Dr. Robert Filler, seen here on Aug. 6, 1997, died on July 2 in his Toronto home.Fred Lum*/The Globe and Mail
In February, 1979, Dr. Robert Filler changed the life of a seven-month-old boy from Brooklyn, N.Y.
Herbie Quinones was born with a birth defect that complicated his breathing, and turned swallowing into a life-threatening act. A corrective surgery performed in Brooklyn had left his windpipe pinched between his esophagus and his aorta. The procedure he needed to relieve pressure from his windpipe was complicated; few doctors had as much experience conducting it as Toronto’s Dr. Filler.
He was the surgeon-in-chief of the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children at the time, and offered to complete the procedure free of charge once he learned the Quinones family was unable to afford it. Their story gained popularity thanks to media attention and galvanized Canadians, who donated nearly $17,000 to a fund for accommodations and related costs. Air Canada even offered the family free flights to Toronto for the surgery.
Media and public pressure eventually pushed New York officials to pay for the surgery altogether. The remaining donated funds were instead used to create SickKids’ inaugural Herbie Fund.
The Herbie Fund allows children from all over the world to access surgeries at the hospital free of charge, thanks to annual fundraising efforts and donations. Now, 846 patients from 107 countries around the world have been treated thanks to the fund.
The role the surgeon played in creation of the Herbie Fund is but one story in the career of Dr. Filler, a world-renowned surgeon who used his skills for surgery and passion for medicine to do right by children and communities.
“He was a giant of pediatric surgery in general,” says Agostino Pierro, who currently works as head of general and thoracic surgery at SickKids. Dr. Pierro was one of Dr. Filler’s many mentees, and he remained close to the doctor for more than 30 years. “He was one of the most known pediatric surgeons on earth, and he still remains one of those.”
Robert Martin Filler was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on March 5, 1931. His mother, Lillian Cohen, was born in New York, and his father, Barnett Filler, was a Russian immigrant. Dr. Filler was the eldest of three children.
He graduated from Lawrence High School in 1948 and obtained an undergraduate degree from Cornell University in 1952. In 1956, he graduated cum laude from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Dr. Filler married June Risman, a teacher working in Boston, in 1957. The couple had three children and remained married until she died in 2017. Ms. Filler was “a socialite, Miss Manners, always knowing the right things to do,” their son Larry Filler said in a July interview. And in some ways, it was the gentle nudges of Ms. Filler that helped Dr. Filler build stronger ties with friends and colleagues.
“He was very social when he went out, but he was also introverted and could be focused,” Larry Filler said. “My dad would have been happy staying at home, reading a book,” he added, explaining that he is instead remembered as someone who frequently remembered details about other people’s lives.
“That’s my mom,” he said of Ms. Filler’s impact on her husband. “They really had this amazing love affair with each other and respect that was amazing, that assisted both of them.”
In his early 30s, Dr. Filler was drafted to work as an army surgeon during the 1965 Vietnam military draft. He spent the following year working as an army surgeon in Vietnam, where he also found time to operate on local children with cleft palates. This led to the creation of a program where he conducted the elective surgeries on Vietnamese children and locals, but the army eventually tried shutting down the program. Dr. Filler took to American media to denounce the program’s suspension after being discharged from service. Army officials swiftly reinstated it, and later awarded Dr. Filler a Bronze Star for his surgical work.
The doctor returned to Boston after Vietnam, where he became chief of clinical surgery at the Boston Children’s Hospital. He was also an associate professor of surgery at the Harvard Medical School. In 1977, he moved to Toronto and became surgeon-in-chief at SickKids. Dr. Filler’s term as chief surgeon would be of an unprecedented length – a total of 18 years. He also became a professor of surgery and pediatrics at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Filler was a surgical expert whose skill for rare and at times dangerous procedures earned him respect among industry peers. It was during his tenure at SickKids that Mr. Filler completed the operation that would change Herbie Quinones’s life. The doctor was also internationally renowned for his expertise in the separation of conjoined twins; he led cross-disciplinary medical teams of as many as 50 experts through complex surgeries that could last close to a day. In 1991, he was elected president of the American Pediatric Surgical Association.
In 1995, Dr. Filler was awarded the Order of Ontario for his contributions to pediatric health as a resident of the province. It was around this time that he “all of a sudden felt compelled that he had to become Canadian,” his son Larry Filler said. “There was going to be a legacy here in Canada that was more permanent. I think he was a very proud American, but I think he really loved Canada, loved Toronto, and really saw the good in this country.”
Dr. Filler was also extremely adept with technology and foresaw a future in which Canada would widely adopt telemedicine, long before the technology was implemented and years before the global COVID-19 pandemic made video consulting ubiquitous.
The doctor was concerned about children living overseas and in remote Canadian communities that lacked access to specialized health care. He believed remote care accessed through video calls and digitally shared medical records could help families save thousands of dollars in travel and accommodation costs.
In 1995, Dr. Filler launched Ontario’s first telemedicine program at SickKids. The pilot project ran for a year in Thunder Bay, later expanding to 50 northern cities and beyond. In 1998, he helped found the Canadian Society for Telehealth, over which he later presided. He also served as the first chair of the Ontario Telehealth Network between 2006 and 2009.
“Many people are still afraid of change,” Dr. Robert Filler told The Globe and Mail in 2001 when doctors were slow to adopt the new technology. But he did not give up, sharing his long-term vision for medicine; one where the use of technology would be “an opportunity to link all the knowledge from community, home and hospital,” and give doctors digital access to records about procedures, medications, X-rays and files of patients.
The doctor found time to mentor dozens of residents and younger colleagues despite his busy schedule, says Dr. Pierro, who first met Dr. Filler in 1988. Dr. Pierro had moved to Toronto from Italy to spend two years working as a fellow under Dr. Filler.
He describes the doctor as an inquisitive man who inspired colleagues to push their thinking beyond their perceived limits. He remained a “great influence” in the life and career of Dr. Pierro, despite medical appointments that took him away from Canada. At Dr. Filler’s retirement party at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto, the doctor was gifted a map of the world, filled with signatures of former students and mentees that indicated where they lived in the world today.
“It was amazing. You could see people from all over the place,” Dr. Pierro said, “which demonstrated this was a man who was not just known to Canada, he was known internationally. Everywhere.”
Dr. Filler also cared deeply about his family. Despite a busy professional life and accumulated achievements, the doctor found time to offer his sons sound advice, to give his granddaughters honest critiques of university papers, and to tell the childhood stories he repeated until he died on July 2 in his Toronto home.
“My dad would sometimes sit there in wonderment when the family was together,” Larry Filler said. Having a family that was tight-knit and lived without lasting disagreements brought Dr. Filler a sense of pride.
“He said he didn’t know another family like that,” Larry Filler added. “And whether it’s true or not, that’s the way he felt.”
Dr. Filler leaves his three sons, Stephen, Richard and Larry, and his eight granddaughters: Allison, Lauren, Tali, Ariel, Rachel, Hailey, Nicole and Danielle.