It is with profound sadness that the Department of Anthropology announces the passing of Professor Emeritus Lawrence Sawchuk. Larry’s nearly 50-year career at the University of Toronto began as a Lecturer in 1976, advanced to Assistant Professor in 1978, and then a tenured Associate Professor by 1981.
Over his incredible career, Larry committed to his natural talents as a teacher and storyteller. From human variation, to health and disease, biomedical anthropology, and demography, Larry’s courses were always popular with students, especially Plagues and Peoples, enrollments sometimes upwards of a thousand. Larry’s legacy will live at the University of Toronto Scarborough, his vision and work creating the original Health Studies program that has since grown to become the Department of Health and Society. Larry thought it was important for students to understand the biocultural roots of health and disease, building connections between anthropology, the social sciences, and humanities and sciences more broadly.
There is no doubt Larry’s wit and sense of humor made courses appealing to students, but he was also committed to teaching innovation. Along with students and IT staff at the University of Toronto Scarborough, Larry created a number of multimedia teaching tools, many games or interactive books originally available as CD ROMs, more recently available online. The Digital Atlas of the Human Skeleton, in 2001, offered a unique 3D interactive experience with the human skeleton. Another interactive tool was the 2004 Deadly Harvest game where students explored clues and potential risk factors in a virtual community to solve the puzzle of a disease outbreak. In 2006, the game Conspiracy in Fairport aimed to provide students with basic forensic skills to solve a murder in a fictious town. Most recently, Larry’s 2021 interactive e-book on epidemics was published by Top Hat Monocle. After four internal university teaching awards, Larry was awarded the University of Toronto’s prestigious President’s Teaching Award in 2013.
Larry’s passion was his research. As a biological anthropologist, he was devoted to research focusing primarily on historical epidemics and demographic studies. Larry was one of a few biological anthropologists in Canada to incorporate demographic methods and biostatistics in his archives-based research, and a strong advocate of the importance of understanding population culture and history. His 50-year research commitment to Gibraltar and its people is testament to this philosophy. His research in Gibraltar began in the 1970s when he studied the demography of Gibraltar’s macaques with Dr. Frances Burton. He also established a longstanding research career in Malta for nearly 20 years, as well as contributing to research on health and disease in Ontario.
With nearly 70 publications and a few in the pipeline, Larry’s work showcased his commitment to anthropology’s case study approach. He published with students, medical doctors, and statisticians on a wide range of topics, including issues in water insecurity, social inequalities and differential mortality, and intra- and inter-population variation in endemic, epidemic, and pandemic infectious disease impacts (including cholera, influenza, measles, tuberculosis, and yellow fever). Larry also developed methods for quantifying the impacts of crisis mortality in epidemics, and for measuring the impacts of disease interactions and syndemics at the population level. More recently, he explored the history of the macaque population in Gibraltar, bringing him back full swing to the start of his career.
Larry instilled a strong work ethic and confidence in his students, an incredible force encouraging them to pursue their career aspirations. Larry guided graduate students who went in diverse directions, many becoming involved in academics or research in health. From fieldwork in communities and archives, to database constructions and statistical analyses, Larry encouraged his 25 graduate students to be creative and critical thinkers, undoubtedly also inspiring the countless tide of undergraduates over the years.
Beyond the academics, Larry was an audiophile and loved good music, particularly the Blues. He had a keen interest in astronomy and finding treasures at the auction. His pastimes included restoring antique furniture, woodworking, gardening, tending to the goldfish and koi in his backyard pond, watching classic films, and photographing nature. Larry grew up in Winnipeg’s North End in the 1950s, riding motorcycles long before he learned how to drive a car. Larry spoke of his Ukrainian grandparents, living outside the city in traditional sod homes he visited as a child. He remembered waiting for city buses when it was -30 in Winnipeg in February, and he bristled at arrogance, the thing he most disliked. He earned his BA and MA degrees in Anthropology at the University of Manitoba before moving to the big city of Toronto, accepted into the PhD program at the University of Toronto, a major turning point in the evolution of Larry’s life. He is survived by three sons, Aaron, Justin, and Jonathan, and four grandchildren, Grace, Renton, Lincoln, and Xavier.