Dr David Millar Norwell, 1919–2015

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 57, No. 7, September 2015, Page 306 Obituaries

portrait of the late Dr. Norwell
Dr David Millar Norwell was born on 2 May 1919 in Kilmarnock, Scotland, and died on 23 May 2015 in McBride, BC. David was the second youngest of four boys and two girls. All the boys, graduates of Glasgow University, became family physicians.

Dr Norwell worked briefly in a law office before joining the British Army to serve much of the Second World War in India. We met in 1946 when we both started studying medicine in Glasgow. David graduated in 1951 and moved to Vancouver in 1953. I admired his courage and dedication to his art when he decided, after a few years in family practice in North Vancouver, to follow his passion by studying music at UBC. But while music fed his soul, medicine fed his family, and 2 years later he returned to family practice. In subsequent years Dr Norwell was active in composing, performing, and producing music.

After retirement in the 1990s David moved to Valemount, where his family lived. He never lost his love of learning and continued well into his 90s to be engaged in the community as a musician and graphic artist. An interview with Dr Norwell from 2010, produced by Valemount Community TV, can be seen on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmgLzsmSua8.

Dr Norwell is survived by his wife, Jane; children, Liz, Robert, and Janey; and seven grandchildren.
—W. Gardner, MBChB
West Vancouver

William Gardner, MBChB,. Dr David Millar Norwell, 1919–2015. BCMJ, Vol. 57, No. 7, September, 2015, Page(s) 306 - Obituaries.



Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply