John H. Burgess, Montreal cardiologist and advocate for Indigenous health care, dies at 88

Dr. John Burgess (photo: Owen Egan / McGill)

MONTREAL — Dr. John H. Burgess, the former head of cardiology at the Montreal General Hospital and former president of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada - as well as a decades-long advocate of health care for Inuit in the Far North - died this week at 88.

Dr. Burgess passed away on Monday as he sat on an Adirondack chair on the dock at his beloved cottage on Lake Memphremagog, Vermont.

He was known for having practiced medicine on the two extremes of medical care delivery – as the head of cardiology at the Montreal General Hospital for more than two decades – and as cardiologist to the tiny and remote Inuit communities of the Baffin region in the North for three decades. The author of two books, one on each of those topics, showed his interest in history and how health-care workers have evolved along with their patients.

After graduating from McGill University in 1958, Burgess studied and researched at the University of Birmingham, England and University of California, San Francisco. It was the start of a life-long interest in continuing medical education. He was director of cardiology at the Montreal General Hospital for more than two decades starting in 1973. Even as head of cardiology in a big city, he was told he needed to continue learning.

He started spending four weeks a year treating heart disease among Inuit in the Baffin Islands. He wrote about his experience in his 2008 book ‘Doctor of the North; Thirty Years Treating Heart Disease among the Inuit.’

“Burgess clearly valued his travel clinics and consultations by phone and fax with Northern health practitioners as perhaps the most rewarding aspect of his career,” wrote Northern health-care expert Dr. Amy Hendricks in her review of the book for the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

“Far from being a distant clinical researcher, Burgess displays admiration and humility toward the patients he describes and the culture that he encountered during his northern visits,” she wrote.

In 1987, Dr. Burgess was awarded the Order of Canada for his medical research, teaching, and hospital outreach program in Nunavut.

In 2016, Dr. Burgess co-authored “The General - A History of the Montreal General Hospital” about the role of the hospital in the city and how it was the home to the first medical school in Canada, at McGill University. The book documented the hospital’s 200-year history that saw it transform from a community hospital serving the city’s English-speaking community to an internationally recognized academic centre.

“I knew Dr. Burgess from when I was a resident in training,” Dr. Christopher Labos, a cardiologist, said. “I have a copy of his book, and somebody showed me his history of the hospital. It was funny because he never talked about it very much, but then other people would tell you what he had done over his career, and it was impressive, the sheer scope of his career and the number of things he accomplished. He was always very nice to me, and even after he retired, he would still come in for rounds to listen to the lectures. I was sad to hear he had passed. He also seemed to carry himself with a certain quiet dignity.”

Dr. Burgess was active right until the end of his life, and was chairman of the McGill University Health Centre Continuing Education Committee at the time of his death. Just this past June, he conducted an emergency medicine re-training class by videoconference.

He also practiced what he preached in terms of staying fit, walking to work most days from his Westmount home. He was a role model to many of his friends, including 90-year-old James Robb, a neighbour of the Burgess family who went to McGill at the same time as Burgess. Robb became a lawyer but said of Dr. Burgess, “I was always impressed by his medical accomplishments. And he was a good friend to me. I also walk to work and I would often meet him on our walks.”

He finally went to his cottage in July after many months of not being permitted because of the pandemic. The eldest of his four children, Willa Burgess, says the cottage was the most important place for him, and the counterpoint to his busy professional life. His parents bought the cottage in 1926 and Dr. Burgess was very fond of being the elder statesman of the place.

“It was where he could relax,” Willa Burgess said. “It’s where we watched Western movies, anything with John Wayne. And it’s where he taught us how to waterski, and to always keep trying because it’s tough when you face plant on the first try. But his message to us as kids was always, ‘I know it hurts and it’s tough but get back up and try again.’”

Willa Burgess said she will miss talking to him and his faithful presence.

“He would call every Sunday at 9 a.m. sharp and I could ask him anything,” she said, adding that her father’s death was sudden and unexpected because he was so fit.

“But he died in that chair on the dock overlooking the lake, just steps from the tree where his late wife Andrea’s ashes are buried.”