I was saddened to hear that Neil Collishaw succumbed to small cell bladder cancer on October 10, 2024. Neil shared the news of his diagnosis friends and colleagues in early 2023, but continued contributing good ideas and feedback to tobacco control activities until near the end.
For most of his career Neil epitomized the soft-spoken civil servant working behind the scenes to move the ball forward against the tobacco industry in the Canadian Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization. He helped develop and implement Canada’s path-breaking tobacco control legislation and laid the foundation for what became the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. He had encyclopedic knowledge and knew how to move the ball forward in byzantine bureaucracies in the face of sometimes erratic politicians.
After he retired from government service, he became the research director for Physicians for a Smokefree Canada where he provided insightful analysis and continued to provide guidance on dealing with government. I regularly sought his advice, most recently on how to best present the results of our meta-analysis of e-cigarettes and disease in the population.
He and his wife Barbara hosted my wife and I on our last pre-COVID trip when we visited Ottawa in February. (I had been invited to speak at a meeting then.) We had great time in Ottawa’s coldest month.
His daughters have set up a website to honor him, and to provide a space for his friends and colleagues to to help tell his story at www.collishaw.ca. My contribution is here.
Stanton Glantz blog 