George Anis Awad, 1942-2007

George Anis Awad died on Thursday, May 24, 2007. He was in hospital for the treatment of a lengthy and deteriorating heart condition of several years duration. He passed away in the company of his wife, Macy, and his daughter Melia and his son Tarek.

George was born in 1942 in Palestine. When the state of Israel was established in 1948, his family left his motherland and settled in Beirut, Lebanon. George was the fourth of five siblings.

He obtained his medical degree from the American University in Beirut. On the completion of his psychiatric training at the University of Rochester in New York, he did his child psychiatry training at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

He then moved to Toronto, Canada, where he was offered a position in the Family Court Clinic affiliated with the University of Toronto. He eventually assumed the directorship of that program. He also rose to the rank of Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto in 1980, completed his psychoanalytic training in 1979, and became a training analyst in 1992. As a Staff Psychiatrist at the Hospital for Sick Children he specialized in Infant Psychiatry and later in Forensic Child Psychiatry. He was in high demand for his expert opinion in Custody and Access cases until the end of his life. He was active on many committees serving the needs of children and families.

George was greatly appreciated for his efforts towards the advancement of the soul of psychoanalysis and his masterful chairing of a rare town hall meeting of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society as a body to deal with an incident of boundary violation in The Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis remains unforgettable.

He maintained an active psychoanalytic practice until his untimely death, and was a lively contributor and participant in the local and national scientific programs. His work has been published widely in the psychiatric and psychoanalytic literature.

In recent years he joined a group of analysts from many countri