Dr. Timothy Christie is a familiar face to many students who have attended his philosophy lectures. Besides being an entertaining and humorous lecturer, Dr. Christie has inspired in many of his students the same appreciation of the great thinkers of the past that he himself possesses.
Dr. Christie has a rich educational background, which has taken him across the country. He has a BA and an MA, both in Philosophy, from UNB; a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Ottawa; and a Master of Health Science degree in Epidemiology from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia.”
Dr. Christie, besides lecturing, is a “[…] philosopher working as a Professional Medical Ethicist in Horizon Health Network.” One of the highlights in his career has been opening the Uptown Methadone Clinic at St. Joseph’s Hospital.
Like all philosophers, he also has a great aptitude for research. Focusing on Ethics, Injection Drug Use, Harm Reduction, and Public Policy, he has extensively written in these fields, including co-publishing a paper titled Virtue ethics as an alternative to deontological and consequential reasoning in the harm reduction debate.
But, luckily for his students, among his other focuses (and somewhat stemming from them) lies a strong passion for teaching. He told The Baron that, “The beauty of teaching health care ethics is that I get the opportunity to teach students from a variety of disciplines: Arts, Nursing, Health Sciences, Business, etc. Having this type of diversity makes for some wonderful class discussions. Since I have my own clinical ethics practice I am able to supplement academic lectures with real-world practical examples.”
“I did not choose to study Philosophy because of any career aspirations. I appreciate the discipline and I studied it for its own sake.”