Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Outspoken, curious and compassionate, Kirsty Duncan believed that when people told her things were “impossible,” they were simply daring her to prove them wrong.
As a medical geographer, professor and author, as a federal cabinet minister in charge of science and sport, as a Highland dancer and as a speaker of Gaelic who once won a prize for a poem she wrote in that language, she spent her life taking on dares. Failure, she always said, was not a defeat, but rather an opportunity to learn.
“For Kirsty, evidence-based decision making was paramount,” said her husband, Sven Spengemann, a former Liberal MP who is currently on leave from his job as a director at the United Nations Office for Project Services. “She fought to free scientists to talk openly about their work, and she fought for women, and people who are gender diverse or have disabilities in that work because she knew they all had something different and important to contribute.”
Dr. Duncan, who was 59 years old when she died on Jan. 26 of cancer-related causes, approached her diagnosis with the same zeal she had shown for everything else in her life. Even as the disease spread throughout her body, she was open about the experience because she felt doing so could help others, patients and caregivers, not feel so alone.
She agreed to every treatment her doctors offered because she wanted to live; each setback, of which there were many, was treated, not as a defeat, but rather as a springboard to the next step of getting better. And there was always solace in swimming, where the water allowed her wracked body to feel buoyant and whole again.
Kirsty Duncan, second from left, during a tour of the Shoichet Lab at the University of Toronto, in June, 2017.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
In a way, cancer was just another dare in a lifetime full of them. For years, she gave speeches, argued in cabinet and made the implications of research understandable for laypeople. In 2018, for example, she began a TED talk with this: “Let me tell you about rock snot.”
Riveted by images of rocks having colds and nasal drip, the audience listened attentively as Dr. Duncan, her hair pulled back tightly in a no-nonsense ponytail, went on to explain that the “snot” was actually invasive algae that grew on rocks and threatened the very existence of salmon and trout. Yet, when a reporter contacted the government scientist who had found that climate change may have been responsible for the algae’s proliferation, she said, his bosses did not allow him to talk.
“Now, who the heck would have wanted to stifle [news of] climate change?” Dr. Duncan asked. “We know that climate change information is suppressed for all sorts of reasons. We see it when countries pull out of international climate agreements and when industry fails to meet its reduction targets. And so many other scientific issues are obscured by alternate facts and fake news. We have seen it in Russia, in the U.S. and even in Canada.”
First elected to Parliament in 2008 as the Liberal member for Etobicoke North, the heart of what is known colloquially as “Ford Nation,” Dr. Duncan continued the TED talk by noting that science is humanity’s best effort at uncovering the truth about our world and our very existence. And scientists must be free to explore unconventional, controversial subjects, reveal inconvenient truths – and fail, because even a failed hypothesis explains something.
“Kirsty believed in the power of people,” Mr. Spengemann said. “She barged through political barriers because she thought we all represented a layer cake of commonalities first and foremost.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said his family had one rule when it came to Dr. Duncan: “We don’t run against Kirsty.”
Ms. Duncan makes an announcement in the Foyer of the House of Commons.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Kirsty Ellen Duncan was born on Oct. 31, 1966, in Toronto, the older of Errol and Helen Duncan’s two children. Her father, the first of his Scottish family to be born in Canada, was a school caretaker who rose through the ranks to become a supervisor at the Toronto District School Board, while her mother, a high-school physical education teacher, had a pilot’s licence, was a sailor and played the bagpipes even though she was ethnically Polish.
The parents met when Mr. Duncan overheard his future wife playing the bagpipes in the school gym. Together, they taught young Kirsty and her brother, Christopher, the value of hard work, not accepting stereotypes or class barriers, and showing respect for everyone they met, no matter their status in life.
True to form, the daughter would end up qualifying for and running the Boston Marathon eight times, and became a weightlifter and triathlete. An early experience as a gymnast left her with body dysmorphia: She was repeatedly told she was fat and developed such unhealthy eating habits by the time she was in her second year of university that she damaged her stomach lining. This led her to become a passionate crusader for safety in sport, a cause she brought to the cabinet table.
“For Kirsty, the issue of safety in sport was as important as the need to bring more diverse voices in the world of science,” Mr. Spengemann said. “The safety of girls, the promotion of women – she was in a position where she had a voice, and she refused to be silenced. Was there resistance? Yes, but it did not deter her.”
She graduated from Kipling Collegiate Institute in 1985 as an Ontario scholar, then studied anthropology and geography at the University of Toronto. After that, she moved to Scotland, where she completed a doctorate in geography in 1992 at the University of Edinburgh.
Ms. Duncan at a celebration at Rideau Hall for Canadian athletes who competed at the PyeongChang Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
From 1993 to 2000, Dr. Duncan taught meteorology, climatology and climate change at the University of Windsor. While there, growing ever more concerned about the increasing probability of a global flu crisis, she immersed herself in research about the cause of the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918. Finding fragments of that virus could lead to a better flu vaccine in the present, she knew.
Eventually, after several years of searching, Dr. Duncan learned of seven miners who had died from the Spanish flu and were buried in the small town of Longyearbyen, Norway, an area that would contain permafrost. It took several more years of preparation – building a team, developing methodologies and getting permits to exhume the bodies – but finally, in 1998, the ground survey began. The results were disappointing because the bodies were not actually buried in the permafrost, the process itself reinforced for her the value of science that fails in its goals.
In 2003, she wrote about the process, including the respect her team showed for sites that were culturally sensitive, in a book called Hunting the 1918 Flu: One Scientist’s Search for a Killer Virus.
The same year, she began to teach both medical geography and corporate social responsibility at the University of Toronto. In 2008, she published a second book, Environment and Health: Protecting our Common Future.
Dr. Duncan, who was also diagnosed years ago with multiple sclerosis, made the leap to politics because she saw it as a pathway to enforce what she had taught and written about for all her professional life. Under then-prime minister Justin Trudeau, she served as minister of science and sport from 2015 to 2019, while in 2018, she was also responsible for the portfolio of persons with disabilities.
Ms. Duncan at the announcement of Canada's participation in a joint bid to co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
In 2019, Mr. Trudeau named her deputy leader of the government in the House of Commons, a position she held until 2021.
On Jan. 27, 2023, she called for a public inquiry into abuse in Canadian sports and criticized the Trudeau government for not effectively following up on her initiatives as sports minister. Two days later, she issued a statement that she was taking a medical leave from Parliament because of a “physical health challenge.” She returned in 2024 after treatment for cancer.
She worked for as long as she was able, unafraid to criticize the government for failing to follow through on initiatives she had pushed for, including safe-sport reforms to protect children.
Following her death, Mr. Trudeau posted on social media that Dr. Duncan “believed in knowledge, compassion and service, and she brought those values into every conversation and every fight she took on. I learned a great deal from her, and I was lucky to call her a friend.”
Among her many accolades, the University of Edinburgh awarded her an honorary doctorate to mark a lifetime of service, while she was recognized as a contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was given the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, jointly with former U.S. vice-president Al Gore.
In 2023, she was named to the list of 100 influential women in oncology by the online publication, OncoDaily, while her 2024 book, The Exclusion Effect: How the Sciences Discourage Girls & Women & What to Do About It, was shortlisted for a 2024 Science Writers and Communicators of Canada book award.
“Had she been given more time, Kirsty wanted to be part of a kindness revolution in Canada,” Mr. Spengemann said. “She believed that we are supposed to be kind to each other, to lift each other up, not tear each other down. For her, that was the way for us to achieve the impossible.”
In addition to her husband, Dr. Duncan leaves her brother, Christopher, and a coterie of close relatives and friends.
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