On Tuesday, September 3rd 2019, after a year-long battle against cancer, Dr. Jay Keystone, CM, MD, MSc, FRCPC, passed away peacefully surrounded by family. Dr. Keystone will be remembered and missed by his wife Margaret Mascarenhas and his five children, Danielle and Amos Adler, Kathryn Keystone, Jen Keystone, David Keystone, and Kevin Keystone and Aaron Sanderson.
Dr. Keystone was a leader and an expert in tropical and travel medicine with accomplishments too numerous to name. After graduating from the University of Toronto Medical School in 1969, Dr. Keystone trained in Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical Center. He obtained his fellowship in Internal Medicine and received his Masters in Clinical Tropical Medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He was a Professor of Medicine as well as the Director of the Tropical Disease Unit at the Toronto General Hospital. Moreover, Dr. Keystone worked as the Director of the Toronto Meisys Travel Health Clinic and was the president of the International Society of Travel Medicine. In addition to his dedication to tropical and travel medicine, Dr. Keystone was an accomplished writer, publishing countless peer-reviewed articles as well as pioneering the first textbook in travel medicine that is currently being used throughout the world. As a testament to his contributions, Dr. Keystone received the Ben Kean medal from the American Society of Tropical Medicine in 2008 for his dedication to clinical tropical medicine and his impact on future physicians. In 2015, Dr. Keystone was appointed to the Order of Canada, and in 2019, he was awarded the Inaugural Distinguished Fellow Membership from the International Society of Travel Medicine.
Apart from his dedication to tropical and travel medicine, Dr. Keystone was known by his colleagues for his humor, leaving current and future physicians with a simple yet profound passage to always remind us to keep laughter as our best form of medicine: “Humour is an important tool in the practice of medicine: in teaching I use it to engage the learner; in practice it creates a relationship between me and the patient that levels the playing field and puts them at ease.”