With a mission and mandate to make a difference in the development of Bangladesh and similar resource-poor countries by Canadian citizens and others, Dr. Farid Uddin Khaled Shariff, along with his friends and colleagues together, established the Canadian Association for Bangladesh Development (CABD) – Manitoba Chapter in Winnipeg, Canada in 2003. Dr. Shariff was elected as Founding-President of CABD. After serving as a member of CABD’s Board of Directors for two decades, Dr. Shariff passed away on November 27 (Monday), 2023, in Winnipeg, Canada. We are deeply saddened by this loss of our beloved mentor.
Dr. Shariff was born in a noble family in Perala village in Patiya upazila (sub-district), in the District of Chittagong, Bangladesh, in 1933. As a young medical student, he was deeply involved with post-partitioned India-Pakistan political issues, and actively participated in the Bengali Language Movement (Bhasha Andolon) in 1952. He was arrested and imprisoned at one stage of his participation in the Movement.
Dr. Shariff immigrated to Canada in 1960. Upon completion of internship training at the Regina General Hospital (Saskatchewan, Canada), Dr. Shariff practiced at the Grey Nuns Ile-a-la-Crosse before travelling to Edinburgh, Scotland, for further study, and subsequently became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada.
Throughout his life, despite high demand for his professional service as an orthopaedic surgeon, Dr. Shariff had always been passionate about making time for important developmental and volunteer works. As there was a critical need for surgeons to treat injured Freedom Fighters in the newly formed country of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) in 1971, Dr. Shariff and his colleague, Dr. Ted Hiebert, from Winnipeg, Canada, responded to the call. In 1971, he returned to the newly formed country and took care of patients, most of whom were injured Freedom Fighters during the Liberation War, at the Shahid Suhrawardy Hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Organizing the Bangladeshi diaspora community in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Dr. Shariff founded the Canada-Bangladesh Association (CBA) in 1982 -- which has since been an important organization for connecting Bengalis and other Canadian friends of Bangladesh in Manitoba, Canada.
Under CABD’s program in Bangladesh, Dr. Shariff established several medical clinics and schools for children in Bangladesh, of which the Pirkhain school is a notable one. Since the establishment of CABD in 2003, every year he travelled to his home village, Pirkhain where he established the Moulana Ashraf Chowdhury High School, a mosque, and a number of vocational training programs. Philosophically, Dr. Shariff was passionate about helping younger generations in Bangladesh with professional skills and progressive outlook, as his vision had always been preoccupied with a human resource development perspective.
Dr. Shariff viewed life as a constituent part of nature, which led him to build a cottage with his own hands and skills in Kenora, Ontario, Canada. He sailed in the calm water of the Lake of Woods, and lived many summers in Bangladesh's countryside in Anwara Upazila to be in nature and with his “own” people.
The stories are endless about Dr. Shariff and his life indeed “was much larger than life”!!!
CABD and its members will always remain indebted for his contributions to this organization as well as others – as he influenced our lives and views significantly.
