a brilliant student and physician ---a credit to his profession and his family

I have followed Dr. Herzman's work over the years, with admiration and appreciation for his deep humanity and dedication to improving the lives of all children. He will be sorely missed and long remembered.

One of my greatest professional pleasures in moving to Vancouver five years ago was the opportunity to work more closely with Clyde and HELP. We had just completed our first EDI survey in Montreal around then and it has since become a standard there. So I already admired Clyde a great deal. What I didn’t appreciate then was the depth and breadth of his humane expertise and passion. How rarely can someone put together sophisticated and sustained research and carry it down all the way down the line to advocacy and policy with such humility, accessible exposition and persistence. What a public health hero! More that than, though, Clyde was a true mensch, and we will all miss him dreadfully.

Clyde Hertzman: dynamic, inspiring, creative, intelligent, persistent, forceful, funny, charismatic, perceptive, visionary lighting the way for families and communities for generations to come.

Thanks to Clyde for his enthusiastic and generous communication of this research and its implications for communities and policy. He was an early leader in 'knowledge translation', speaking to interested audiences anywhere in an accessible and empowering way. Our job is to remember, and sustain the work.

I first met Clyde when we were vacation-relief orderlies at Vancouver General Hospital in the summer of 1975. Even then he had a steady hand and a wicked sense of humour, both of which were evident as I practiced male catheterization on his thumb. Our paths crossed again a few years later when he was in medical school in Hamilton, Ontario and I was completing a science degree. He welcomed me into his wide circle of medical student friends, and I enjoyed his and Martha’s company, until - after graduation - life once again sent us off on separate paths. Our next connection was when Clyde did some of his early work on the social determinants of health for BC’s Royal Commission on Health Care and Costs in 1990. By then Clyde was an established physician-researcher and I was a neophyte lawyer on the Commission. Our discussions on the implications of his research for BC’s health care system were informative and delightful. Clyde was particularly adept at communicating complex ideas in clear and understandable language suitable for my profession. At our last path-crossing a few months ago, when he spoke with his usual eloquence at one of Joyce Murray’s breakfast sessions, we chuckled at our respective grey and thinning hair, and exchanged business cards with promises to get together for lunch before we hit our 40th anniversary as VGH orderlies. I’ll keep Clyde’s card, along with my fond memories of him as someone with entertaining insights into life, the universe and practical uses of the human thumb.