Dr. Kamil Nasr was eight years old in 1948 when his parents fled their home in Haifa for Egypt, where his mother had relatives. But his native Palestine never left his heart. Nor did Egypt, where he would stay 10 years, or Lebanon, where he would become a physician.听听聽
鈥淚 want to support the next generation of ophthalmologists in the regions where I lived and grew up,鈥� explains the doctor, who was a McGill University lecturer for 35 years while practising ophthalmic surgery at the Montreal General Hospital, now part of the McGill University Health Centre, as well as at the former Reddy Memorial Hospital.听听聽
That鈥檚 why in 2021 he pledged to create a master鈥檚 scholarship in his name at the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at McGill University. The Dr. Kamil Nasr Scholarship will be awarded to master鈥檚 students based on merit, with a preference for students coming from the same conflict-ridden part of the world as he did.听听
鈥淲e鈥檙e hoping to be able to award the first scholarship of $10,000 this fall.鈥澨�
An eye on medicine聽
Nasr says he arrived at McGill in 1967 somewhat by chance after studying medicine at Universit茅 Saint-Joseph in Beirut, which was affiliated with Universit茅 de鈥疞yon. He had applied to McGill and Universit茅 de Montr茅al for his ophthalmology specialty, but it was McGill that accepted his application. 鈥淚n Palestine, my father had been a judge in the English court, so we had a British passport. Yet my English wasn鈥檛 very good.鈥澨�
There were several reasons he chose eye medicine as his specialty. 鈥淎s a child, I used to repair watches, and I was attracted to tiny things that require meticulousness. I also imagined it as an elegant specialty, with very little blood and few emergencies.鈥澨�
Eye surgery is undoubtedly one of the fields of surgery that has evolved the most, he explains. 鈥淚n 1967 we were in the Stone Age. To do cataract surgery, we had to cut the eye open and remove the entire lens, then suture it with thread. Patients were immobilized for a week with their head stabilized between two sandbags. There were lots of complications and the patient, who no longer had a lens, had to wear Coke-bottle glasses for the rest of their life. Today we insert an implant, and the patient often doesn鈥檛 need glasses at all after the surgery. We are also seeing enormous progress in the treatment of other eye diseases, such as macular degeneration, which is fantastic.鈥澨�
鈥淚 came to Montreal at a wonderful time, the year of Expo鈥�67, and I adapted very well to life in Quebec. I鈥檇 go so far as to say that I emancipated myself from Middle Eastern cultural conventions, particularly when it came to manners and the tendency to stick within your family.鈥� In 1973, he returned to Beirut to open his own practice, but the project was to be short-lived. In 1975, the first phase of the war in Lebanon, known as the 鈥淭roubles,鈥� began. 鈥淭here were blockades everywhere and fires. The conditions for running a practice were becoming difficult.鈥澨�
Nasr returned to Canada that year, passed the exam to obtain his licence to practise and started working at McGill and other Montreal hospitals. He would remain at McGill for decades, until stepping down in聽2010. 鈥淚 wanted to make room for a fantastic young candidate, a glaucoma specialist, who needed a position, and I was no longer operating.鈥澨�
He retired for good in 2014, and for the past 10 years has been learning Italian, as well as embracing a life of travel.聽
His condo on Nuns鈥� Island, in the Montreal borough of Verdun, is filled with works of art. It also has photos and paintings of his parents and sister, whom he brought to Canada and who have since passed away, and his maternal uncle, Maximos V Hakim, Patriarch of Antioch of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church from 1967 to 2000.听听
鈥淗e was quite a character,鈥� recalls Nasr, himself a Greek Catholic (Melchite). He accompanied his uncle on each of his trips to Canada. 鈥淭hey were state visits. He was received by the Prime Minister and the Governor General.鈥澨�
Kamil Nasr makes no secret of the fact that his family鈥檚 flight from Palestine to Egypt left deep scars. 鈥淚t was meant to be a temporary exile but after a year, my parents put me in the care of Jesuits in Cairo. My father, who was 48 at the time, found work as a legal adviser to the British embassy in Cairo but his career as a judge was over.鈥澨�
In 2021, the university approached Nasr to request a donation, and told him about a program, the Martlet Research Trust, in which the university would double the amount of his donation up to a maximum of $125,000.听听聽
Nasr jumped on the opportunity. 鈥淎t this stage of my life, it鈥檚 very important for me to contribute to the advancement of eye care,鈥� he says. In so doing, he joins a small but growing group of donors, graduates and former faculty members who provide financial support to the Department of Ophthalmology and Vision Sciences. 鈥淲hat makes me the happiest,鈥� he says, 鈥渋s that this grant, which bears my name, will be given in perpetuity.鈥澨�
This article was first published in French:聽Un don pour la vision