MONTREAL – An American pediatric surgeon who died over the weekend on Montreal’s Mount Royal was a man who loved Canada, international medicine and working with children, according to friends and colleagues.
Shreyas Roy, 38, a promising new hire at the Sainte-Justine university hospital centre, reportedly fell off a cliff early Sunday morning while walking on the mountain with his partner.
“He was standing there and then he wasn’t,” said Michel Lallier, a renowned pediatric surgeon at Sainte-Justine who received a call at 5 a.m. Sunday from Roy’s panicked girlfriend, Veronique.
“I went to go see her and there was total confusion, it wasn’t clear what happened,” he said in an interview.
Roy was born in New York City, lived in India with his grandparents between the ages of three and 10, and went to college in Syracuse, N.Y., before attending medical school at McGill University.
Lallier broke down in tears just after describing how Roy was considering building a hospital in the area around Bihar, India, where he grew up, and what his death meant for Sainte-Justine.
“We are a family at Sainte-Justine,” Lallier said. “We have to start again from zero to find someone to replace Roy.”
Roy was getting ready to spend a year in Chicago learning a specialized technique for surgery on children. He was scheduled to begin at Sainte-Justine in July 2018.
Donald Doell, who attended medical school at McGill with Roy, said the doctor had a magnetic character and was generous and supportive.
“He was wonderful telling stories and had a lot of good ones,” said Doell, adding Roy loved Canada and was ready to start a life in Montreal with Veronique.
“He really brought people together and inspired them and really became a very important part of everyone’s life that he touched,” he said.
Family and friends were scheduled to hold a ceremony for Roy in Montreal on Tuesday evening and his funeral services will be in Syracuse on July 29, according to his obituary.
