Born in Montreal in 1953, David Goldbloom studied at Harvard and read for a second undergraduate degree in physiological sciences at Oxford. Returning to Canada, he attended medical school at McGill University before beginning a distinguished career in psychiatry. Alongside his clinical practice, he was a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, and his published works include How Can I Help? A Week in My Life as a Psychiatrist. Retiring in 2022, Goldbloom continues his volunteer work on the boards of numerous cultural institutions, and he has also served as a selector for the Rhodes Scholarships in Canada. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada. This narrative is excerpted from an interview with the Rhodes Trust on 17 October 2025.
David Goldbloom
Nova Scotia & Exeter 1975
'I ended up with two very inspiring parents’
My father’s family came over from Lithuania in 1880. My grandfather, Alton, was born in Montreal in 1890, beginning four generations of Goldblooms born in Montreal so far. My great-aunt, Ellen Ballon, was a pianist, a child prodigy who became very well known, with a dazzling concert career and a sizzling private life. I have access to all kinds of private letters and diaries, and I’ve written her biography to be published in the fall of 2026. I’m excited to share her story with the world.
I also ended up with two very inspiring parents who have had a profound influence on my life and career. My father Richard worked as a paediatrician in Montreal and my mother Ruth was a homemaker and a very active volunteer. When I was 13, our family left Montreal for Halifax. My father became Chair of the Department of Paediatrics at Dalhousie University and ultimately the Chancellor of the University, and my mother continued her volunteer work, culminating in her leading in the creation of Canada’s National Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, the place where millions of immigrants first touched Canadian soil. It’s a wonderful museum and I’m proud to be serving on its board of trustees now.
As a child, I was a performer. My parents had met auditioning for a play together at McGill, and my grandfather was at one point a professional actor on a Vaudeville circuit. My older brother was having a certain amount of success on TV and stage as a child actor, so I was naturally drawn to this and believed profoundly that I was going to be discovered by Hollywood. I acted in a short film and a television series as a child, but it wasn’t going to be a big ticket for me. I also studied piano for about ten years from the age of six, and that laid the groundwork for the piano being a tremendous source of comfort and pleasure.
On life at Harvard and applying for the Rhodes Scholarship
My parents never pressured me in any professional direction, and even though I came from a long line of paediatricians, I didn’t hang out at the hospital. All I knew about physicians was how much they seemed to love their work. At Harvard, I think I still imagined I might become an actor. I was a government major, and I squeaked through the bare minimum of science prerequisites for medicine. I indulged my interests in a liberal arts education and revived my theatrical career before it completely extinguished by doing a number of plays and musicals in college, which I remember much more distinctly than any of the courses that I took. One of the wonderful things about Harvard was that they had some of their most celebrated professors teaching introductory courses, and the drama inherent in those lectures was extraordinary.
I needed to make a lot of money because of the difference in cost between going to university in Canada and going to Harvard, so in the summer breaks, I worked at CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as a summer relief announcer for television and radio. So I would spend the summer doing news, weather, sports, and interviews, filling in for whoever was taking their summer holiday.
Harvard was a bit of a Rhodes Scholar factory in the 1970s. I went for a mock interview, which was a terrifying experience. My response to an unnerving situation is usually to make jokes, so the feedback I got afterwards was that I didn’t have a prayer of getting the Scholarship. But I applied anyway, and I got the interview in Nova Scotia. It was such a pleasant encounter that it felt like it only lasted about six minutes. Now, having served on the Rhodes selection committees in Québec and Ontario, I know from speaking to candidates afterwards that their perception is also that it felt like a six-minute interview!
‘Life in Oxford was very rich’
I have very vivid memories of the sailing over to Oxford. All the American and Canadian Scholars had a week on the boat to get to know each other and establish friendships that are irreplaceable. Quite apart from the stuff we learned and the doors that were opened, those friendships are the most potent residue of the Scholarship for me.
In one sense, the decision to ship out to Oxford instead of going to medical school had been an easy one. In another way, it was very tough. My girlfriend Nancy was a year behind me in university and needed to finish there. At that time, you weren’t allowed to be married during your first year as a Scholar anyway, but we had gotten engaged before I went to Oxford. So, in that first year, we wrote three or four letters a week to one another, because phone calls were ferociously expensive. We saved all those letters, and during the pandemic, we put them all in chronological order and read them aloud to one another. We got married at the end of my first year as a Scholar and we spent the first year of our married life together in Oxford. Life in Oxford was very rich, and Nancy and I were also constantly grabbing a late afternoon train to London to go to concerts, so we took in an inordinate amount of classical music.
‘The ultimate fusion of biology, psychology and culture’
Nancy and I started medical school as a married couple at McGill. She was a much better student than I was. I learned the ropes fairly quickly and managed to get through, but the first two years were drudgery. Then we got into hospitals and started our clinical rotations and that became the enriching part of medical school. Nancy went into ophthalmology, and I entered the world of psychiatry. We did our specialist training at McGill and then moved to Toronto.
My research fellowship in Toronto was funded by the Medical Research Council of Canada and was focused on eating disorders. Alongside that I pursued a career in general psychiatry, running an inpatient unit and teaching medical students and residents. I had never seen a patient with an eating disorder during my training that I was aware of, but after attending a guest lecture on the subject, it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks that this area was the ultimate fusion of biology, psychology and culture. It made for a layer of complexity that was very attractive and stimulating and very challenging.
On family life and giving back to the arts
With our two children, I think it’s a fair statement that Nancy shouldered far more of the childrearing burden (or privilege) than I did, but she still had a very fulfilling professional career. We also had, by necessity, a nanny who is still with us 40 years later as a part-time housekeeper, and that kind of highly personal professional help was integral to making it all work.
I wake up every morning looking forward to the day - and that feels like a gift. I witnessed from both my parents the richness of experience associated with volunteer work. I have served on the boards of the Stratford Festival and the Royal Conservatory of Music here, and being near talent at that level is an amazing experience. Volunteering in those kinds of roles makes you feel you are doing something in a small way that contributes to the growth of institutions and to opportunities for more young people to participate in the arts.
‘Blurry vision is okay’
One thing I’ve been curiously grateful for in my career is the positions I didn’t get. The old saying is that when one door closes, another one opens, and that’s been my experience. My advice to current or future Rhodes Scholars would be that, even though you may not have a clear vision of what you want to do, blurry vision is okay too. You don’t know what the future really holds. So, even though you are pursuing something intensely, keep those antennae tingling for the unexpected, the unanticipated.