If Tuong Phong Nguyen could meet the namesake of his gold medal, A.F. Holmes, they would share a tale of birth in a foreign land, parents abducted at sea, and commitment to a Montreal medical career.

Getting into McGill medical school is tough; only the best need apply, and only the very best are chosen. One important part of the application is the personal essay, and the admissions department have read it all. Yet even they were struck by the essay from an 18-year-old Montreal student, Phong Nguyen, who came to Canada with his family in 1975 as Vietnamese boatpeople. He wrote, "In April 1975, with the communists' acension to power, Phong and the members of his family, unjustly accused of espionage,were sent to a re-education camp in a remote area of the country. He stayed there only 13 days, although his father passed 42 months in the camp. In May, 1979, his family fled as "boat people"in a quest for justice and freedom. . .on the seventh night of a hellish voyage, as the light of the moon illumniated the fragile boat, a dolorous cry broke the night.A mother cried at the death of her child, carried off by diarrhea. No medicine! No doctors! For Phong, deeply moved by this scene, the medical profession took on a profound meaning.

"I came to discover the fragile balance of life."

Phong's mother, Ly Phuong, had been a doctoral student, his dad, Trieu Nguyen, a high school principal, when they fled to Malaysia on a crowded boat with their two young sons, Phong and Nam. During the voyage, pirates attacked the boat, stealing the wedding rings of Nguyen and Phuong, along with their money. Young Phong was 7 years old. "It was a scary thing, one of the critical events in my life," he says. "But we were more lucky than other boat people; no one was killed, no one was raped."

The family spent two months in a refugee camp before coming to Canada. They chose Montreal because they spoke some French but no English. "My parents were in shock, they were on autopilot," Phong recalls. His parents opened a depanneur at 1890 St. Zotique Street in the working class Ahunstic area of Montreal and set about rebuilding their lives with the support of other Vietnamese families in the area. Both boys excelled at school. Phong went on to graduate at the top of his class at both highschool and CEGEP, winning le prix Eugene Doucet and la medaille de Bronze du Gouverneur du Canada respectively.

McGill medical school was within reach, although Phong worried that his poor English at the interview hampered his chances of entry. But the admissions committee saw beyond language difficulties, and wisely so. Phong collected a string of awards throughout medical school including J.W. McConnell Scholarship each year and the Harry S. Gros Memorial Prize in Surgery. He finished with the top honour, the Holmes Gold Medal given for the student with the top marks in all four years of medical school.

The Holmes Gold Medal honours Dr. Andrew Fernando Holmes, who founded the McGill Faculty of Medicine, in 1823 and became its first dean. Perhaps, trial at sea is part of the Holmes legacy. The Napoleonic Wars took their toll on the family. As Joseph Hanaway and Richard Cruess, tells us in McGill Medicine (1995), "Holmes' parents were on the way to Canada from England when they were captured by a French frigate in the late 1970s and were taken to Cadiz, Spain, where they were held prisoners until 1801. Andrew Fernando was born there in 1797." The family then settled in Montreal when Andrew was 4, but he returned to Europe for medical school and graduated from the University of Edinburgh, and returned to build McGill Medicine. The Holmes Gold Medal has been awarded every year since 1865.

Following in Holmes' footsteps, Phong Nguyen is pursuing a medical career in Montreal. He is a resident at the Montreal General Hospital in internal medicine, and hopes to become a cardiologist. Meanwhile, his brother, Nam, is a third-year medical student.

But lest one think graduating at the top of McGill medical school comes with a lot of privileges, think again. Despite pressure-filled schedules, both Phong and Nam live at home and work at the family store on weekends. "We give our parents a break," Phong says. And like so many young graduates these days, Dr. Tuoung Phong Nguyen, MD'96, Holmes Gold Medallist, is worried about finding a job. "It's very difficult to get a job in Montreal, some say it's virtually impossible," Phong declares. Yet he is not tempted to try other provinces or the United States. "I have my friends and my community here," he says.