Last weekend, after busy day at the Ontario Medical Association council meeting, physician Elana Fric-Shamji settled in for a meal with some of her colleagues.<\/p>\n
Dinner attendees described the 40-year-old doctor and mother of three as being in a vibrant, joyful mood. She told entertaining stories, shared her excitement over a recent joke tweet of hers that went viral and was published in media outlets.<\/p>\n
And she volunteered some difficult news: She had filed for divorce the previous day.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe openly discussed her impending divorce and chose to look at it as \u2018a new beginning,\u2019 \u201d said Darren Cargill, a fellow doctor also attending the OMA council weekend, where she was happy and \u201ceven giddy at times.\u201d<\/p>\n
Six days later, at a press conference late Friday night, Toronto police announced Fric-Shamji\u2019s body had been found near the underpass of a bridge beside the West Humber River in Vaughan.<\/p>\n
Her husband \u2014 the father of her kids and a neurosurgeon with Toronto Western Hospital \u2014 has been charged with first-degree murder.<\/p>\n
Mohammed Shamji, 40, made a brief court appearance at Old City Hall Saturday morning. Dressed in a white prison jumpsuit, Shamji stood in the prisoners\u2019 box looking nervous and solemn. At one point, he glanced over his right shoulder to family members seated in the gallery.<\/p>\n
He was remanded into custody until his next court appearance Dec. 20. Shamji\u2019s lawyer, Liam O\u2019Connor, declined to comment.<\/p>\n
The couple\u2019s children are currently with Fric-Shamji\u2019s mother, according to police.<\/p>\n
Toronto homicide investigator Det.Sgt. Steve Ryan told reporters police have spoken to witnesses and believed there had been an altercation in the couple\u2019s home.<\/p>\n
The discovery of the body came after Fric-Shamji was reported missing; her mother had reportedly not heard from her since Wednesday, and she didn\u2019t show up to work at Scarborough General Hospital on Thursday or Friday morning. Shamji\u2019s husband did not report her missing, according to police.<\/p>\n
On Thursday afternoon, York Regional Police were called to a bridge beside the West Humber River where the body of a woman had been discovered. A post-mortem autopsy in Toronto Friday confirmed Fric-Shamji\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n
According to police, she was strangled and suffered blunt force trauma of some kind.<\/p>\n
Friday night, at a coffee shop near Lakeshore Rd. E. and Highway 10 in Mississauga, Mohammed Shamji was arrested without incident. Early Saturday, police had sealed off the couple\u2019s North York home as they awaited a search warrant.<\/p>\n
Repeatedly described as a \u201cbrilliant\u201d physician by colleagues and friends, Fric-Shamji was on staff at Scarborough hospital\u2019s family practice teaching unit.<\/p>\n
Fric-Shamji went to the University of Ottawa for medical school after which she received a master\u2019s of public policy degree from Duke University in North Carolina. At the Family Medicine Teaching Unit, her research interests were women\u2019s and preventative health, and family and community medicine.<\/p>\n
Mohammed Shamji is an assistant professor of surgery with the University of Toronto\u2019s faculty of medicine, and a specialist in spinal surgery. According to his biography, he is a graduate of several prestigious university programs, including Yale University, and completed his neurosurgery residency program at the University of Ottawa.<\/p>\n
As news of Fric-Shamji\u2019s death spread Saturday, Ontario\u2019s medical community was sent reeling. In a statement Saturday, OMA President Virginia Walley described her as a \u201ctalented family physician who was active in many efforts to improve the health-care system.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOntario\u2019s doctors are a close-knit community, and we are all stunned \u2026 At this time, our thoughts and prayers are with her family, her friends, and her colleagues,\u201d Walley wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cI most recently spoke to her at our (OMA) fall council, where she enthusiastically discussed her work to help advance the interests of physicians and their patients.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr. Nadia Alam, who knew Fric-Shamji through a doctors\u2019 online network and their mutual involvement in the OMA, said her death has been met with \u201cwidespread shock and grief.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was a big part of various physician Facebook forums, so many docs knew of her, if not her directly. And many enjoyed her sense of humour and kindness,\u201d Alam said.<\/p>\n
Lindsay Bisset, a fellow doctor whose kids attend the same school as the Shamji children, described her as \u201cpassionate about her children, her work and her physical fitness.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe adored her kids and was a terrific mom. The type who believes in family time together and was very connected with her kids,\u201d Bisset said.<\/p>\n
She had a witty, silly side, too. In medical school, she was a \u201cdynamo,\u201d remembered fellow student Maggie Gordon, and she could get away with swearing and making jokes that \u201cjust brushed the edge of appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Fric-Shamji and her husband were avid social media users, often posting photos of each other and accolades about professional accomplishments. In April, they travelled to Dubai for a spine surgery conference Mohammed Shamji was attending.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you Dubai for your beautiful architecture, tasty food, exotic desert, and kind people. It was a trip of a lifetime. Now onto the most wonderful place of all \u2014 home,\u201d Fric-Shamji wrote on a photo posted online.<\/p>\n
The pair also often posted about their mutual love of fitness, particularly running and the practice of Jiu-Jitsu. On a photo from earlier this year depicting her husband in his Jiu-Jitsu uniform, Fric-Shamji wrote: \u201cTwo-striped Dr.Mo – can break your neck and then FIX it!\u201d<\/p>\n
Brendan Byrne, a friend of Fric-Shamji who described her as \u201cbrilliant\u201d said the photos suggest you can\u2019t believe everything you see.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never really know what goes on behind closed doors or the facade of a happy selfie,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Dr. Daisy Fung, an assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Alberta, said a tight-knit, across-Canada group of physicians are now arranging a memorial. They are hoping to arrange a trust fund for the three children and a GoFundMe page.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hope to do something in her memory, and all those women affected by domestic violence,\u201d Fung said. \u201cWe are all deeply saddened and shocked at this tragedy and our concern also lies with her mother and her three beautiful children.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sonia Elliott said she was a former patient of Fric-Shamji\u2019s when she operated a new family doctor practice, which Elliot believes the doctor did to \u201cbe more available for her family.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was a conscientious doctor who had a way with kids, coming across as a type \u2018A\u2019 personality and a mother who was very family oriented.<\/p>\n
Elliot said she was disappointed at the \u201cvery sudden\u201d announcement that Fric-Shamji was closing her practice to move to Toronto for her husband\u2019s new job.<\/p>\n
\u201cClearly a lot of work had gone into mounting this very young practice so a sudden dissolution seemed strange to say the least. And it was at that point that it was hard not to consider, even briefly, what the balance in their relationship was like,\u201d she wrote in an email to the Star.<\/p>\n
Dr. Lesley Barron, an Ontario general surgeon, met Fric-Shamji for the first time last weekend, at the OMA council where she was a Toronto district delegate.<\/p>\n
Fric-Shamji struck Barron as \u201clovely, intelligent and funny,\u201d and Barron noticed she had also been really active in terms of bringing forward motions at the council meeting.<\/p>\n
At dinner, the two discussed work, patients and Fric-Shamji\u2019s pending divorce.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe discussed that sometimes divorce is a good thing,\u201d Barron said. \u201cShe said a weight was lifted off her now she had decided to go ahead with leaving her husband.\u201d<\/p>\n
By WENDY GILLIS and KENYON WALLACE, \u00a0Source:\u00a0TheStar.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"