Dr. Jun-bi Tu passed away peacefully in his home on Sept. 16, 2022, at the age of 92. He was the loving husband of Beth, a caring father to Jack and Karen, a revered grandfather to Eric, Christopher, Owen, Andrew and Bradley and a kind father-in-law to Jane and Paul.
Jun-bi Tu was born in Longyan, Fujian, China and was the fourth of five sons and one daughter. He went to medical school in Taiwan, where he became separated from his family after the communist takeover of mainland China. He graduated from medical school at the National Taiwan University, and in 1965 he received an honorary doctorate from Kyushu University in Japan for his work in neuropsychiatry and the neurologic impacts of Wilson's Disease. He immigrated to Canada in 1966 to work as a pediatric research fellow and psychiatrist for severely mentally ill children at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. His research interests were in neuropsychiatry, psychopharmacology and pharmaco-epidemiology. He retired in 1995 as a professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Western Ontario, now known as Western University.
In his retirement, he became engrossed in writing poetry and poetic medicine. Working in mental health Jun-bi witnessed high smoking rates, especially among those with severe mental illness. He was passionate about smoking cessation and spent a great amount of time in his retirement writing poetry about smoking cessation.
He came to Canada with very little but an education, a job, and a hope for a better life for his family. He received many reaffirmations that his decision to immigrate to Canada was the right one. As he battled with lymphoma at the end of his life, he felt very lucky to receive medical care covered by Canadian medical insurance. He was very appreciative of the education his children received in Canada and the western world and the opportunity it provided to them to follow in his footsteps to become academic physicians and researchers.
He was grateful for the loving and devoted care of his wife of 60 years, was very proud of his children and their accomplishments, and he greatly enjoyed watching his five grandsons grow and develop.