It is with great sadness that we inform the Dentistry community of the passing of our former colleague Dr. John Fong Chong. Dr. John Fong Chong died peacefully at age 94 in Montreal on May 27th, 2020. He was born in Trinidad and immigrated to Canada to study at Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia and then McGill where he graduated in Dentistry in 1960. He had an active private practice on Cote-des-Neiges until he retired in 2001. Dr. Fong Chong supervised DMD students and taught Prosthodontics and Operative Dentistry at our Faculty for 59 years. He will be missed by his students, and the Faculty at large.
Fellow McGill Dentistry colleague and friend, Dr. John Blomfield shared these words of rememberance:
Referred to endearingly by generations of McGill Dental Students as “the Fonger”, Dr John Fong Chong(JFC) was the consummate “Zen” of demonstrators, always calm and unflappable.
His teaching style was supportive and direct – “Ms/Mr Student” – is this clinical procedure the best you can do ? Would be a standard question from JFC. If not, then improve on it and ask me to check your work when you are ready ! If yes, then in a calm and supportive way JFC would suggest ways in which the clinical procedure could be improved or give a clinical hands on demonstration of how and what hand instruments to use.
John had a wry sense of humour and was without ego. I personally have a lot to thank him for, having been a student of his in 1974-75 and then as a teaching colleague over four decades. I was a recipient of his generosity; he gifted me a steel beam, which to this day is a structural element of my house and we walked home from many downtown dental meetings together as we were close neighbours.
For many years JFC attended the Academy of Operative Dentistry meetings in Chicago with his late friend Dr Ike Silver and also local participation at the Montreal Dental Club scientific meetings. Consequently McGill benefitted through his sharing of new directions in clinical procedures and applications of new materials.
John was predeceased by his wife Andrea, who died in 2013.
Dr. John Fong Chong, may your soul rest in Peace. You will be remembered well and with gratitude by the multiple dentists and dental students who have benefitted from your clinical guidance at McGill Dentistry. Au Revoir Dr. Fong Chong.