(Details kindly furnished by his widow, Mrs Violet Ewing)
Gerald came from a “medical” family, his father a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin who became a psychiatrist, his mother an Edinburgh graduate who had had to study anatomy at Surgeons’ Hall because mixed sex classes were not permitted in her day! An uncle, Sir Robert Hay, FRCP Edin was an ex-Director General of the Indian Medical Service, retiring in 1947. Though Gerald would certainly have denied it, he was to bring further honour to this dynastic family.
Qualifying in Edinburgh in 1955 he did his junior post graduate training under such luminaries as Sir John Halliday Croom, Dr TRRTodd, Sir James Learmonth before spending four years in the RAF. Deciding to go into cardiology he then worked under Swan and Jackson in Newcastle and finally Sir Ian GW Hill in Dundee.
Like many at that time he emigrated to Canada, in his case to work as a Consultant Internist in Regina, Saskatchewan, founding the Renal Dialysis Unit and the Burns Unit in the General Hospital. In addition to his clinical and administrative workload and teaching as an Associate Professor in the university, he was instrumental in establishing both the Coronary Care Unit and Intensive Care Unit and became probably the first invasive cardiologist in the city.
In 1972 he and his family moved to Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia for a year before returning to Regina for four years, after which he worked as a cardiologist in Oregon, USA for a year. The 1980s saw him move into Oncology back in Regina, as Medical Director of the Blair Cancer Centre there, then Professor of Oncology, Head of Cancer Services, a member of the Canadian Oncology Society and the National Cancer Institute Clinical Trials Group and last but not least, a member of the Board of Regina Palliative Care Inc.
Retirement to Nanoose Bay on Vancouver Island, BC was meant to be a time for his beloved gardening (so different from what he had known in the prairies), boating, fishing, reading and bridge and so it was for a few years until he was found to have a carcinoma. His name will, however, live on in Regina where a street or park is to be named after him; in a new Cancer Clinic he started where the medical library is to bear his name. In Edinburgh we shall be in his debt because he has left a very generous donation to the Sibbald Fund of the College Library.
We send our condolences to his wife who has lost a husband, a daughter and a grandchild all in the past three years.