The federal civil servant, who became an ardent anti-tobacco supporter, is remembered for his work supporting smoking control efforts in Canada and other parts of the world.
Neil Collishaw passed away at his home in Ottawa on Thursday after a battle with bladder cancer. according to his family. He was 77 years old.
Collishaw’s contributions ranged from his time as a bureaucrat at Health Canada to his later years as director of research for the Ottawa-based nonprofit Physicians for a Smoking-Free Canada.
That included helping draft legislation in the mid-1980s that restricted tobacco companies’ ability to advertise, and helping pass another law banning smoking in federal workplaces, trains, and airplanes. was.
Collishaw also toured Canada in the early 2000s with an Ottawa restaurant worker with lung cancer to confront the health effects of second-hand smoke.
“One of his beliefs was that you could accomplish a lot if you didn’t care who got the credit,” said Cynthia Callard, his longtime friend and colleague.
“He was always helping out in the back room.” [others] Understand what they wanted to do. ”
System operation
Callard worked at Collishaw in the mid-1980s prior to the passage of the Non-Smoker Health Act, a private member’s bill that banned smoking in federal government offices, and the Tobacco Product Control Act, which required health warnings on tobacco products. We met.
Both bills passed the all-party legislative committee. At the time, Collishaw worked for Health Canada under former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative government, while Callard worked for the NDP MP who introduced the Non-Smoker Health Act.
Ms Callard said she called Collishaw for help and he sent her a large package of articles and background information.
“You know, this was before the internet,” Callard said. “And this was a narrow field [of study]. So that ability to make the system work is what made him so effective. ”
She said Mr Collishaw had also helped develop a national strategy to reduce tobacco use.
In the 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Collishaw worked for the World Health Organization.
There, Callard said he helped train government officials in former communist countries on how to stand up to tobacco companies that tried to push through “offensive” advertising.
He also said he was called in from behind the scenes to assist lawyers in defending Canada’s new anti-tobacco law against legal challenges.
“He realized the value of storytelling.”
In the early 2000s, Collishaw and Callard were working at the Canadian Anti-Smoking Hospital when they met a woman named Heather Crowe.
Ms. Crowe, a non-smoker, worked as a waitress in Ottawa’s Westborough neighborhood for many years. She was the first person to successfully claim full compensation from the Occupational Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario because her occupational exposure to tobacco smoke caused her cancer.
Mr Collishaw accompanied her on speaking tours around the country and again worked behind the scenes, Ms Callard said.
“He recognized the value of storytelling,” said Ottawa City Councilor Teresa Kavanagh, who is married to Collishaw.
“It’s one thing to read statistics, it’s another to talk face-to-face with someone who is suffering from a terrible disease because of the people around them who smoke.”
Collishaw died last week surrounded by his family, Kavanaugh said.
