Contributed by Fiona Clarke

You didn’t have to know Nate well to know that he was a good person through and through. He always had a sunny disposition and a gentle way of making others feel at ease. Some of my last memories of Nate were in his final weeks of residency, when he was giving thoughtful feedback to help make the program better for the rest of us, and staying late after class to help prepare the second year residents for our upcoming exam. It was easy to see that his selflessness and genuine compassion for others were a large part of what made him such a good physician and friend.

Nate and I were in the same Mental Health and Behavioural Science (MHBS) class. And although he’d never let it show, we shared a slight mutual distaste for the course. I think part of the reason Nate didn’t particularly like MHBS was because it wasn’t really necessary for his development as a physician. He had already perfected the “soft” skills in medicine, my guess is long before he ever entered the field. Without ever witnessing him with a patient, I know that he would have had no trouble connecting with each individual, earning their trust, and going above and beyond to care for them and their family in every way.

In our first year, I had a really difficult case where I failed to identify that a man had metastatic cancer when he came to my family medicine clinic feeling “off”. Just a short while later, Nate was caring for the same man at Grand River Hospital on his hospitalist rotation. Somehow through my pain, guilt, and doubt, Nate was able to make me feel a little bit better by explaining just how difficult the diagnosis had been to make, even in the hospital with all the tests readily available. He would update me on the man’s condition often, as he knew that I was forever ruminating about what had happened. And even though the prognosis was bleak, Nate would focus on the positives, how much the man had been able to do that day or how his loving family was always by his side.

You could tell that Nate carried that positivity with him everywhere in life. Whether he was talking about what he and Kristy were going to get up to on the weekend, or one of his recent patient encounters. I don’t think I ever saw him without a smile on his face and a sparkle in his eye. And that is how he will forever be remembered.