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Spagnolo, John P., DPhil (Oxon), died at the age of 81 on the warm and gentle evening of March 21, 2016 after a very long and valiant struggle with cancer. A devoted husband to Penelope (née Straugheir), loving father to Rebecca and Tabitha, and enchanted grandfather to Jacqueline, he will be remembered for his abiding loyalty to his family and his insatiable thirst for knowledge and enlightenment. These were surpassed only by a great sense of fun. Born on August 1, 1934 in British-mandated Palestine, he spent much of his youth in Lebanon where he met his lovely and generous wife of over fifty years. There, at the American University of Beirut, he discovered his enduring love for history before leaving for Oxford where he spent some of the happiest days of his life studying Franco-Ottoman history under Albert Hourani at St. Antony’s College. With DPhil in hand, he and Penelope took a circuitous route (via their beloved Beirut) before settling on the Vancouver Lower Mainland in 1966 where he began his 33-year career in the History department of Simon Fraser University. He was part of the first wave of professors to make SFU the exceptional institution it is today. There, he found the very best of life-long friends who, along with his family, will remember him as an accomplished scholar, but will miss him always for his youthful sense of humour, occasional byzantine ways, gentlemanly manner and, above all, his resplendent smile to the end. A memorial page can be found at the website of McKenzie Funeral Services (West Vancouver). In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the North Shore Hospice Society in North Vancouver.