Obituary of Dr. Peter Webster

Dr. Peter MacLean Webster Peter was born in China to Canadian missionaries during W.W. II. He would joke that while in China he and his brothers spoke only Mandarin; on their return to Canada they refused to speak anything but English. The family settled in Orillia for Peter’s elementary school years and then moved to Agincourt where he met Nancy in high school. Peter’s parents had lived lives of service and Peter was ready to follow their example. He chose medicine, his mother’s career, and graduated from the University of Toronto Medical School in 1968. Peter and Nancy had married during the medical school years and in 1969 they were accepted as missionaries with the United Church of Canada. With their 3-week-old baby Beth, they left for language study in central France and then for Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was a time of relative peace in Zaire. For 3 years in a large rural mission hospital in the village of Vanga on the Kwilu River, Peter served as a family doctor, surgeon, gynecologist, pediatrician, nursing instructor and public health inspector. On his last Christmas Eve, he successfully delivered triplets to a woman who had arrived in extreme distress in the back of a truck. In 1972 the little family returned to Toronto where Peter began specialty training in Respiratory Medicine, wanting to be better equipped for tuberculosis should he return to Africa. These studies resulted in a further year’s training in Boston, and a 38-year career in Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. He called himself a ‘lung doc.’ He taught medical students, aggressively tackled smoking, defended the rights of the disabled who needed ventilators to survive. On Tuesdays he served in the ALS clinic, treating, encouraging and counselling his patients through this dreaded disease. Stephen Hawking honoured him with a letter of appreciation. In 2003 he took the lead in the fight against SARS in the isolation units and again was honoured, this time by the city of Toronto. On the home front, Peter became a father twice more; to Miriam born in 1973 and Nora in 1978. He ‘served and protected.’ No matter their age, education or profession the girls relied on their Dad for strength and advice; he was the inexhaustible ear to every bump, lump, bruise, scrape or scary symptom they felt. The words, ‘Hey, Dad, what does this look like to you’ were common. As the girls grew up, they all served as candy-stripe volunteers at Sunnybrook. Beth remembers pushing a wheelchair down the hall one day and seeing her dad up ahead. He came right up to her chair and bent down and talked with his patient, not realizing that his daughter was there beside him. This was the source of much family joking in later years but the lesson was good. See the soul of the person, not the damaged body. With Parkinsons Disease, Peter showed just how well the soul could shine through the damaged body. Peter’s instinct for service taught everyone around him how to live with a severe illness. In Amica-Unionville, family, friends and staff would say, ‘He is always calm.’ ‘He asks about my epileptic daughter.’ ‘He lets me trim his eyebrows so they aren’t scary.’ ‘He listened to me.’ ‘He never complained.’ Peter served his family, his God, and God’s people. The girls remember a speech he gave on parenting at Miriam’s wedding. The speech is lost but the moment was captured on the cover of today’s Order of Service. That photo is about one who lived his life in service. That smile is a testament to one of the true joys of Peter’s life, his family. And that moment is a memory we will share until we meet him once again.