David A. WHEELWRIGHT

1925 - 2019

WHEELWRIGHT, David, A.: Jul. 04, 1925 - Dec. 12, 2019 David Antony Wheelwright, born July 4, 1925 in Redlands, Tonbridge, Kent the youngest son of textile designer and inventor John Sylvester Wheelwright and Beatrice Ella Wheelwright. He was educated at Tonbridge School and Keble College, Oxford, on a scholarship, graduating in medicine in 1952 after serving as a Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, stationed in Singapore and Ireland, from 1943 to 1945. He married Patricia (Tish) Doreen Ball on 31 May 1958, and the couple moved to Bermuda that year where their first child, Geoffrey Charles St. George, was born on 21 February 1959. David served as a medic in the Colonial Service, based at St George s, before the family relocated to England in 1960 where their daughter, Julie Diana, was born, shortly followed by Jacqueline Amanda (Mandy), in 1961. After serving as a locum at several locations in England, the family emigrated to Calgary, Alberta in late 1962. Their youngest child, Penelope Clare, was born the following year. Growing restless as a family general practitioner, David and Tish moved again, to Westbank, British Columbia, in 1968 where they ran a frozen foods business. Less than three years later, David decided to return to medical school to study psychiatry, at the University of British Columbia, graduating in 1971. The family returned to live in Lakeview Heights, Kelowna while David - a newly qualified child psychiatrist - went into practice with two other psychiatrists. In 1987, David retired from the practice but continued to serve his patients from the family home, finally retiring after a long career, in 2005. David fell in love with the landscape of the Okanagan, was a keen water skier, and later took up hang gliding, which gave him an intimate knowledge of the valley s rolling hills and deep valleys. Following a hang gliding accident in 1977, he began studying for his pilots license and would later own a Cessna that he flew as far north as Alaska, and as far west as Winnipeg. David was also a keen skier, taking to the slopes first in France as a young man. He ended his winter sports career on a snow board that kept him on the slopes into his eighties. He will be remembered by his family and friends as a man of insatiable curiosity, a wry wit who delighted in telling stories and making observations about life s absurdities. His questing led him to explore new forms of psychotherapy, including past life regression, and other New Age philosophies. Predeceased by his parents and siblings, Irvine, who was an RAF pilot shot down over the North Sea in 1940, and Peter who passed away at age 88. He is survived by his wife, Tish, and children, Geoffrey, Julie, Mandy and Penny and seven grandchildren (Alex, Thames, Brendan, James, Thames, Isis, Adam and Luke). The family are grateful to the staff at the Westview Place in Penticton, who cared for David with kindness, patience, professionalism and generosity.