It has been an absolute privilege to work with Neil for the past quarter century, and he will be sorely missed. Neil was a mentor, colleague, friend, collaborator, co-defector and a key architect of tobacco control in Canada and globally. After helping to get Canada’s tobacco strategy off the ground while serving at Health Canada in the 1980s, Neil helped initiate the global tobacco control treaty while running WHO’s tobacco control program in the 1990s. Upon his return to Canada in 2000, Neil lent his tremendous talents to civil society by serving as the research director for Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada. Despite his knowledge and expertise, Neil was a humble warrior and a gentle giant of tobacco control who suffered fools well and was always gracious and kind despite the circumstances. I have many fond memories of working with Neil, and one of the best was campaigning for smoke-free workplace laws across Canada in the early 2000s. In 2003, Neil and Cynthia Callard mounted a national publicity and government relations campaign for Ottawa restaurant worker Heather Crowe–who ultimately died from lung cancer from breathing secondhand smoke at work. I spent several days with Neil and Heather in early 2004–attending a national labour ministers conference in Banff to rally support for subnational workplace smoking bans. Neil used his advanced diplomacy skills to overcome tight security and engineer an impromptu lunch meeting with all the labour ministers. The meeting was a trigger point for accelerating workplace and public smoking bans across Canada. This example is just one of Neil’s many contributions to tobacco control. These contributions will serve public health and tobacco control for many generations. Thank you, Neil, for truly making the world a better place.