Colin Dale was born in London on 2 June 1934, the son (one of twins) of Charles Hugh Dale, a general practitioner, and Phyllis Lucy, née Spring, a nurse. He was educated at Oundle School and St Bartholomew's Medical School, where he qualified in 1958, and where his father had trained before him. After junior appointments at St Bartholomew's (where he was ENT house surgeon to Fred Capper) and the Metropolitan Hospital in Hackney, he became an anatomy demonstrator at King's College in the Strand from 1959 to 1961. He also worked at Great Ormond Street Hospital in 1962, and the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital in 1963. These posts were followed by ENT registrar and senior registrar appointments at St Bartholomew's, following which he became assistant professor of ENT surgery at the Foothills Hospital in Calgary, Canada, from 1971 to 1986. He was appointed Chief of Staff at the Rockyview General Hospital in Calgary from 1981 to 1987, and was President of the Alberta Society of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery from 1989 to 1994. He was also an assessor of community hospitals for the Canadian Council on Health Facilities Accreditation from 1989 to 1994. In 1960 he married Almut Lieker, a German nurse whom he had met at the Metropolitan Hospital, and they had two daughters - Geraldine, a nurse/physiotherapist specialising in sports injuries, and Angela, a theatrical costumier - and a son, Michael, a computer consultant. Colin Dale's interests included rowing, and he later became president of the Calgary Rowing Club and a Canadian national rowing official. He enjoyed kayaking, and built a log cabin from scratch in Alberta. He was also a keen philatelist, collecting in particular Nigerian stamps. His medical publications included articles on catscratch fever, Bell's Palsy and vocal problems in singers, and he helped establish the Canadian Voice Care Foundation. He died on 17 August 1996 aged 62 in Calgary, after a long illness due to a glioblastoma, and was survived by his wife and children.