québécois, with whom the Drummonds had been living co-operatively for centuries. He insisted his children learn French and open their hearts and minds. He considered himself a true Quebecker and passed on his commitment to a bilingual, multicultural Canada.
In their later years, Keith had to live in a nursing home, and Dorothy moved to a retirement home. During the COVID-19 lockdown, Keith had a fatal heart attack. Dorothy, confined to her room, had difficulty hearing a nurse explain that her husband of 74 years had died. The nurse was reading a group text from her children, unable to visit in person – it was the sole thread of solace between them.
Susan G. Drummond is Keith’s daughter.
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