6,500 Autopsies Later... One of North America's most respected forensic pathologists, Dr. Hans Sepp, was born in Rakvere, Estonia. Before immigrating to Canada in the early 1950s, he attended medical schools in Tartu, his native land, and at the University of Hamburg, West Germany, before completing his medical examination at the University of Bonn, 1951. Dr. Sepp furthered his education at Toronto Western Hospital, the Banting Institute, Toronto General Hospital, the Hospital for Sick Children, among others, before he was certified as a Pathologist, 1957, by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. A Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, between 1958-1986, Dr. Sepp began his career as a forensic pathologist for the Ontario Solicitor General in 1964. It is estimated that Dr. Sepp, between 1964-1997, performed more than 6,500 autopsies, of which some 350 were homicide. One of his prized possessions is a diploma confirming that he is an Honorary Member of the Murder and Mayhem Society of North America. In this view, Dr. Sepp gives a guest lecture at his alma mater, University of Tartu in Estonia,1988. [Photo, courtesy Dr. Hans Sepp]

Chess Player Becomes Oceanographer Born in a fishing village on the shores of the Gulf of Finland, Helmuth Sandstrom fled Soviet occupation of Estonia, his native land, in 1944, resettling as a young lad with his family, first, in Finland, then Sweden, before migrating to Canada, as “swallows,” landing at Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1950. As an undergraduate student in Physics at the University of Toronto, Helmuth became interested in glaciological studies which prompted him to join a scientific team venturing to Ellesmere Island in Canada’s Arctic. Data collected there encouraged him to continue post graduate work at Scripps Institute of Oceanography at La Jolla, California. After gaining his Ph.D. there, he returned to Canada in 1966, taking a position as a research scientist at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. An internationally respected oceanographer, in this early view, Helmuth studies a chess board shortly after arriving at Pier 21, Halifax, 1950. [Photo, courtesy Helmuth Sandstrom]