Stephen Strother

Don had a profound influence on my life in many ways, not the least of which was helping to recruit me to Toronto and the Rotman, where a few years later Cheryl Grady and I got married. I know I am just one of countless people that Don has influenced in many ways, and this influence will continue for many years to come despite his sad and untimely passing. Today at the annual workshop for the Database Project of the Toronto Dementia Research Alliance, Sandra Black started with a tribute to Don and his long standing vision of both clinical research embedded in care and his shaping of the Ontario Brain Institute (OBI) as a funding and support framework for such projects. I would like to think that Don would have appreciated how the TDRA database project, in collaboration with the OBI's Brain-CODE database, is realising his vision. But beyond research Don also influenced the way I look at and try to manage my life. Something he once said to me in my early days at the Rotman has stuck with me and made me change my behaviour towards work-life balance. We were discussing colleagues and friends who had passed away and I think he had recently had the experience of losing someone without having spoken to them in some time. He said, make time to reach out to people you care about who are important in your life because by the time you get around to doing so it may be to late. His  combination of seminal vision with the capacity to excite and emotionally connect with people made Don very special. I am very grateful to have had my life's course shaped by his vision and to have counted him as a friend.

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