11/10/2022
Allow me to tell you the stories of Louise and John Balfour – My grand parents.
Both of them fought in WWII. A piece of history I knew growing up, yet a bit of history I didn’t deeply understand until I started my own career in health care. I knew my grandfather was a Doctor, and my grandmother a Nurse but growing up, the concept of the sacrifice that our forefathers took was perhaps so great, it was in a sense hard to grasp.
John Balfour, my grandfather, founded the Urology Department at the University of British Columbia in 1951- which later on became a key facet in the first successful Kidney transplants which saves countless lives today. I heard many stories of him in our sleepy town in Roberts Creek on the Sunshine Coast. One of my favorites, was a story about an emergency house call he made to a small farming family. As times were tough back then, this family paid my grandfather with what they had – the family Violin. Over the next few days, it was found out this Violin was a famous Stradivarius Violin. My grandfather returned the Violin and refused any further payment. Sacrifice was a common theme in all the stories I heard about him. ( continued in the comments)…
