The project began in 2017, when Nicholas attended a ceremony in Lachine, Quebec, where a memorial plaque was unveiled in honour of Clouston. While the moment was moving, he was struck by how little anyone truly knew about the circumstances of Clouston’s life and death. “I realized then that nothing was known about how or why he had perished and decided to do something about it,”  he recalls.

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Nicholas brought to this work the same rigour he applied throughout his medical career. As a physician and professor, he spent decades teaching how to design and analyze clinical research studies. Applying those investigative skills to Clouston’s story, he pieced together archives, family documents, and overlooked records to reconstruct events that had been ignored for 80 years.

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Now in his 80s, Nicholas views the book as both a tribute to a relative unfairly consigned to obscurity and a contribution to Canada’s collective memory. He hopes it will inspire readers to remember the sacrifices of those who came before — and to recognize the importance of revealing and sharing information that was being kept secret.