In Memory of Dr. Roy J. Shephard

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It is with sadness that we learned of the passing of Dr. Roy Shephard, a past member of the Editorial Board of the European Journal of Applied Physiology, on February 28, in Squamish, British Columbia, Canada, at the age of 93.

Dr. Shephard was an international leader in exercise physiology, with over 2000 peer-reviewed publications during his career (Gledhill and Jamnik 2011) and over 100 books on physical activity or health. His first publication in the area of physiology, from his graduate work at Guy’s Hospital in London, dates to 1951 (Ernsting and Shephard 1951), and his first “fitness”-related publication is from 1965 (Shephard 1965). He was still publishing up until the past year, including on important recent topics such as how to stay physically active during the COVID-19 pandemic (Chtourou et al. 2020).

Dr. Shephard was a prolific writer—colleagues reported that he was always writing no matter his location and during travels to many conferences. Moreover, he practiced what he preached: students at the University of Toronto commented on seeing him biking across the campus on a regular basis during his tenure as the Director of the School of Physical and Health Education, and Professor of Applied Physiology, Faculty of Medicine from 1964 to 1991, and then as a Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education starting in 1994.

Dr. Shephard was recruited from England to the University of Toronto in 1964, where he developed one of the first exercise science programs in Canada, led the formation of Canada’s first doctoral program in exercise physiology, and served as Director of the University of Toronto Graduate Program in Exercise Science from 1964 to 1985 (Goodman and Thomas 2011).

His research areas included cardiac rehabilitation, immunology, sports medicine, gerontology, obesity, endocrinology, internal medicine, physical therapy, and physical fitness and exercise. He was instrumental in developing one of the first cardiac rehabilitation programs in Canada, positively affecting thousands of patients.

Dr Shephard served as an editor-in-chief or editorial board member on a high number of journals, organized numerous national and international conferences, symposia and workshops which included promotion of physical activity in schools (Trudeau and Shephard 2005), development of Canada’s Physical Activity Guidelines (Warburton et al. 2007), the Canadian Home Fitness Test (Shephard et al. 1976) and the Canadian Standardized Test of Fitness (Shephard 2015). He was the former president and honorary award recipient of the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology and the American College of Sports Medicine (Gledhill and Jamnik 2011), and an honorary award recipient from the North American Society for Pediatric Exercise Medicine.

He served as a consultant to the Defence and Civil Institute of Environmental Medicine, the Toronto Rehabilitation Centre, the Directorate of Active Living, Health & Welfare Canada, and the University of Québec (Trois Rivières). He held academic appointments in the Department of Physiology and the Institute of Medical Sciences at the University of Toronto, the Centre des Sciences de la Santé, Université de Québec à Trois Rivières, and the Hôpital Pitié Salpetrière, Université de Paris, and was a Canadian Tire Acceptance Limited Resident Scholar in Health Studies at Brock University from 1994 to 1998.

He held four scientific and medical degrees from London University (B.Sc., M.B.B.S., Ph.D. and M.D.) and honorary doctorates from the University of Toronto, Gent University (Belgium), the Université de Montréal, the Université de Québec à Trois Rivières, and the University of Guelph. In 2014, he was appointed to the Order of Canada “for his pioneering work in the field of exercise science and for promoting the health benefits of physical activity to Canadians”.

His most cited work is from development of an uncomplicated physical activity questionnaire to assess exercise behaviour in the community, which became one of the most broadly used and reliable questionnaires on physical activity (Godin and Shephard 1985). This was later followed up by his second most cited work on the limitation of physical activity questionnaires (Shephard 2003). Along with Dr. Don Bailey from the University of Saskatchewan, he was instrumental in developing the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire (PAR-Q) (Bailey et al. 1974). The publication of the modified version of this questionnaire is his third most cited work (Thomas et al. 1992). Based on a number of exercise screenings for people with different medical conditions (e.g., Burr et al. 2012a, b), this questionnaire was further improved in collaboration with Dr. Darren Warburton, University of British Columbia (Warburton et al. 2011), and has since been used by exercise professionals to safely screen millions of people for physical activity participation.

Dr. Shephard was a substantial contributor to the European Journal of Applied Physiology, with 37 publications in the journal, the first from 1974 on nutrition for exercise recovery (Shephard et al. 1974), and his last couple on seminal review articles on calorimetry and measurement of metabolic rate (Shephard et al. 2017; Taylor et al. 2018). Up until a couple of years ago, he was a valuable member of the journal’s editorial board.

Dr. Shephard was a lifetime contributor and leader in the field of exercise physiology and physical activity for health, and he will be greatly missed.

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