Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology (BPK)

    I had known Dr Tibbits for about 25 years when I took Kin 305. He was this professor who would enter the lecture hall without his notes and write everything on the chalkboard like he memorized every word from the textbook. He knew his molecular cardiology like it was the back of his hands. I remember that he used to make jokes during lectures with a straight face when everyone was laughing at his jokes and I would be staring at the board with a blank face and then looking at the person next to me and asking "what just happened". I was just an average student who was lost and needed directions in life and career paths. Glen and I became close friends, and I had been calling him "My White Dad" for many years. We stayed in touch often after I graduated from SFU in 2000.

    He was a mentor who gave very straightforward advice bluntly but in a paternal or humourous way whether it was about family, health issues, relationship advice, questions about the course, or career paths. I remember that he was making fun of his Afib and being on dronedarone and when he was telling me his cardioversion stories. I struggled with good grades in school but he never treated me any differently than his stellar students. With his encouragement, I eventually entered medicine and became a physician in the US. I came back to visit him at his SFU office during my residency training and he gave me a 1:1 lecture on his current cardiology research. There was so much passion about his work, it was extremely inspiring. I went on further in my training and became a cardiologist. Then I remember telling him now my part of the story, and jokingly I mentioned, the other night I was shocking a patient multiple times to get him out of VT and I thought of you and your Afib story. We both laughed.

    The last time I met up with Glen was about 3 years ago at a restaurant and he gave me the most important life advice that I should come back to be close to family. I still remember that he told me "Clara, it's time to move back closer to your family. Go home and seriously think about it!" I'll never forget his wise words. 7 months ago I finally moved to the Washington States to be close to my family. I kept in touch but he never once mentioned that he was ill. I was messaging him about how chaotic things were but then I was oblivious about what he was going through. He asked if I was happy. He only mentioned that he was still working in the lab. I only just found out after I messaged him again a couple of weeks ago thinking that I would visit him this Christmas but never received a reply.

Along with my colleagues, I have been thinking about the sad news that we received yesterday about Glen. I have known Glen a long time. I would have met him in 1998 when I first came to SFU. Over these many years I have gotten to know him as a colleague, Department Head, enthusiastic scientist and as a friend. But I also want to mention two attributes that may have gone unnoticed, namely, being one tough guy and being a person totally committed to his students, trainees and other personnel. As became known a while ago, Glen had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). By the summer of 2023, Glen was developing ALS and he was aware that he had the disease. He did not want anyone to know that he had ALS as he thought that this would jeopardize his ability to secure grants and support students through studentships and scholarships. His thinking was that if people knew that he had ALS, they would regard him as not having much of a future and so would not support his activities. He was also aware of the poor survival of ALS patients, with typically a 3-5 year survival, especially with the form of ALS that he had, which started with speech impairment (a ‘bulbar form’ of ALS). Rather than ‘take it easy’ in response to his illness, he doubled down and worked harder than ever.

I took him up on an earlier offer of visiting his lab in the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute (BCCHR) in the fall of 2023 to have a look at his lab and his research activities. I am so sorry that everyone in the Department did not have an opportunity to do the same and I suggested to Glen and others that they get a cameraman to film the various aspects of Glen’s lab, so that others in BPK, SFU and elsewhere could see what Glen and his colleagues had accomplished. In the fall of 2023, Glen led me through robotic workstations for generating various types of differentiated cardiac cells from induced pleuripotent stem cells, electrophysiological recording stations both ‘manned’ and robotic, as well as image analysis labs galore. It was a real tour de force of a lab that Glen had built up at BCCHR (as well as a lab at the SFU campus). There were also numerous trainees, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and staff that Glen all knew and cared for, like a parent. If they were foreign, he would ask about things at home, with his very frequent ‘off-colour’ but good-tempered remarks. As always, Glen was so excited and enthusiastic about his work it was hard not to share his excitement. As Glen put it himself at the time, finally everything was coming together in his research so that he could achieve what he had dreamed of, characterizing various types of gene mutations in cardiac conditions using human stem cells and detailed physiological analysis. Glen would dread having to give talks because giving talks would reveal his condition. He eventually got to pre-recording the talks using a voice synthesizer.

In spite of all that hard work and desire to keep his disease from public view, he soldiered on. I became aware of all the trips made to emergency rooms and I give credit to Haruyo for all the effort she went to simply to keep Glen alive and functional. However, his breathing was also continuing to deteriorate and then a stark choice emerges for invasive ventilation (tracheostomy) and a ventilator, or not.          

I hope Glen’s students and team members appreciate what Glen was up to. He would do anything for you guys. Pretend to be healthy, continue to write grants and work on their behalf and I hate to add, continue even to his last dying breath. Only one really tough hombre could have done that and I continue to be so amazed at his strength and willpower. To put this in context, he could not talk, he was fed by liquid tube feedings into his stomach, he continued to have episodes where he could not breathe and had to go to the ER. He must have been exhausted. However, he was still writing grants and papers and wanted the research activities to continue and progress.

In closing, and it is difficult to close, because it is still so hard for me to imagine how much willpower Glen had to do what he did, especially near the end.

Having said all that about Glen, it is still not doing justice to him, not capturing his impish humour. Some might even say ‘off-colour’ comments, sometime perhaps taken too far, even as Department chair? Although some of this humour was good natured teasing, he was also prepared to be the butt of the teasing himself. I recall that he was amused when someone pinned a ladies bikini bottom to his car radio aerial (that dates this comment), or when there were advertisements posted all the way up Burnaby mountain drive on his Birthday. His staff parties were always memorable.

Glen, we miss you already.

Charles Krieger