Born in West Hartlepool, England, in 1903, Cyril Fortune came to Western Australia with his family after the First World War and graduated as a Bachelor of Science in the University of Western Australia in 1924. A few years in laboratory medicine stimulated his interst in clinical medicine, the study of which he pursued in Melbourne, graduating in 1933 and obtaining an MD in 1935. He joined the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1938. It was his initial training in laboratory medicine that prompted his interest in blood transfusion, his guiding influence in the Blood Bank of WA and even led to his personally supervising transfusions to his patients towards the end of his medical career.

From 1941 to 1944 he served as a lieutenant colonel in the RAAMC. As a Carnegie Fellow in 1946, he spent time with Wilson in Anne Arbor, Michigan, and thereby acquired his background in electrocardiography and cardiology. He joined the RPH staff in 1947 as an outpatient physician and in 1953 became an inpatient physician. In this role he was effective in forming the Cardiac Investigation Unit. He was on the staff of the Princess Margaret Hospital as a senior cardiologist until 1960 and served as a visiting physician at the Repatriation General Hospital.

These are some of the facts. What about the man himself? A bundle of energy and purpose, his overseas visits indicated to him the way cardiologists and the care of heart patients should develop. He spent hours in the company of younger men, working out details of equipment to be purchased for heart investigations. He championed the idea of the National Heart Foundation in Western Australia and was its Director in the early, formative years. He knew it was not sufficient to have ideas. To promote them, you had to be on committees and see to it that plans were approved. Cyril was there. The concept of a professor of cardiology in Western Australia was another project he pursued to its ultimate success.

In addition to his role as RACP councillor from 1963 to 1969, he was president of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand from 1966 to 1967, no mean feat for a Western Australian in those days. One of the great pleasures in life is to build your own house and this Cyril did in Birdwood Parade, Dalkeith, where he and his wife Clarice often entertained visiting medical celebrities. As if medicine did not present sufficient challenge, he successfully took on the development of a farm at Boyup Brook. Amazing vigour, urgency, reticence and a ready smile were some of the attributes of this man who got things done.