Obituary of Ugo Schacherl

Ugo passed away peacefully in Ottawa on January 7, 2016 at the age of 93 with family and friends by his side. He kept his childlike and radiant, blue-eyed smile and feisty spirit until his final days. Now he can finally join his beloved wife, Nada (Natalia). Ugo was born in Fiume, Italy, now Rijeka, Croatia, to David Schacherl, a Jew from Vienna, and Stefania Harasin, the daughter of a sea captain. He tragically lost his mother when he was only four. During the war, Ugo narrowly escaped execution and served as a partisan in Yugoslavia. He and Nada married in 1947. They spent time in a refugee camp before immigrating to Canada in the early 1950s. Having almost completed medical school in Padua and Zagreb, Ugo now started over. He worked in a lumber camp and railway gang before settling in Meadow Lake, where the road ended and there was no electricity or plumbing. He worked as a technician in radiology and a researcher in neuropathology with Dr. J. Olszewski, and finally received his medical degree from the University of Saskatchewan in 1962. He was devoted to his patients in Cudworth, Delisle and then Saskatoon, treating everyone with understanding and respect and giving each patient his full attention and wisdom. Ugo had the intellect of a scientist and the vulnerable soul of a poet. He wrote poetry from an early age. He translated poems from Italian to English and published many articles in The Medical Post. In later years, he reviewed Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and developed a new formula for the perimeter of an ellipse. He liked to say, “I am an ignorant man with a good library.” Ugo was predeceased by his wife Nada in 2011, his parents, Stefania and David, his brothers Bruno and Hermann and sister Luzzi. He leaves behind his four children, Elena (Ron Ostrander) of Calgary, Eva (Piers Hutchinson) of Ottawa, and Susette and Myrna of Toronto, as well as his cherished grandchildren, David, Janina and Laura Ostrander, Nicole and Julien Chassin and Amy Schacherl. His family is so grateful to his caregiver Jane Mariki and the staff and residents of Villa Marconi in Ottawa for bringing some peace and happiness to the difficult last year of his life. We miss you so much, but your memory will live in our hearts.