Endel Tulving

If you are lucky in life, you will meet colleagues who become friends. If you are very lucky, some of them become real friends. If you are more than very lucky, you will meet someone who becomes what Don Stuss was for me for one third of a century.
 
Here is copy of a letter that I sent Don ten years ago.  

*****
May 19, 2009
 
Dear Don, 
 
It is hard to believe that it was 17 years ago, almost to the day, that you and I enjoyed the warm spring sunshine while sipping drinks outside the bar at the University's Faculty Club on Willcocks Avenue, and changed the world, or at least a tiny part thereof. How time flies! 
 
Remember, you asked me how things were with me. Rather than replying with the standard, perfunctory "Fine!" I blurted out that I had known better times. When you actually followed it up and wanted to know why, I told you that I had just received the final confirmation that I was out of my job in the psychology department as of the coming June 30. I had reached the advanced age of 65 and although I myself thought that there might be some life and spirit left in me for another few years, and that I would not mind staying on, the powers that be at the university thought otherwise. So, I had to go. You asked what my plans were, and I said that I would try to find some other place, another institution, somewhere, that might have any use of me. And, right there and then, you offered me a position as a senior scientist at the Rotman Institute. I asked you whether you had a vacancy, and you said no; I asked you whether you had a budget line for someone like me, and you said no; and I asked you how, under the circumstances, you could offer me anything, and you said not to worry, "things will work out." 
 
Things did indeed "work out," but of course not by themselves. They never do. In the saga that began on that May day on Willcocks Avenue, everything proceeded and ended as it did only because you applied your phenomenal, and now legendary, intelligence, energy, and management skills to the problem, and solved it. Your diplomatic missionary work in gently persuading Mrs Anne Tanenbaum and her family to support research in cognitive neuroscience turned out to be especially critical. The Tanenbaums at that time presumably knew Joe Rotman and his outstanding reputation, but they knew little about RRI, little about you, and nothing about me. So getting the Chair set up was quite a feat. Of course you could not have done without them and their goodwill, but without your imagination, initiative, and persuasive powers the whole venture would not have even reached square one. 
 
In no time at all, you took the initiative in getting me to meet Jack Cleghorn, the highly respected schizophrenia researcher at McMaster. He had been enticed by the UT's Medical Faculty to become the head of the to‑be‑established PET Center that was going to help Toronto schizophrenia researchers catch up with the two Ontario universities that were ahead of UT in this respect. After Cleghorn died in 1992, we had the good fortune of seeing Sylvaine Houle and Shitij Kapur in key positions at the Clarke Institute's PET centre, and suddenly we were involved in the new game in town‑‑PETting cognition, especially memory. I was elated when we "discovered" your old, and my own new, favorite part of the brain, the frontal lobes, as playing a major role in the brain/mind orchestra that is memory. That was less than 20 years after you had written, in your most important papers, about how little was known about the role of the frontal lobes in anything, especially cognition.
 
That the Rotman Research Institute scientists delved into and then settled in functional neuroimaging became a pivotal event in RRI's evolution as a world centre in brain/mind sciences. It all happened early, and was timed perfectly, because of your keen appreciation of the global developments and the future of our science.  Your ability to attract top people in functional neuroimaging of cognition, such as  Terry Picton (he actually was first), Cheryl Grady and Randy McIntosh, and later others, to join your team was another brilliant achievement of yours. I know from long experience that it has always been difficult to persuade highly successful scientists from other countries, especially the US, to uproot themselves and come to the cold north. When they do come, it is usually not because of the money, but because of more important features of one's professional life, such as other people and the ambiance.
 
As you well recall, you and I first met in Galveston, Texas, in 1985, at the conference on recovery from brain injury that Harvey Levin had organized. You gave a lecture on the use of experimental methods in objectively assessing frontal lobe deficits resulting from closed head injury. I did not know you at the time, but I remember being impressed with you and what you said, because clinicians that I knew at the time did not think and talk like you did. They did not talk about objective, reliable, experimentally oriented methods in studying the cognitively pathological brain. They talked mostly about psychometric tests.
 
So, at the end of the conference, when we shared a cab to the airport in Houston, I was more than eager to find out more about your research and thinking. I very much liked what I heard. And when we agreed that something should be done about the Wechsler Memory Scale‑‑I for my reasons and you for yours‑‑I became your fan, without telling you about it, of course! But I did put the intelligence gathered in that taxi to good use when, a few years later, in Toronto, we were looking for the first Director of the newly established Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest, and I served as a member of the search committee. 
 
Today, the success story called the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest is well known in the biomedical circles and research all over the world. So is your decisive and abiding leadership role in the story. Having been a close eyewitness to the happenings at our institute over the last 17 years, I can only echo all the praise and approbation that your colleagues, staff, postdocs, and students rightfully bestow on you. 
 
Personally, I believe I have benefited more than anyone else from the good that you have done in the world. When you offered me the position at RRI, back then, you changed my life. Indeed, you gave me a new life. I might have been able to do all right without your intervention, one way or another, but that is uncertain. What is certain is that the last 17 years have been among the very best that anyone can call his own. I have really enjoyed my association with the other scientists, students, and staff at the Rotman, and indeed with the whole Baycrest community. In many ways, however, the best part of it has been you. The feeling that my presence here has also been appreciated by many is naturally an added bonus.
 
So, Don, my dear friend and colleague: You are known to have made jokes about having been my "boss." But I want you to know that, in all seriousness, I think of you above all as my saviour. For that, and for everything that you have done to me and for me, I will remain grateful to you forever. 
 
All good things in life come to an end, and so it must be with my long association with the Rotman Research Institute. You and I agreed some time ago that the next academic year will be my last one here, and that I will resign my current position, and retire, on June 30, 2010. Please take this letter as my acknowledgement and acceptance of that agreement.   
 
With my very best wishes,  Endel