Calvin Ralph Stiller, OC, OOnt, MD, FRCP(C), FCAHS, DSc(hon), LLD(hon), (born February 12, 1941), is a highly esteemed Canadian physician, scientist, and entrepreneur. Although retired from a long and distinguished career as a member of the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western University in London, Ontario, Stiller's impact on the Canadian health care system remains profound. His work in the area of organ transplantation and immunology, especially, was path-breaking in Canada and elsewhere, as was his creation of and support for various streams of top-level medical research, innovation, investment, and market application.
Early Life and Education
Stiller hails from the tiny prairie town of Naicam, Saskatchewan. He was the third of five children born to the Rev’d Hilmer Stiller, a minister ordained by the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, and his wife Mildred (née Parsons). Stiller spent his childhood years in Naicam, the kind of town that Wallace Stegner would write about later evocatively in his celebrated prairie memoir, Wolf Willow. Stiller's lifelong love of horses – of which the Ontario farm where he resides today is a reflection – began here. Later, the family would move to Tisdale, and then finally in 1947 to the much larger Saskatoon. Here, Stiller would complete his schooling, which included graduating from Bedford Road Collegiate, followed by two years of undergraduate pre-medical studies in Arts and Science at the University of Saskatchewan. At the age of 20 in 1961, Stiller entered the medical faculty at the U of S, just as the then Premier of Saskatchewan, Tommy Douglas, was leading the controversial campaign to bring about a comprehensive, national system of health care in Canada. Always interested in science and medicine, Stiller had aspired from an early age to be a physician, in large part because of the inspiring example of a local doctor, Abe Dick, who had given outstanding care to his father who suffered from severe complications in kidney function owing to Bright's Disease. ‘I want to be him’, he told his mother at the age of 12 referencing Dr. Dick, ‘and I never varied’.1
As well as hoping to achieve the high bar of attending medical school, during his childhood and youth Stiller demonstrated a pronounced entrepreneurial bent, which would come to fruition many years later. When they were growing up, the Rev’d Stiller had encouraged his children to think always about how to serve others, and there were three professions especially that readily exemplified the virtue: minister, teacher, and doctor. This paternal ideal from a man whom he ‘loved dearly’ left an indelible mark on the young Stiller.2 But in the meantime, in order to save money, and already ‘being a little entrepreneur at heart’, as he recalls, Stiller set up a milk bar at school (the first such initiative to provide food in the local school system), delivered newspapers along the longest route in Saskatoon, co-owned and serviced pen vending machines distributed throughout the city, and, later, opened Skateland Roller Rink, which offered a venue for teenagers to burn off energy during the North American roller-skating craze of the late 1950s.3
Career
Following the completion of his MD degree in 1965, Stiller set off to pursue five years of post-graduate fellowship studies at what was then called the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont., followed by a year spent at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. During these years of advanced training under leaders in the field such as Dr. Ramsay Gunton and Dr. John Dossetor, Stiller developed a specialization in what was an obvious natural interest in kidney disease, as well as in the related areas of transplantation – a growing field – immunology, and infection. Returning to Western in 1971, and having gained by then his fellowship designation of FRCP(C), he embarked on a long tenure at University Hospital, London. Beginning in 1972, he was appointed Chief of Nephrology and Transplantation, and later, Director of Immunology at the John P. Robarts Institute.