If we are lucky, we meet a few people in our lives who support us in ways that make us feel valued, heard and safe. They shape how we move through the world, change us for the better and to them we remain forever grateful. Keith Brownell was such an individual. Keith was a deeply committed family man who loved his wife, children and grandchildren. To his colleagues, Keith was a caring physician to thousands of patients, and a mentor, teacher and colleague to generations of physicians. He taught us so very much about what it means to be a physician, to be a teacher, and above all a good person.

Dr Keith Brownell graduated from medical school at Queen’s University, was a rotating intern at Vancouver General Hospital, worked as a general practitioner in Kamloops and then trained in Neurology at Queen’s and at the University of Michigan. He went on to complete an MRC Fellowship in Muscle disease at Mayo Clinic with Dr Andrew Engel before joining the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary. Rising through the ranks, Dr Brownell became a full professor in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, now part of the Cumming School of Medicine. He was a pillar of the Faculty for 40 years before becoming an Emeritus Professor in 2015. He developed the first Neuromuscular Clinic at the University of Calgary and made many contributions to the field, from seminal work on malignant hyperthermia to clinical studies of a number of inherited and acquired muscle disorders. These efforts, among a list of superb publications, included a key paper on Kearns-Sayre syndrome published in the New England Journal of Medicine and a paper on ryanodine receptor mutations of central core disease in Nature Genetics. He was a long-time and extensive contributor to CJNS. Over his career, his work particularly and increasingly focused on education and trainee wellbeing, and he won numerous teaching awards, including the very prestigious American Neurological Association Distinguished Teacher Award in 2002, the only Canadian to have ever received it. This direction blended with Keith’s many roles as Residency Program Director, Associate Dean and Chair of Graduate Clinical Education, Chair of the Medical Professionalism committee and extensive longstanding service to the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC). His efforts with RCPSC encompassed work on the Evaluations committee, the CanMEDS 2000 project, several External Survey teams and others. He also contributed service to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, Alberta Medical Association and Council of Academic Health Centres. Finally, Keith was a passionate leader in the field of medical ethics and professionalism, recognized by several Associate Dean’s awards of excellence for his teaching in ethics. His contributions to ethics were highlighted as lead author of two key publications in the Annals of the RCPSC, establishing a code of ethics, including a Canadian Medical Association primer in ethics education.

There were three main things about Keith that drew the admiration of all of his trainees and colleagues. These included his commitment to teaching, his integrity, and his unyielding devotion to his patients. He was a mentor and a support for a number of Neurologists from the beginning of training to long after he retired. Keith’s fierce and public “no nonsense” defense of residents will be long remembered and recounted.

As we contemplate a world without him, it is comforting to consider that if each of us strives to live in ways that embody what we loved best about Keith, he will remain alive in our hearts. We have the opportunity to make the world just a little better by trying to be a “Keith Brownell” for those we encounter on our way. We will miss him deeply.

[Image reproduced with permission from the Dean’s Office, University of Calgary, and originally published in the Cumming School of Medicine 2014-2015 Annual Report]