My dad was a professor, too. Almost everyone who knew that heard me say, "So I wanted to be anything but."
One morning in the very early 1990s, as we drove down to campus and my high school in his little silver car, he told me again that I'd make a great prof. I said I wanted to make more of a difference to the world. He said I could be like David Suzuki, who had been a geneticist colleague of my dad's before CBC's The Nature of Things and the David Suzuki Foundation.
I thought, Hmmm—but ...
Fast forward 30+ years, and I'm interviewing David Suzuki about seeking transformative change through science for CoSphere's Small Planet Heroes podcast.
The way I told it, I exhausted every other option before following his advice. At U of T, I enrolled in Commerce (and switched to Arts & Science on day one). After my undergrad, I planned on law school (and went to Princeton for a PhD). After Princeton, I appealed to conservation NGOs (and went to Stanford for a postdoc). After Stanford, I interviewed for 13 positions in the Canadian federal government (and went to UBC as a Canada Research Chair).
After he died suddenly and unexpectedly on April 25, I finally realized that I followed the path he imagined for me as a teenager.
I never gave him credit for it. I couldn't even see it until he was gone.
While he was alive, all I focused on were the things I wanted to do things differently. Now it's so obvious that he was just about the best role model a boy could ever hope for.
He modelled balance in academia. I champion the same. He honoured and stayed connected to his mentors. I celebrate remembering our roots (this post is Part 2).
As a person, he was deeply principled and loving—even if he couldn't always express it in the ways I could understand.
Equipped with a new understanding of him, I submitted the following as a Lives Lived essay for The Globe & Mail. They published it today.
I copied the longer initial submission below, with one additional edit.
Voon Loong (Ricky) Chan Connected across Cultures and Continents
Scientist. Athlete. Father. Coach. Born Sep. 8 1942, in Malaysia; died Apr. 25, 2026, in Burlington, of heart attack; aged 83.
Voon Loong Chan learned to ride a bicycle at age 7 on a one-lane dirt road in the village of Temoh, Malaysia, crouching under the crossbar of an adult bike and squeezed between vehicles and a barbed wire fence. The fence kept tigers in the jungle—mostly—but it had failed to protect the village from guerilla soldiers. Voon Loong’s family had already fled for the city of Ipoh, leaving the boy with his uncle.
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| My parents on a hike |
Once a spot had been secured at St. Michael’s—a prominent English-speaking Catholic school in the city—Voon Loong joined his parents and siblings, five other boys and six girls.
To keep out of city gangs, Voon Loong threw himself into sport. He travelled with friends 100 kilometres over the mountains on a single-speed bike to play basketball, eventually playing for his state. He swam, ran, and played badminton as his studies allowed.
As a teenager, his family came into enough money to send him overseas for school. After his beloved mother admonished him not to “come back with a white wife”, he landed in Melbourne, Australia, to join the new Heidelberg High School. There he met Penny, whose English family wanted nothing less than for her to be that white wife.
Voon Loong and Penny shared an adventuresome spirit and a set of strongly held core values: work hard, tell the truth, make friends, and cherish your family. Otherwise, they contrasted: she was bubbly and free; he was methodical and strategic.
Soon after graduating from the University of Melbourne and marrying in 1966, they began their international travels together. After Voon Loong did a Master’s of Science at Monash, the couple took up their studies in Ontario, at Western. Working at the same Cancer Lab, he studied microbial genetics, she immunology. Bonding to fellow graduate students over chicken curry cooked in beakers, they fell in love with cold Canada.
Ph.D.s in hand, they took up teaching jobs at the University of Malaya. When Malaysia dictated that all instruction was to be done in Malay, Voon Loong sensed that the country was limiting opportunities for Chinese and western students alike. Back across the ocean he went in search of fairness and promise for his children, first for a sabbatical, and then for an Assistant Professorship at the University of Toronto, eventually bringing his family, which by then included two young boys, Chee and Kai.
One of two children, Penny wanted four; one of twelve, Voon Loong wanted two. They compromised on three, and promptly had a Canadian daughter, Soo. In 1980, the rest of the family joined her as proud Canadian citizens. As Voon Loong’s career took off, the young family embraced Canada, skiing, biking, hiking, swimming, canoeing, and camping—visiting every province. British Columbia captivated them for a year, as Voon Loong spent the first of two sabbaticals with UBC’s Nobel Laureate, Michael Smith.
My dad wearing my PLoS Biology Author t-shirt
Voon Loong distinguished himself as a leading microbial geneticist, specializing in Campylobacter jejuni, an important pathogen. It rankled him that funders recruited him to study first-world diseases but spurned his plans to develop a low-cost vaccine for a central cause of diarrheal disease in the tropics.
Modeling the balance that he taught his children, Voon Loong squeezed sports amongst his academic work. In his forties, he took up squash, and simply by studying how good players played, he ascended to its highest heights, winning medals at the World Squash Masters Championships.
Sport was never only for achievement, however; it was always for the friendships that were forged under pressure with play. That said, he liked to tell people how often he won. Surely they wanted to know?
Cycling continued its allure. In 1993, Voon Loong retired as a professor to take up cycle-touring with Penny. The two of them completed dozens of trips across four continents, including a cross-Canada ride in 2008. Again, it wasn’t just the destination but also the journey, as every trip brought new friends, whether they were fellow cyclists from afar or locals who found two shivering rain-soaked seniors in need of a bike shop and decided to transport, feed, and house them for a night.
As his children married and seven beloved grandchildren joined ‘Team Chan’, Voon Loong became head coach of a clan. Together, they biked, swam, paddled, and played every sport imaginable in the ‘Chan Olympics’, as he instilled in all the same values that had guided him through life.
For his family, no ask was too much. Could they send back money to Malaysia from their tiny graduate stipends? Yes. Could a niece come stay for university in Toronto? Sure—we’ll add rooms onto the house. A nephew, too? Great—a sub for 3-on-3 basketball. Another nephew? The more the merrier.
Human connection also inspired his love for pickleball in his seventies. Here was a game, he figured, where he could join up with anyone just about anywhere and make friends. If they were masters of the sport, he studied them; if they were novices, he coached them. He became a certified coach and ambassador for the sport, bringing it to his hometown Ipoh and taking great pride in its flourishing.
It was also about achievement, of course. In his later years, he and Penny made a yearly pilgrimage to Naples, Florida for the US Open Pickleball Championships, the largest and most competitive event in the sport. And he won medal after medal, including a gold and two silvers in the 80+ category just ten days before his death.
In his final days, those closest to him sensed a change in him. He was, at last, content. It wasn’t only that he had ascended so high in the Pickleball ratings (4.68) that there didn’t seem to be another 80-year old left to play, but that he was surrounded and adored by the big, tight, flourishing family he had built with Penny and their fabric of friendships all over the world.
My dad's commitment to study a 'third world' disease (above in red) didn't make the cut, but it mattered hugely to me. He lived by his principles.
The Globe & Mail wanted something that drove us crazy, a flaw or foible (added post hoc in blue). At first I resisted: I had spent my whole life focusing on those. This piece was a gift to him, to make up for my blindness during his life.
Finally, though, I could see the bragging differently. During his life, it felt like he wanted to show others he was better. Now it was just that abandoned seven year-old, one of twelve kids, who needed to be seen.
I love you, Dad, with all of it—not despite it.
CHANS Lab Views by Kai Chan's lab is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://chanslabviews.blogspot.com.
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