An Interview with Laurie Gaspar, MD, MBA, FASTRO

RB: Okay. Well, good afternoon. Dr. Gaspar, thank you so much for taking the time to meet with us and talk about your life and your career in radiation oncology and anything else you'd like to expand upon. It's truly an honor and a privilege for myself and Dr. Patel to meet with you today. So, thank you for joining.

LG: Thank you to ASTRO and to you two for taking the time.

RB: Of course.

SP: Thank you as well. It's great to meet everyone here. This is the first time I'm meeting all of you, so it's a pleasure to meet all of you. Dr. Gaspar, thank you so much for making time for us.

LG: Thanks.

RB: Certainly, we would want to know the standard questions your background, where you trained. I'm happy to start with that. If you'd like to start there or specifically with how you got into the field of radiation oncology or medicine, whatever you would find to be relevant of where you started and how you got here.

LG: Well, I have had a serendipitous career path. It's probably not the normal career path for a radiation oncologist, perhaps, because I was not thinking of medical school as I was growing up or particularly even a medical field because I used to faint in public school and high school when people would start talking about illnesses or if I saw someone getting a vaccination.

Anyway, so medicine was not part of my growing up plan. My father was a banker and my mother was a housewife. But I was raised to think about going to university for sure. So I got to university, and I started out in the basic science classes with other students that were in the medical sciences because I was thinking of speech pathology at the time.

So then I got surrounded by all these students who were thinking of going into medical school and I thought, well, I could do that too. My family, particularly my mother, discouraged me because she thought it would be very difficult to have a personal life and still be a medical student or doctor. She just didn't understand how I would combine those.

So, for several reasons, I did go into speech pathology for two years. During that time, I met my husband who was a first year medical student. We would be studying together and I thought that what he's studying looks a little more interesting than what I'm studying. But we were both students at the University of Western Ontario, now called Western University, so I only applied there. The summer we were married, I was accepted to medical school. I had to pick up organic chemistry during the summer before I started, but it all went pretty smoothly. So then I was in medical school. I was thinking at one point that I wanted to do ENT. But at the time it would have been very difficult for somebody, especially a woman, to do the surgical residencies and do it in a humane way. It was a very punishing program at the time. In fact, there was a plastic surgery resident who committed suicide during his ENT rotation. That brought about a huge change at the time then to how the surgical program at my medical school was running. Anyway, as I went through my clinical rotations, I thought many specialties were interesting but I hadn't found one that I loved.

But then the whole decision process came to a screeching halt because I got pregnant in my third year of medical school. At the time there really weren't policies that were very well-written or adhered to about how to handle it. Mine was not handled very well, in my opinion.

Anyway, I graduated late, in the fall October graduation instead of the usual May one because I took six months off. I think it was June and I was doing a radiology elective.

The radiologist and I were looking at x-rays or CT and he says to me just conversationally, “What are you doing next year?” because everybody had received their information about where they were matched for their internships. I told him briefly, about my situation and then he said: “Well, the Cancer Center just got a big grant. Why don't you go and see if they can use somebody?

I said, “That's a good idea,” and he says, “No, go now!”

So I get up from the view boxes and walk into the Cancer Center. I tell the first administrative person that I see that I'm a medical student and I'm wondering about a job. I mean it sounds really lame right now. Next thing I know I'm sitting with the Cancer Center director and he says, yes, they will hire me to look after the inpatients for medical oncology and he will try to get me some credit toward my internship. Also, they would pay me at the level of an intern. It was everything I wanted because I was afraid that, if I sat around at home for 10 months, that I would lose my clinical skills and it would be very difficult to get myself into a program. So I left that meeting really happy.

I think the plan was that they were going to contact me to get some more – there must have been some forms or things that would have to be done. But when I hadn't heard in a week or two, I just wandered in again to the Cancer Center unannounced. A different administrative assistant said to me: “Are you the medical student who's thinking of working for medical oncology?” I said yes. She says, "well, there's somebody else who wants to meet you."

Next thing you know, I'm in the office with a radiation oncologist, Jim Gilchrist. He says to me, "Instead of working with medical oncology, why don't you do a residency in radiation oncology?"

I said: "Well, that's great, but what is radiation oncology?"

So he tells me in a couple of minutes about radiation oncology. There would be no obligation if I started the residency and I didn't like it. Nothing lost. So I said, sure, I'll do it. 

I started it and, honestly, within a month I knew it was the right fit for me. I loved it. It combined my interests in radiology with patient contact and problem solving.

There was a problem at the time in Canada where there was a shortage of Canadians interested in doing radiation oncology. Those who were interested were doing it at Princess Margaret in Toronto or in other provinces. Although the program in London, Ontario was not strong at the time I got the impression that I would likely have a job there. My husband was two years ahead of me and had done a family practice residency. He had his own practice in London so I was interested in staying there. I did almost one year of residency and then they sent me for a straight medical internship. I didn't do a general rotating internship which meant that I could choose my rotations.

I really liked my internship. It was very good. My year of residency, so to speak, before my internship year, made me a better intern because I did have some clinical experience already. Then I decided to have my second child during my third year of residency and take a 6-month maternity leave.

After my maternity leave, I had to wait another year until I could do my exams, and then I got the job in London, which I had hoped for. Now I want to tell you how I ended up concentrating on lung cancer and brain tumors.

While I was in my residency, one of my mentors, Dr. Banerjee, died of lung cancer. He was the primary radiation oncologist treating lung cancer and brain tumors. I had hoped to work with him but with his passing, I took over the lung cancer and brain tumor practice along with another radiation oncologist, Barbara Fisher. During my first year of being on faculty, we moved to a new cancer center. We had a LINAC adapted for radiosurgery, and there weren't too many of those at the time in Canada. In addition, I think we got the first remote high dose rate applicator system. And they also recruited Arthur Porter who trained in Edmonton and then came to London, Ontario to be our chief. Arthur was young and brilliant. So the opportunities were there.

With the radiosurgery and the HDR, there were studies that we could do that were relatively uncommon at the time. Also, Arthur Porter was a very ambitious person. It was really the first time that I thought of ambition for myself. I was competitive and I wanted to do well, but I hadn't really thought of doing anything other than just staying in London, Ontario and being a radiation oncologist. It was a great job with a combination of academics, teaching and clinical practice.

But then Arthur announced that he was going to be moving to Wayne State to be the chairperson there. He invited me to come with him. I went for an interview, but I decided to stay in London. Unfortunately, I didn't do a formal fellowship after my residency. I wished I could have, but I had two young children. I couldn't go someplace for a year. The only thing I was able to do was to spend 6 or 8 weeks at the University of San Francisco. I was just an observer of their lung cancer and brain tumor programs which of course were very strong and innovative. My interest in brachytherapy for brain tumors started there. So things were going well in London up until a few months after Arthur Porter’s departure to Wayne State. It became clear that the atmosphere in the department was different. For example there were disputes about who was going to take over Arthur's leadership position with the result that I didn't enjoy working there any longer.

Long story short, I moved to Wayne State. That was such a huge move because as a family, we hadn't thought about moving. Within six months I could see it was a very good move in many ways. For example, my husband switched from working in his general practice to working in medical education. He was very successful in that.

Wayne State had a strong thoracic oncology program with involvement in RTOG and SWOG. Arthur Porter was the chair of the RTOG Brachytherapy Subcommittee and he encouraged me to present a concept for esophageal brachytherapy which was my first study in a cooperative group setting. The RTOG helped my career immensely. Jim Cox and Walter Curran provided opportunities for me, such as developing the first recursive partitioning analysis based on prior RTOG brain metastases studies.

Also, I continued with brain tumor research at Wayne State. There was a neurosurgeon, Lucia Zamorano, who had started a brachytherapy program for malignant gliomas and I enjoyed collaborating with her. I really benefited from meeting radiation oncologists who were interested in mentoring me. For example, David Larson, who I had met during my weeks in San Francisco, put me on the ACR brain metastases appropriateness committee. This resulted in multiple publications.

My clinical practice and research were doing well at Wayne State but somewhere along the way I started thinking about developing my leadership skills. My first leadership training was as a fellow in a program called Executive Leadership for Academic Medicine, ELAM. ELAM was an intense program for a year that helped me think more about my career goals. Arthur Porter encouraged me to do an MBA at the University of Michigan. It was all very good education with the financial courses and managerial writing, etc. I would encourage it. But when I get asked by radiation oncologists if they should do an MBA and I've said that I would recommend doing the MBA if it doesn't get in the way of your research, of your academic development, of your CV. Because if your goal is to be a chair, I think just having an MBA is probably not that useful. But I think people have to think about what they expect to get from an MBA because, I think, most of the things that I've accomplished have not been because I did my MBA. It was probably more because I got very involved in clinical research and I was successful in writing papers that got published. I had planned to complete the MBA in the usual four years but then the opportunity to be the chair in Colorado came up. It was a small newly created department at the time. But there were already plans for building the new cancer center, the Anschutz Cancer Pavilion. So my timing for taking the position and being the first chairperson was an opportunity.

My first 20 months in Colorado went by really quickly as the new cancer center was being built. Then we had a new department, new machines, and I could build the faculty. That was probably the most exciting time in my career, to be building a new department. I've always said this to people, it's easier to take a department that's at a very low point and raise it higher than to come into a department that everybody loves and respects and just drag it down.

My philosophy all along has been that you really need to surround yourself with people you want to spend time with. I don't care how smart somebody is. If they're very odd, then the team dynamics don’t work. I hired radiation oncologists who became very successful. There was little turnover for years. It was a very fun time. We expanded our radiosurgery program. We got the Novalis Brainlab system. We also started multidisciplinary clinics. I need to give credit to London, Ontario, because we did multidisciplinary clinics in lung cancer and brain tumors even while I was there on faculty in the 1980s. So it was nothing particularly new for me to have multidisciplinary clinics, but we got them going as well in Colorado.

RB: You're checking all the boxes. It sounds like Dr. Porter was a fantastic influence on your career. It seemed like it started in a serendipitous manner, as you mentioned. Were you always someone who – when you first underwent going into a radiation oncology residency, did you – I think today we have the tendency to overthink things a bit – did you really think very much about it or it just seemed like a good fit and you went with it? I'm noticing a theme of being very open-minded, and taking feedback and running with things that are interesting.

LG: I think one of the things that I was able to do — I mean I'm not a very inventive person — but the thing I could do is see an opportunity. So for example, in London, Ontario, we had a strong neuro-oncology program. Gregory Cairncross and David MacDonald, those names are big in neuro-oncology. Anyway, they were my neuro-oncology colleagues then. But we were having trouble at that time with getting patients to radiation treatment in a timely fashion. So patients with glioblastomas were waiting weeks. We all wished that we could start the radiation treatment promptly but it just wasn’t possible. So I went to Drs. Cairncross and MacDonald and I said maybe we could design a Phase II study that evaluates chemotherapy before radiation treatment. So we conducted and published one of the early studies on that topic.

This is another bit of advice that I try to give radiation oncologists; it's that going to a meeting like RTOG, now NRG, or SWOG and standing up before a group of people to talk about an idea and develop an idea, is a good idea. Although many concepts never get off the ground, people now know who you are. Instead of being a person wandering around the meeting as an unknown, now people will stop you and ask you questions about your concept.

Another thing I have always encouraged is to maximize your chances of meeting influential people. For example, I encourage going to the social events at scientific meetings. Sometimes they are fun, sometimes they are not, but you should try to make the effort. I have tried to give advice to many younger radiation oncologists over the years. But I didn't take my own advice as well as I should have when I became a chair at Colorado. One of the things I do regret is that I didn't get a mentor outside of radiation oncology to mentor me as a new chair. At one time I had the ambition to be more involved in medical school administration, and I think I would have benefited from listening or having a mentor at the time to advise me on how I might get there. I am very proud of most of my achievements, but there are definitely things I could have done better.

Another thing I do want to mention is one of the positions that I held as the chairman of the Society for Chairs of Academic Radiation Oncology, SCAROP. Being part of that organization, one of the things that I recognized and I couldn't make any headway in unfortunately, was that as a group of radiation oncology chairs or people in high administrative places, we're not giving each other enough help.

For example, when I was negotiating my contract at the University of Colorado, it was the first time I had to think about what is it that you need to be successful as a department. I went to one very well-known radiation oncologist that I really felt I had a relationship with and he would tell me nothing practical about the financial aspect. I was asking for specifics. What should I expect from the hospital as far as starting a radiobiology program? What would you need to get a residency program going? Anyway, I felt like I just did it in the dark, in a vacuum.

I have had many conversations with radiation oncologists interviewing for chair positions, and I try to be more helpful. Maybe there's a lot of confidentiality agreements that people have signed that don't allow them to be more helpful? I've had people tell me that. I think, as a specialty, we've got to come together a little bit more, instead of being competitive.

SP: I think your story is incredible. My question is when we opened our first radiosurgery program, I was the co-founder of the Gamma Knife program. Do you have any advice for anyone who would be wanting to start a transformative program in their community?

LG: Well, we were able to start a Gamma Knife program at Wayne State. We got a Gamma Knife while I was there and it was a difficult time working with the neurosurgeons because they sometimes wanted to use radiosurgery in ways not clinically proven. The neurosurgeons, they were probably ahead of their time. But, for example, they wanted us to be treating the post-surgery cavity for metastasis. In the 1990s this wasn’t done. I said I'll do that if we write a study, but otherwise we can't do it.

Anyway, so you try to work out how to work with difficult people in difficult situations. She was very unhappy that she sent me a patient for consideration of brachytherapy. I didn't think it was indicated, so I told the patient that. So the neurosurgeon was very unhappy with me. But we had a conversation in which I said: listen, we have to work together and sometimes we're going to have professional disagreements. It can't become a personal thing. That's just the way it's going to go. She and I became very good friends after that.

This is hard to say, but sometimes you just can't stay in a place that — I'm not talking about your situation in any respect — but I just mean, like for me, I knew I couldn't stay in London, Ontario. At the time it just wasn't very common for people to move. I don't know why, but in Canada at the time, generally you start at one place and it would be unusual for you to move around. So it was very upsetting to me and to my immediate family that all of a sudden, I have to move to improve my chances of a successful career.

Another important issue for us in medicine is how to find work-life balance. I was lucky that my husband had a job where he didn't travel very much. He did a little bit, but I was really able to do everything I wanted to do. My sons, when my husband would go away, they'd be worried that I really couldn't handle everything when my husband wasn't there because he was always handling it while I was away. So it became a bit of a joke. But I was lucky I had the support of my husband.

SP: Do you have any tips on work-life balance?

LG: We've all been there. What I did when I moved to Colorado — because I was kind of in the same situation you're describing. At Wayne State, when I started my MBA, Arthur gave me a half day a week so-called away but not really. I was doing my MBA work in the evenings on the weekends and it was difficult. When I went to Colorado, what I did – which was unusual at the time – was I had everybody work four-day weeks. They had to be available by phone, but they didn't have to be physically in the department. I really didn't care how they spent their day, but everybody needs – talking about myself, I need a block of time. I write my best papers or whatever I'm working on, from my desk at home with my tea and my Doritos. I need a certain ambiance and then things will happen. It has to be unbroken time. When you have young kids, that's very hard.

The four day clinical week was hard to get started. The hospital administration was unhappy with it at the beginning, especially when they would help me financially with recruiting young radiation oncologists. But I believe that the day off a week enabled the faculty to be successful.

SP: How do you find practicing in the United States compared to Canada? Is that very different or very similar?

LG: I haven't found it very different. What is a little bit different sometimes is the relationship between the specialties. Sometimes there's pressure on radiation oncology to do things that they don't really want to do. I know I've had phone calls from radiation oncologists. Some of them from prior residents, saying, “I have a medical oncologist that wants me to do…” blah-blah-blah, “I don't think I should.” I'll say, “right, no, you shouldn't," but this is a common situation and we have to deal with the pressure.

When I was at Wayne State, I started radiation therapy urgently on a young patient who had a very, very painful bone metastasis. I got called and yelled at by the medical oncologist. He was planning to put the man on a study and now I had ruined it. Well, long story short, I get called in to speak with the head of medical oncology at the time who says to me there's two different types of relationships with radiation oncology. One is where it's a collaborative relationship and the other one is where the radiation oncology simply does what the medical oncologists want them to do. This medical oncologist wanted the second type of relationship. I wasn't the chair at the time and I didn’t feel like my chair supported me particularly well. It was one of my disappointments. But I think the Canadian practice is generally the same as the U.S. practice, but there might be a little bit more work involved sometimes to get yourself so that you can be respected for your opinion even if it's different than the other's opinion. Maybe sometimes that involves managing differences of opinions. I had no difficulty with the American exams because I could just decide in my head, you know what, if we do it in Canada, there's a good reason why we do it. I think we're taught to justify our decisions. That's how I felt. That's how I felt about my residency program which was sort of a self-teaching program in many ways because it was such a small program.

SP:  Oh, my goodness. I guess it's very different now. 

LG: You know, sometimes I worry about the future of radiation oncology residents. I know there's concerns about the manpower needed, or about what's the future for reimbursement. Generally, what's happened over the years is that where one practice for radiation oncology goes away, radiation treatment develops in another area. You know we have to adapt with the times in our specialty. It's natural that patients would want to find out if there are safer alternatives.

RB: Thank you. I think that that leads into another question. What emerging trends or innovations are you most excited about? What are you most excited about going forward? What responsibility do you think ASTRO has to prepare the trainees for that and to be intellectually flexible

LG: Well, I told you before I am not very inventive. I could never foresee the future. I think once I am in it, I am as adaptable as I can be to the new thing. I think there are radiation oncologists who are able to see more clearly about what's likely to happen to us, but I think the most exciting things have been our ability to work with new agents. I think it's our collaborative nature as a specialty. Lung cancer comes to mind primarily. The transformative nature of lung cancer treatment over my 40 years in practice is really amazing. The outcomes are just so much better.

The role of radiation treatment has changed, but it's still an important part of treatment. Even in oligometastases. I think we have to be more involved with evaluating new agents and how to safely incorporate radiation treatment. One of the first SWOG studies that I was involved with was adding the early generation EGFR inhibitors to chemoradiation. It was a negative study, since we were giving it to everybody because we couldn't test for EGFR receptors at the time. That was a very satisfying study to be involved in because although it was negative we learned a lot. So I think we just have to be ready as a group to do those sorts of studies that might show that our treatment is not as beneficial as we believe.

Another example of a difficult topic was the benefit – or lack of benefit – of whole brain radiation therapy for brain metastases. I remember we were at an RTOG brain committee meeting in the 1990s. That was a big room full of people. The chair at the time, he's presenting a concept which is about brain metastases and whole brain radiation therapy. Anyway, I put up my hand and I said, well, the big question among my group of neurosurgeons is whether or not we need whole brain radiation treatment in addition to radiosurgery. The answer I got from the podium, from the chair was: "Well, Laurie, the rest of us in this room are card carrying radiation oncologists.

So sometimes, you know, your ideas are just at the wrong time or sometimes you just have to accept that this question can't be answered. You know it took a few years and then we got the studies done. Then we find that whole brain radiation isn't as important as we thought it was. So it's just being open to change.

SP: I'm noticing that's a theme; you're open to change at multiple points in your career and to immense success. 

LG: Well, I don't want to make myself sound like I'm totally "Miss Flexible." I wish I were. I have my own work I have to do on myself sometimes.

RB: Sure. I guess that begets another question. If you could go back and give yourself as a practicing radiation oncologist or a new radiation oncologist some advice – I know you've done it multiple times during this talk and it's been immensely helpful and we're so thankful for that – but what advice would you give to someone starting out or to yourself starting out? 

LG: Well, I've told you about making sure you have mentors. They have to be mentors that are willing to really do the tough job sometimes of telling you what you're doing wrong. But as well I think you have to be willing to change jobs sometimes. I think I've touched on that several times. Sometimes the place and time is not right for you. It doesn't work; it just is not working. Really, I hate it when people are passive/aggressive. Like they're unhappy, but they're not doing something about it. Or they're just miserable at work. I can think of people I worked with that I know weren't happy people. Not to say they didn't enjoy their clinical work and do good patient care, but they weren't flourishing in that place with that group of people and yet they still stayed. I'm just philosophically against that. If I'm unhappy, I want to know I can move. Once a year I would go for a job interview, actually, just to make sure that I still had opportunities. Maybe not every year, but I mean I think every once in a while, you want to double check that you are marketable, that you are on the right track.

I have women that I mentored who are interested in being chairs. One of the most difficult aspects is that you have to be willing to move your family. That sounds natural and obvious, but it's more difficult as women to do that. You are usually talking about a two-career family and it's not as easily said as done. Both of my career moves were very tough. My sons were seven and eleven when we left Canada. Then my older son was starting at University of Michigan when I moved to Colorado. So he was happy because now we're out of state. But my younger son was just starting high school and, to his credit, he was good about it. But it's tough and I felt bad. On the other hand, maybe they want a happy mother. I don't know. I just felt like it was something I had to do.

So, depending on your goals, you have to be willing to move. You could wait and hope a job comes up in your current location, but that's not very likely. It's harder to be an internal candidate as well, I think.

RB: If you don't mind me asking for your career moves, were these things that were discussed as a family?

LG: No. So really the move from Canada was literally one day I went into work and there was an incident and I came home and I said to my husband: "I'm moving, you want to come with me? I'm happy to have you come, but I'm moving.

Literally, I did say that. To my sons we never mentioned ever moving. We had built a house. We were established. We had never discussed the possibility of moving. So this was a huge shock and I felt so bad.

So then, when we went to Wayne State, I did it differently. I would let my sons know when I went for job interviews. I mean you could argue this is maybe not a very healthy thing to do. I'm not saying that this is the right thing for everybody, but I decided to make them aware that Wayne State, it's probably also not my end, you know. So it didn't come as a shock the same way when we made the second move. Certainly, with my husband, we had discussions as a couple. I said, "we've made one move for me; is there some place you want to go?" but he was generally happy with the jobs he had. But you know, for some women, for a good reason, they can’t be as flexible or movable.

RB: Sometimes it's difficult to navigate those partnerships.

LG: Yes.

RB: It sounds like you changed your approach for the second move over, but now it seems like it worked out very well.

LG: Yes. That was one of my better decisions. I went for other chair interviews and either they didn't go very far or I turned them down. But Colorado was, for me, a really, really good decision.

RB: They are lucky to have you. 

SP: Outside of work, what kind of hobbies do you enjoy? Who are you like as a person outside of work?

LG: I've always been physically active. I used to play tennis. I'm not a great tennis player, but I enjoyed it a lot. I played on teams and things. But I developed a vision problem and so I had to give that up. But I'm still very active. I bike and hike. In Colorado, of course that's easy to do.

But my passion these days is to play bridge. I travel for bridge. My husband is not. In keeping with the type B thing, he's saying goodbye to me when I go off to a tournament. I play with other people that I've met because that's not his thing. Then we've taken dancing lessons for like 15 years. We take French lessons together, my husband and I, and we travel to France every year. So there's no shortage of things to do. One of the things I had to do when I retired the second time – I retired once and I didn't like it. That was when I went to Banner MDA in Northern Colorado which was great for the four years I did that. But this time around, when I was retiring from Banner, I felt I had to try harder. My father was turning 96 the summer that I retired three years ago and he was in Toronto. So I got to visit. I went like five times to Toronto between when I retired and when he passed away in October that year. That was just unpredicted that he was going to pass away in October. Except, at 96, you know things could happen. But the timing of my retirement was very good.

One of the things unfortunately that I decided I had to do as a retiree was end my connections to medical groups. For me, I was either fully in or fully out of work. You either read all the journals and still are an expert or you are not. I believe you have to be treating patients to stay in the flow, to really know what's going on and what really the discussions are about. It sounds weird, but I literally do not keep in touch. That's just my way of retiring.

SP: No, it makes sense.

LG: Yes. Other radiation oncologists have managed retirement differently. Karen Fu, she was at ASTRO every year. She won the gold medal and so, of course, that's a different category entirely of that sort of person. But she as a retired person was still reading all the literature and staying involved. I respected her very much for that decision, but it just isn't mine. It just doesn't work for me.

RB: Do what's best for you.

LG: Yeah, yeah.

RB: Any other points you'd like to comment on this? This has been phenomenal.

SP: Yeah this has been amazing.

RB: It's been very rewarding spending some time talking with you.

LG:  Well, thanks for taking the time. I enjoyed it too. It gave me a chance to think ahead of time about what it was that I would want to share. I wish I had had a more purposeful life…

RB: But I think there's some beauty in the not talking yourself out of a good opportunity. I think too often I see trainees, myself included, we find the reasons not to do something. Well, I won't do this or I won't go to this meeting because this, this, and this will happen. Or like you're saying in presenting research ideas, I won't present this idea because they'll shoot it down. 

LG: Right.

RB: Well, that's not often the point, but we sometimes want to draw out the conclusions before we even have enough data to.

LG: Right, right, right.

RB: It's a valuable thing, especially in today's times where it's tough to know how to predict the future. Maybe it's better to just do.

LG: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

RB: Wherever it takes you.

LG: So true. Well, thanks for taking the time. I wish you guys the best.

RB: Oh, I have one more question. Are you a Leafs fan or a Senators fan? Are you a hockey fan at all? I need to know. The Battle of Ontario is 

LG: Yeah, yeah. No, I'm all for – I watched Canadian baseball. I'm a Blue Jays fan more than hockey. Because I grew up in a hockey family, so I stopped watching hockey until my son was – he was a travel hockey player up until college. So it was – you know. Then I get interested again, but not professional. I don't follow any of the Denver teams. I'm still rooting more for Canadian teams.

SP: Blue Jays are amazing. Yeah, Blue Jays are awesome to watch. They're very good.

LG: I know. I still have a soft spot for Canada, but we're never going to move back. Our life is still here. Both my sons live in the area. I have two grandchildren who live in the area. So we love it.

RB: Congratulations. 

LG: Thank you.

RB: Thanks again, Dr. Gaspar. 

LG: Thank you. Bye, guys.

SP: Thank you.