Norman Bethune, Doctor

At the corner of Guy Street and De Maisonneuve Boulevard in Montreal there is a tiny concrete park with a pigeon-spattered, life-sized statue on a plinth and a few small trees. The park is designated as Norman Bethune Square and the statue is a slightly idealized image of the good Doctor dressed in a Chinese Communist Army uniform of the 1930’s and a lab coat, striding energetically forward – a classic work of Soviet Realism created by an unknown Chinese artist and gifted to the city of Montreal in 1976 by the Chinese Government; the year of Mao’s death.

Bethune spent eight years in Montreal after growing up in Gravenhurst, Ontario, where he was born in 1890. He was famous in Montreal as a thoracic surgeon and as a communist. He was also famous for demanding what would later be called Medicare and for opening a free clinic for the unemployed during the Depression. He was also famous for being a wickedly good surgeon – he invented a number of procedures and surgical instruments that are still in use. Many of his fellow doctors despised him, for his politics. His convictions led him (or, as some sources tell us, his rich and powerful enemies drove him) to leave Montreal and enlist in the International Brigade to fight against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. While there he helped establish the very first mobile blood transfusion units – the ancestors of the MASH units.

After a short visit home to Montreal to fundraise he was off to China to serve as a medical officer with the 8th field army of Mao’s Red Army in the liberation of China from Japan.  In the course of performing several surgeries he developed blood poisoning and died in 1939.

Bethune remains, even today, the most famous and revered westerner in China. This is due to the fact that Mao singled him out as the greatest volunteer to the Communist cause from the West. This is also due to Mao writing his eulogy entitled In Memory of Norman Bethune (Chinese: 紀念白求恩)which extolls Bethune’s absolute selflessness. In the 1960’s this was required reading in all the schools of China and is still an important political document, that lives on in Chinese elementary school textbooks. Bethune is hugely famous in China and largely unknown in Canada.

Bethune is buried in China’s Revolutionary Martyr’s Cemetery. Norman Bethune University of Medical Sciences, Bethune Specialized Medical College, Bethune International Peace Hospital and Bethune Military Medical College as well as three statues are dedicated to him. Here, in Canada, we have the Norman Bethune Collegial Institute (a High School) – and the house he was born in is a museum. While the Bethune Medal is the highest medical award in China, we have an NFB film and a couple of television shows (not to mention Donald Sutherland, who likes to portray him) as well as a handful of biographies (including one by Adrienne Clarkson – remember Adrienne Clarkson?). The best known of these is The Scalpel, the Sword by Ted Allan (also a playwright of the 1950’s and 1960’s and an award-winning screenwriter). The parts of the book that took place in Montreal and Spain, Ted Allan got right ,because he was there and he knew Bethune. The part set in China he made up, so it’s a bit rocky. The best Biography of Bethune is The Phoenix by Roderick and Sharon Stewart. Oh, and there was another film, with Donald Sutherland and Ted Allan fighting over the screenplay. . .

All this is part of the record and if you have actually heard of Bethune, I’m probably not telling you anything you haven’t heard before. But there’s another story, too. And although it’s also a part of the record, it’s not very well known. You can find it, if you want to spend hours surfing the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, or if you stumble across it all in an article by A. Munro and I. M. C. Macintyre. I did both and in that order. And then the story unfolds itself.

You see, Norman Bethune’s father Malcolm was a tear-away and a world traveler who met a Presbyterian missionary, married her and became a puritanical evangelical. It goes a long way towards explaining his son, Doctor Norman. But Malcolm’s father, also a Norman (1822-1892) was a very well known doctor who was born in Moose Factory, Ontario, but graduated from King’s College, London (England) and went on to become the Professor of Surgery at the Toronto School of Medicine and Trinity College. A thoroughly respectable medical career.

Now grandfather Norman’s father Angus (1783-1858) was born on Carleton Island, New York, where his father was stationed with the Royal Highland Immigrants, serving as Chaplain. The reverend John Bethune moved his family (including young Angus) to Montreal and then Williamstown, Glengarry County in 1787 – that house is also a museum. Angus joined the North West Company (fur traders working out of Montreal) as a young man and by 1810 he was working with Alexander Henry in the foothills of the Rockies and assisting David Thompson in preparing for his crossing to the Pacific in order to forestall the John Jacob Astor attempt to create (through the Pacific Fur Company) his own private west coast Country of Astoria (but that’s another story and I’ll come back to it). So successful was Angus that by 1814 he was running the west coast operation for the NWC and setting up trade deals with China. He went on to become an important player in the Hudson Bay Company after the merger with the NWC. Al lof Angus’s family were influential in the business and political spheres of his time.

Angus’ father (John Bethune 1751-1815) was, as we have seen, a Presbyterian minister and he was the founder of the first Presbyterian Church in Montreal. In case you have lost track, this is our Norman Bethune’s great-grandfather. He was also the great-great-great-grandfather of Canadian actor Christopher Plummer. He is generally referred to as “prominently connected” and a major mover and shaker in the Scottish community of the Montreal of his time. His father was Angus Bethune from the Isle of Skye whose maternal grandfather helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape into hiding and later to France after the battle of Culloden. Angus married Christina MacLeod, they had seven children and Angus lived to the age of 71. And here it gets very hazy and also interesting.

Angus’ parents were Ferquhard Bethune, and Isobel MacEachern of the Isle of Skye. There are numerous hints that Angus was the LAST of a list of Bethune Doctors in the western Islands that stretched back into the Middle Ages and used an ancient classical text as their medical manual. That this clan of doctors existed is pretty well documented, although Angus’ part in it isn’t. Still, if the name fits . . . So, Doctor Norman Bethune of Gravenhurst, Montreal, Malaga and China, comes to his profession by way of descent, stretching back to the Highland mists of antiquity.

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Oh, and by the way, Hugh MacLennan's very best novel, The Watch that Ends the Night, has a major character in it named Jerome Martell. MacLennan always denied that Jerome was based on Norman Bethune - but he was. Just read it.

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