Dr. John Carl Harold Laudan died suddenly of a heart attack while in hospital on November 14, 2013, in Vancouver, while recovering from unrelated surgery.  He was 81.

John Laudan was born in Milden, Saskatchewan on November 1, 1931, the son of Dr. Harry Laudan and Ethyl Laudan (nee Bentley).  His father Harry was the eldest son of a German cavalry officer who had immigrated to the United States and then Canada.  When he was 18, John moved with his family to Longview, Washington, and received his medical training at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he received thesis honours and was awarded the degree of Medical Doctor in 1957, after which he interned in Vancouver, British Columbia.  He joined the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps in 1958 and served for three years at Fort Churchill, Manitoba, then an air base serving Strategic Air Command.  Returning to Vancouver to train as a radiologist, he received his specialist certification in 1965 and became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada in 1972.  He practiced in Vancouver at Associated Diagnostic Radiologists for many years, retiring in 2010.

John Laudan was also a portrait and landscape oil painter, and was influenced in his style by his friend, the late Vancouver artist Egbert Oudendag.   He had an enduring interest in classics throughout his life.  His medical thesis was on epilepsy, throughout which he related modern scholarship to the writings of ancient Greek sources: it received high commendation from the medical school.   He was an enthusiastic follower of politics and made many friends among the principals and followers of the conservative political magazine National Review, which he read attentively throughout much of his life. In his youth he was an excellent rider, having worked at the Laudan family ranch at Okotoks, Alberta, and was a champion sabre fencer at university, an interest he inherited from his military grandfather, who taught him cavalry sabre drill when he was a boy. He once tried to hunt gophers from horseback with a sword, which was not a success.  As a young man he entertained women's groups by singing fashionable songs, and was a good pianist.  It was a rare and special evening when, in later years, he could be enticed to play and sing to his old favourite songs on the piano.  He was an accomplished figure skater, a good tennis player, a sailor, and a collector and shooter of black powder firearms.  He brewed his own beer and made toy soldiers.  A gifted linguist, he read Latin, and spoke German, French and Afrikaans, the last of which he taught himself having married his wife Lesley, who was born in South Africa.

John Laudan joined the Canadian army in the hope that he would be posted in Germany, the land of his forefathers, but the powers that be felt he was more needed in the arctic, and so he was sent to Fort Churchill.  During his posting he chased by a polar bear, learned to build igloos, and delivered a generation of Inuit children.  In a training march through the tundra, he had to be stopped by his sergeant who advised that while he might be fine, the men were tired, something which he was discretely proud of all his life.  He suffered a serious riding accident as a boy, and spent a year as an invalid in bed, during which he developed and enduring love of the nonsense poems of Lewis Carroll, which his uncles read to him to keep his spirits up. He was erudite and well-read in many areas, including history, literature, and science, and would often provide long citations from memory.

Among his other endeavours, John Laudan nevertheless found time to be married five times, twice to Lesley with whom he remained to the end, and who was the love of his life.

He sometimes had a gruff manner and cantankerous opinions, but also a deep humility, and never wanted to be fussed over.  He would be entirely surprised by how much he is missed, and by how many.

He will be remembered by his wife Lesley, his children Alyne, Hamilton, their mother Marion Laudan, his children Dirk (Mina) and Carl, his grandchildren Nicholas and Suhana, his sister Barbara, his aunt Gladys, his cousin Joyce, and his friends.

Please contact Dirk Laudan at (604) 512-6203 or dirklaudan@me.com for details of the Celebration of Life in memory of John Laudan.