Professor Donald A. Bailey Jan 5^th 1934 to June 3^rd 2023

I first met in Don 1989 when I was a PhD student studying at the Institute of Child Health, University of London, UK. He had previously spent a sabbatical at the institute with Dr(s) J.M. Tanner, N. Cameron and colleagues, and was visiting on his way to a European meeting. Our paths continued to cross at various paediatric exercise and bone meetings. At one such meeting he invited me to visit the University of Saskatchewan and assist with some longitudinal data analysis. This led to him persuading me, and he was very good at persuading people, to apply for a faculty position in the College of Kinesiology and I was appointed in 2000. I then had the distinct pleasure of working closely with him for the next 23 years. He became not only a great working colleague but more importantly a close friend.

Donald Alexander Bailey, known affectionally as Don or Bailey, was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1934, during the great depression, which had a lifelong impact on him. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father a train engineer. After attending Victoria Elementary School in the 1940s, he then attended Nutana Collegiate in the early 1950s. Don was a lifelong sports fan and as a child his heroes were the Boston Bruin’s hockey player Maurice “the rocket” Richard and the St. Louis Cardinal’s baseball player Stan “the man” Musial. As a boy he was fascinated by Charles Atlas’s dynamic tension program that was advertised in his favourite comic books. Don was a junior athlete winning high school provincial championships in basketball and baseball. He enrolled in the College of Arts and Science at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon and graduated with a B.A. with a math’s major in 1955. In 1957 he married Donna, a home economics teacher, who provided love, support, and guidance over the next 63 years. Family was very important for Don, and with Donna he raised 3 children Jonathan, Byron, and Bonnie. They had 4 grandchildren Mark, Mireya, Jacob and San and a great-grandchild Lily.

Don’s postgraduate education began at Bowling Green State University, Ohio where he received an M.A. in Physical Education (1956) and was completed at Indiana University where Don received a P.E.D. (1959). His doctoral work investigated the effects of expectancy on simple reaction time in university athletes. He returned to Saskatoon in 1959 and was recruited into the Faculty of the School of Physical Education which later became the College of Physical Education (1972) and then the College of Kinesiology (1999). He remained in the College until his retirement, having taught over 5 decades, at which time he was granted the status of Emeritus Professor. In post-retirement Don assumed a visiting professor position at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, teaching the fall term growth and development course for 10 years from 1995 to 2005.

During his long and distinguished career Don was always at the cutting edge of both science and technology. On joining the School of Physical Education, Don worked with the then Director, Dr. Bill Orban, on studies of children’s physical fitness. In the immediate post war period there was growing consensus that Canadians were unfit, and health professionals turned their gaze towards the development of fitness in childhood. In 1963, to address these concerns Dr. Orban initiated the Saskatchewan Growth and Development Study (SGDS) (1963–1973) with Don installed as the study’s Principal Investigator. One of their first investigations looked at the relationship between speed of movement and simple reaction time (Carron and Bailey 1973). The SGDS was one of the world’s first studies to follow longitudinally the development of children’s physical fitness, concentrating on the development of somatotype (Bailey et al. 1982), strength (Carron and Bailey 1974), and aerobic fitness (Mirwald et al. 1981). SGDS is still ongoing with Don’s last paper, published in 2020, investigating patterns of physical performance spurts during adolescence (Guimaraes et al. 2020).

Don was an early proponent of the importance of health promotion and in the early 70’s joined the boards of ParticipACTION and ParticipACTION Saskatoon. ParticipACTION, was a Canadian government public initiative to increase public awareness of the need for daily physical activity and healthy lifestyle choices. Don was ParticipACTION’s longest serving board member. One of ParticipACTION’s most famous media marketing approaches was the comparative international findings that “some Swedish men at age sixty had the same fitness level as some Canadian men at age thirty.” ParticipACTION Saskatoon was picked as the demonstration community for ParticipACTION and Don was central to its success. One spin-off, in 1975, was the Saskatoon vs. Umea (Sweden) Great Ga Lunka Lop/Run, Walk, Jog. Sakatonians won this competition by recording 2% more physical activity over a three-day period. Don and colleagues were also responsible for the development of the Canadian home fitness test (Shephard et al. 1976). Not content with just one health promotion Don, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, went on to be actively involved in the development of LIFE (Lifestyle Inventory Fitness Evaluation). LIFE was one of the first studies to computerise fitness data. LIFE was taken up by the YMCA and instigated nationwide with Don leading the academic evaluation of the data collected.

In the late 1980s, Don’s interests turned to bone health and in 1989 he published a paper that showed the incidence of sustaining a bone fracture during adolescence was equal to the incidence of sustaining a fracture at 50 years of age (Bailey et al. 1989). Don concluded that the relationship between incidence of fracture and age could not be explained solely by an increase in physical activity but may be related to bone development during the growing years. So not content with directing just one childhood growth study Don decided to initiate a second. In 1991, the Saskatchewan Pediatric Bone Mineral Accrual Study (PBMAS) started, following a group of Saskatchewan school children (Bailey 1997). This is the world’s longest ongoing investigation of children’s bone health and lifestyle. Don showed that during adolescence those children who were more physically active accrued 20% more bone than their inactive peers (Bailey et al. 1999). In 2008, when this group were in their 20’s he found that those who were active teenagers had maintained this increased bone health (Baxter-Jones et al. 2008). In 2011, he answered his initial 1989 questions and showed that during adolescence there was a period when bone growth and bone mineralisation (an index of bone strength) were out of synch making bones more susceptible to fracture (Baxter-Jones et al. 2011).

This short bio only captures a small fraction of Don’s academic achievements. Over a long and distinguished career, he published over 200 journal articles and book chapters and presented to numerous national and international scientific meetings. He also trained the next generation of children’s bone health researchers many of whom have gone on to have very distinguished academic careers of their own. He was always a strong advocate of the College of Kinesiology (nee College of Physical Education) with two of his doctoral students going on to become Deans of the College. Don always said his proudest achievement was the mentoring of students, watching them grow as researchers and academic leaders.

Don was very much a storyteller. A style that led him to be much sought after as a keynote speaker around the world. In telling a story, in his soft prairie drawl, Don enthralled, entertained, and most importantly educated so many generations of faculty and students. Don gave his final lecture, on 3 March 2014, to undergraduate students at The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Don was a very spiritual, self-effacing, humble man, with a great sense of fun and a determination to improve the lives of his fellow Canadian’s through promoting the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. For all his important work with Canadian organisations to promote health, Don had always remained true to his roots describing himself as the “token jockstrap” within the public health organisations he had been involved with.

Dr. Don Bailey passed away peacefully on 3 June 2023, surrounded by family. He loved life and life loved him back. I trust that now Don can rest in peace knowing that his dream was fulfilled. He wanted to leave the world a little bit better than he found it and he did.

Adam D.G. Baxter-Jones
College of Kinesiology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada [email protected]

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