CMAJ's youngest-ever editor dies.

1122 CMAJ, October 20, 2015, 187(15) ©2015 8872147 Canada Inc. or its licensors Dr. Gordon Dickinson, who was handed the editorial reins at CMAJ in 1965 when he was only 33 years old, died suddenly at his Toronto home Aug. 4, 2015. He was 82. Dickinson graduated from McGill in 1958 and was appointed editor of CMAJ in December 1965, becoming the youngest physician to hold the post since the journal was launched in 1911. Prior to his appointment, he had served as the journal’s associate editor since October 1959. “I remember that he was hired as associate editor by Dr. Stanley Gilder less than two years after graduating from McGill,” recalled his ex-wife, Mary Lou Dickinson. “I also know that he loved the work at CMAJ. He always said his job was to help the articles say what they needed to say — he took the editing process very seriously.” Dickinson worked at the journal while it — and the CMA headquarters — were located in Toronto. He resigned as editor in 1969, the same year CMA staff began moving to the association’s new headquarters in Ottawa. By June 1971, CMAJ and its staff were also located in Ottawa. Mary Lou Dickinson said there was some debate about the impact the move would have on the journal. “The CMA was making the move to Ottawa because it was the political capital of Canada,” she said. However, by leaving Toronto, CMAJ would also be leaving the country’s leading centre of medical research. “There was some debate about that,” she recalls. Gordon Dickinson’s decade at the journal marked the only time in its history that it published weekly, a process that began in 1960 and ended with his departure in 1969, when twice-monthly publication resumed. Despite the many deadlines associated with weekly publication, Dickinson managed to complete a master’s degree in philosophy at the University of Toronto in 1962. “Al though married to medicine, Gordon Dickinson’s mistress is philosophy,” CMAJ noted upon his departure.