Tom Feasby: Honorary Doctor of Science from Western University, 2013

Dr. Tom Feasby, dean of Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary from 2007 to 2012, made the academic headlines in Eastern Canada recently when receiving an honorary degree from Western University. Feasby received a honorary Doctor of Science from the school where he served as a faculty member for fourteen years. He noted that “It was a proud moment to receive the degree from the university where one of my former trainees is now the dean of medicine.”




Feasby received his med degree from the University of Manitoba in 1969, and then did his residency in London. His Western connection came a few years later, when he taught in the Department of Neurological Sciences at Victoria Hospital.


Adela Talbot of Western News summed up Feasby's numerous career accomplishments:

Feasby is responsible for building one of Canada’s leading neuroscience departments, which now includes internationally prominent research programs in stroke, multiple sclerosis, brain tumours and peripheral nerve research.


He was vice-chairman of Academic Affairs at Capital Health (the Alberta Health Services), and associate dean of Clinical Affairs at the University of Alberta. Feasby also founded iCARE, a health services institute. Feasby served several years on the boards of directors of both the Canadian and American Neurological Associations, and currently serves on the board of the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and the strategic advisory board of the Institute for Public Health.

He has authored or co-authored more than 160 refereed publications. Feasby was among the first to describe a form of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a devastating neuro-muscular disease in a number of co-authored papers.”

At the University of Calgary from 1991 to 2003, Feasby served as Head of the Department of Clinical Neurosciences while leading the Calgary Health Region's Department of Clinical Neurosciences. In Calgary, he founded both the Neuromuscular and ALS Clinics.

Last year, at the end of his period as University of Calgary dean, Dr. Feasby gave a talk at the June Convocation Speech, which drew on material from none other than legendary Canadian medical figure William Osler. The theme he spoke on was memory:



A series of pictures from Dr. Feasby's farewell party at the University of Calgary:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35327065@N08/sets/72157629682600848