Dr. Robert Liptrap gets the last word

Dr. Robert Liptrap wanted to have the last word.

In his self-written obituary this past week, Liptrap reflected on his life and said goodbye on his own terms.

“I leave this world with many memories of warm, stimulating, exciting friendships and adventures," the longtime veterinarian wrote. “And so dear family and friends I bid adieu.”

Liptrap, a graduate of the University of Guelph's Ontario Veterinary College, passed away on Oct. 13. He was 91.

“I died peacefully at Hospice Wellington in Guelph having been thoughtfully, caringly and compassionately looked after and with my family surrounding me,” his obituary reads.

His daughter, Kimberley Ann, says her father had a very full life, affecting many people, in many ways.

“And yes, he wanted to write his own obituary,” Kimberley Ann said.

“He also made all of the plans for his celebration of life. He was quite an avid photographer, so he had a slideshow prepared of his favourite photos that he had taken, and he also had some USB drives with music that he liked. He had everything prepared for us.”

Liptrap was born in May 5, 1932, to Alice and Robert Liptrap in Toronto. His brother Richard was born almost two years later.

“Our parents had come to Canada from London, England, in the late 1920s, first my father and then my mother when he had saved enough to bring her over too,” Liptrap wrote.

His family moved several times. During the depression, they lived in Toronto and witnessed the devastation that time had on people's lives.

“I attended school in Preston, now part of Cambridge, before we were on the move again to St Lambert, PQ. In my late teens I went off to Macdonald College in Quebec to study agriculture for a year before enrolling at the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph,” Liptrap explained.

Kimberley Ann says her father was always interested in agriculture.

“He worked on a farm when he was a teenage boy. That’s partly how he put himself through university. And then that evolved into veterinary medicine,” she said.

It was there that Liptrap met his wife to be, Patricia Ruth Lawton.

“The wisest decision I ever made was to marry her,” he wrote.

After graduation, Liptrap went into a large animal practice. It was during that time his daughter Kimberley Ann, and son Robin Scott, joined the family.

Kimberley Ann and her brother grew up in Guelph.

“My father loved to teach. He loved the energy and the synergy of teaching. I would say that was probably one of his biggest passions, teaching and all of the interactions,” Kimberley Ann said.  

“As a father, he was always very supportive. I think of him as my rock, and I was just always grateful that he was my dad.”

Becoming restless after five years, Liptrap returned to the college to take up graduate studies, receiving a MVSc and a PhD.

“Universities were expanding then, and I pursued an academic career teaching many young inquisitive minds and doing research on farm animals. Around 1985, a young lady named Cheryl Niemuller bounced into my office and asked if I knew anything about elephants,” he says.

“This occasioned an abrupt shift in my studies, and I spent the last 10 years of my working career with an outstanding group of intelligent, resourceful young women studying reproduction in wild animals.”

Kimberley Ann says this opportunity led to her father working with the African Lion Safari.

“Funnily enough, my father was allergic to animal fur, but elephants presented a less allergic subject, so he was happy about that. He wasn’t allergic to elephants,” she says.

“It never stopped him, but it certainly did help that he could work with an animal that he was not allergic too. So, that made a huge difference for him, and he found it very interesting. He really enjoyed the people that he worked with as well.”

Kimberley Ann says her father had a lot of different relationships with people that he valued.

“And you can see that in his photography as well,” she says.