BANCROFT
BANFIELD
BANKS
BANNERMAN
BANNON
BANTING
BANCROFT o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-11-21 published
HODGKINSON,
Ronald
Arnold
Born July 27, 1927 in Ottawa. Ron died peacefully with family
by his side on November 16, 2003 at the Victoria Hospice, at
the age of 76. He fought a tenacious battle with cancer, courageously
and with his sense of humour intact to the end. Predeceased by
mother Josephine
CAVILL, father George
HODGKINSON, and brother
Gilbert. He will be sadly missed by his loving wife Jean Lesley
(née BANCROFT,) of 46 years, his son Eric Ronald
HODGKINSON,
daughters Janice
ROBINSON
(Dan
REDFORD,) Susan
VIMINITZ (Mark,)
grandchildren Jenna, Sam, Josh and Zack, brother Art, sisters
Nora, Elsie Ann and Helen, 11 nieces and nephews, and many dear
Friends. Family and Friends are invited to celebrate Ron's life
at the Gordon head United Church, 4201 Tyndall in Victoria, at
3 p.m, on Saturday, November 22. Donations can be made in his
memory to the Cancer Society or the Victoria Hospice.
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BANFIELD o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2003-12-10 published
John "Jack"
BILLARD
In loving memory of John "Jack"
BILLARD who passed away Monday,
December 1, 2003 at the Mindemoya Hospital at the age of 77 years.
Beloved husband of Audrey
(BANFIELD)
BILLARD of Mindemoya. Loving
father of Sandra
MOSLEY of Atikokan, Madge
BUDGELL (husband Wilf
predeceased) and Sharon
HAGEN (husband George) both of Lively and
Terry (wife Anne) of Red Lake. Cherished grandfather of Melissa,
Jergen, Erica, Steven (fiancie Christina), Darren (fiancie Anne),
Andrew, Tyler and Karleen. Dear son of Archibald and Elizabeth
BILLARD both predeceased. Dear brother of Gwen, Don (wife
Mona+,)
Lora (husband Jim), predeceased by Ada, Edwin, and Ross. Dear brother-in-law of
Ruth, Marguerite, Rod, Ella and Barbara. Sadly missed by nieces , nephews, great
nieces and nephews, cousins and especially by his canine pal Riley.
Funeral Service was held at the Lougheed Funeral Home Regent St Sudbury
Friday, December 5, 2003. Cremation at the Parklawn Crematorium.
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BANKS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-03-06 published
BANKS,
Athalie
Isabelle
Died of cancer at Moncton Hospital on Saturday, March 1, 2003.
Formerly of Ottawa, Ontario, she leaves behind brothers and sisters
in Australia. Cremation has taken place. Burial later in the spring.
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BANNERMAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-04 published
Dorothy Della
SCOTT
By Eugen BANNERMAN,
Thursday,
December 4, 2003 - Page A26
Mother, friend, practical joker. Born June 13, 1917. Died October
5, in Wingham, Ontario, of natural causes, aged 86.
Dorothy Scott's grandparents arrived with their family from England
in 1876, and, several years later, rented a house and farm near
Brussels, Ontario
It was a long journey by wagon over the rough, corduroy roads
that wound through Huron County. They carried all their belongings
with them. When they arrived, they found the house was still
occupied, so the family had to make do in the barn's milking
parlour. Dorothy's grandfather was a carpenter and boarded off
one corner of the stable. Her grandmother scrubbed, whitewashed
the walls and ceiling and tidied the place for her growing family,
until the other family moved out.
Dorothy's grandmother was expecting, and it was here she gave
birth to her fifth child (Dorothy's mother), and named her Thirza.
Her grandfather took the newborn infant and wrapped her in a
home-made blanket. He put clean straw in the cattle manger and
laid her in it. "Just like the baby Jesus."
Dorothy told me this story on one of my first visits. I was the
newly appointed United Church minister in Blyth, Ontario, and
at 85, Dorothy was one of its oldest members. Old in years but
not in spirit. Growing old should not keep us from laughing and
having a good time, Dorothy often told me, for as soon as we
stop laughing, we age rapidly. Dorothy's joie de vivre was spontaneous
and infectious. Even when she was hooked up to plastic tubing
supplying her with vital oxygen, the sparkle (and laughter) in
her eyes was always present.
Dorothy Della
SCOTT was born to Thirza
(WALDEN) and John
CALDWELL.
She grew up on her parents' farm and
on June 15, 1938, married
Laurie SCOTT, also a farmer. She received a dining-room suite
and a milk-cow as a wedding gift from her father. They had two
children, Robert and Donald.
Dorothy SCOTT learned as a child to have fun and laugh. In spite
of the hard work and deprivations of farm life, the years did
not repress or smother her inner child. Often it burst forth
in unexpected and unique ways.
Her worst prank, she told me, was when she was a nurse and decided
to play a trick on a new orderly. She had the other nurses cover
her with a sheet as she lay down on a trolley and "played dead."
The new orderly was called and told to take the body to the morgue.
She lay absolutely still until they were in the elevator. Then
she sat up, and frightened the poor man, "really bad," as she
said.
There was also a serious dimension to Dorothy's life. As a young
mother, she almost died giving birth to her second son, Donald.
But in the privacy of that moment, she had a near-death vision
of Christ. "If this was death," [she] thought, "no one need be
afraid."
Dorothy was unsentimental about many things but not her family.
She concluded her memoirs, Dorothy's Memories (2002), by tracing
her own happy life to a happy childhood and loving husband and
family.
Shortly after my arrival in Blyth, Dorothy tested her new minister's
tolerance for humour. She slipped a white envelope into my hand
as I was saying goodbye to parishioners after worship. "Don't
open it now. Give it to your wife and read it when you get home."
It was the first of many jokes from the Internet that made us
laugh with pleasure and anticipation.
We will miss Dorothy, her cheerful disposition, her countless
stories, her white envelopes, and her cushion-seat in the third
row of the sanctuary.
Eugen is Dorothy's friend and minister.
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BANNON o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-02-17 published
Claude J. GOUGEON
By Claire LALONDE
Monday,
February 17, 2003, Page A16
Father, husband, businessman, art collector. Born January 14,
1923, in Ottawa, Ontario Died December 14, 2002, of fibrosis
of the lungs, aged 79.
Act enthusiastic and you'll be enthusiastic was dad's motto.
In just such a positive manner, our dad raised five children,
urging us all to reach for the stars.
Dad received his training as a pilot with the Royal Canadian
Air Force during the Second World War. After the war, while working
as sales representative for Imperial Tobacco Company in northern
Ontario, dad met Rita
BANNON.
Perhaps it was his rich tenor notes
and the sweetness that emanated from his violin, mingling with
Rita's piano melodies, which led to their 1946 marriage in Sudbury, Ontario
In Sudbury, Claude began working for Rita's father at Bannon
Brothers' Furniture Store and raised his four daughters and one son.
His entrepreneurial spirit surged and he moved to Arnprior, Ontario,
where he invested his energy in his own furniture business and
became president of the local businessmen's association.
Later, his love of wood and fine form resulted in his establishing
Estate Antiques, a furniture-based antique shop in Orleans, Ontario
(Our tongue-in-cheek quip used to be that: "Everything was for
sale except Rita and the kids.")
On one occasion, my soon-to-be husband was sleeping in a downstairs
bedroom. Dad had just finalized the sale of the oriental rug
upon which the bed sat; he and my brother Tom tried to unobtrusively
hoist the bed (upon which my startled fiancé was feigning sleep),
to roll up and remove the rug.
Dad later developed a lasting passion for art, specifically 19th-century,
Canadian art. Our home became his gallery. With each family visit
we were caught up in dad's joy and expertise as he explained
each new piece. He would point out the effect of light and shadow,
the artist's self-rendering in a painting, the notch in the stonework
that identified a historical date. His appreciation of art was
as infectious as his personality.
Family was dad's first passion, however. He cherished our mother
and often deferred to her natural good taste in the purchase
of fine paintings. As children, our lives were filled with stories
of boating expeditions on the Rideau and Trent canals, and a
perspective of the world that no kaleidoscope could ever duplicate.
Dad's energy for life was boundless. He never had problems, only
challenges; his love for his family was unconditional. This attitude
was evident three weeks before my wedding, the day when I arrived
home distraught over the bankruptcy of the clothing store where
my wedding dress and three bridesmaids' dresses were stored.
Dad knocked at the door of the establishment and spoke to the
owner. Later that day, he arrived home, arms overflowing with dresses.
A natural teacher, one of dad's greatest lessons to us was his
last: the manner with which he graciously surrendered his worldly
goods and independence. In spite of a profound hearing loss,
great difficulty breathing and myriad other discomforts, dad's
attitude remained uncomplaining and positive.
His "act" of enthusiasm had become his natural personality and we were all benefactors.
Claire LALONDE is Claude
GOUGEON's daughter.
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BANTING o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-05-10 published
Programmer was a 'people person'
Computer consultant advised clients not only on technology, but
on the psychology that made the technology work for the company
Harvey GELLMAN was the first person in Canada to get a PhD based
in computer studies.
By Marina STRAUSS
Saturday,
May 10, 2003 - Page F11
He broke new ground in the computer field long before most Canadians
even knew what a software program was, or that computers would
so profoundly change their way of communicating and doing business.
Known as the dean of computer consulting, Harvey
GELLMAN had
a hand in purchasing the first computer in this country in 1952
he ran one of the first software programs and was the first to
get a PhD based on computer studies. Last month, Dr.
GELLMAN
died suddenly in Florida at the age of 78.
He made his name as a consultant who advised clients not only
on technology, but on the psychology that made the technology
work for a company -- with a knack for matching people's skills
to the job at hand, colleagues say.
Most important, Dr.
GELLMAN put the clients first, always looking
out for their best interests rather than simply the consultant's
bottom line, says Jim
HAYWARD, his partner at Toronto-based Gellman
Hayward and Partners for 18 years until it was sold to Montreal-based
CGI
Group in 1992.
What particularly distinguished Dr.
GELLMAN as a consultant was
his departure from others in refusing just to analyze a problem
and deliver a report to the client, Mr.
HAYWARD says.
Instead, Dr.
GELLMAN would find out exactly how far the client
was ready to go in implementing any change recommended in a report
and then guide the client through the change process.
This fundamental shift took root in the mid-1970s, when Dr.
GELLMAN
became frustrated that too many consultants simply handed over
a report and then walked away from the problem, Mr.
HAYWARD says.
"The trick is to work beside the client and walk with them, but
don't take the problem away from them, " he says. "It's like
therapy."
Together, they applied this form of business therapy at Gellman
Hayward, which grew from four partners to about 100 employees
before it was sold, boasting a client list that read like a Who's
Who of corporate Canada.
Indeed, the firm at one time or another advised all the big banks,
Bell Canada, Imperial Oil, Labatt Breweries, Eaton's, Hudson's
Bay, Spar Aerospace, TransCanada PipeLines, Noranda, Falconbridge,
Inco, Atomic Energy of Canada and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
"It was all the big names, says
CGI president Serge
GODIN,
who worked closely with Dr.
GELLMAN after the 1992 acquisition
and credits him with helping to manage its huge surge in staff
mostly through acquisitions -- by integrating and streamlining
the various systems.
"Harvey GELLMAN is a brand name, Mr.
GODIN says. "He was quite
something, very strong, brilliant -- with a big heart."
He was a man of few words, with a deep-seated respect for and
interest in people, colleagues and family.
"He would say, 'The janitor and the president are the same, '
recalls Paul
GELLMAN, the younger of his two sons, who also
is a computer consultant. "He believed it and he lived it."
From the security officers at Dr.
GELLMAN's apartment building
in Florida, where he lived half the year in his retirement, to
the secretary in his doctor's office -- all were touched by him
and upset by his death, Paul says.
Born in 1924, Dr.
GELLMAN was the middle of five children of
Polish parents who immigrated to Toronto in 1928. His youngest
brother Albert says nobody in the household ever quarrelled:
a calm reigned in the family and reverberated in the future computer
guru.
Still, Dr.
GELLMAN's life threatened to take an entirely different
course early on, when he dropped out of high school to work in
an electrical manufacturing plant and help the family make ends
meet.
The factory had an electrical test set that only Dr.
GELLMAN
was able to figure out, Mr.
HAYWARD says. The budding tech whiz
realized that he wasn't so dumb, went back to school -- and the
rest is history.
He attended the University of Toronto, graduating with a bachelor's
degree in mathematics and physics in 1947. The following year,
the university's newly established Computation Centre, headed
by Professor Calvin (Kelly)
GOTLIEB, invited him to join and
study electro-mechanical devices.
Dr. GELLMAN subsequently was involved in purchasing a huge Ferranti
computer from England for $250,000. It was the first computer
bought in Canada, sponsored in part by one of the centre's clients
Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.
"The machine would fail every five minutes, Dr.
GELLMAN was
quoted as saying years later when he was inducted in the industry-sponsored
Canadian Information Productivity Awards hall of fame. "We would
sit at the monitor and watch the diagonal array of dots, and
when a dot dropped, we would stop the machine, reset it and carry
on."
He wrote a small program on punch paper tape to help users print
efficiently from the computer, one of the first software programs
to be run in Canada, and soon he produced the first printout
for a computational problem, according to information supplied
to Canadian Information Productivity Awards.
In 1951, he obtained his PhD in applied mathematics, the first
doctorate in Canada for which the theoretical calculations depended
on a computer.
That same year, he became head of computing at Atomic Energy
of Canada Ltd. and, by 1955, he founded H. S. Gellman and Co.
Ltd. in Toronto to advise the growing number of companies seeking
his help.
Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. was his first client and remained
one throughout his consulting career.
"He was doing a lot of pioneering work on operating systems,
and operating systems that deal with controlling nuclear-power
plants, says Bob
BANTING, manager of information technology
security at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. "He understood the programming
and the technical stuff, but he also knew how to manage people....
He was very good at assessing skills."
He hired top talent, sizing up job candidates in minutes, and
was able to move seamlesslessly from being a good programmer
to a good "people person, Mr.
BANTING says.
Dr. GELLMAN's early work was computing based on mathematical
equations, but the firm quickly moved into what became known
as information technology.
His busy consulting firm was swallowed in 1964 by a subsidiary
of de Havilland and subsequently by
AGT
Data
Systems before he
left with Mr.
HAYWARD to form Gellman Hayward.
But by the early 1990s, the firm was "stuck" and started to seek
a buyer, Mr.
HAYWARD says. "We didn't know how to get to the
next level."
When CGI acquired it in 1992, Dr.
GELLMAN stayed on as a senior
vice-president until he retired six years later.
In 1997, he co-wrote Riding the Tiger, a book that helps business
managers use information technology effectively. He was often
quoted in the media on managing information systems, and wrote
articles on the topic for The Globe and Mail.
In addition, he received many honours during his career, including
being named International Systems Man of the Year in 1967. He
was a founding member of the Canadian Information Processing
Society, among other professional bodies.
In his personal life, he was a private man and a steadfast father
and grandfather nine times over. He was devoted to Lily, his
wife of 57 years. They were teenage sweethearts, best of Friends
and "a model of how we all should live, " says his son Paul.
When Paul's older brother, Steven, decided to pursue a career
as a composer and musician, Dr.
GELLMAN had some reservations,
aware of the risks of such an unconventional and insecure profession.
"Before I left home to study at Juilliard, he said to me, 'I
understand you wanting to become a musician. Become the best
musician you can be; but I am concerned that you don't become
just a musician, ' " Steven says.
"Dad was reminding me to become a full human being, to develop
many facets of my life, just as he did."
Dr. GELLMAN and his wife spent a lot of time in Israel, where
they had family. In the mid-1970s, he took a six-month sabbatical
from work for an extended stay.
He was also part of a small discussion group called the Senge
Circle, started more than a decade ago among business colleagues
to discuss Peter Senge's management book, The Fifth Discipline.
It evolved into regular breakfast meetings to chew over different
business tomes.
The last meeting was in October before he went to Florida when
the group delved into the Peter
DRUCKER classic, The Practice
of Management. Dr.
GELLMAN was struck by how relevant the book
was almost 50 years after he first read it.
Dr. GELLMAN, who died on April 23, leaves his wife
Lily, sons
Steven and Paul, and siblings Dorothy, Albert and Esther.
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BANTING o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-13 published
'What else could it have been but a miracle?'
Rene CAISSE died 25 years ago without gaining the recognition
some cancer survivors believe she deserved. Without Essiac, her
mysterious remedy, they wouldn't be alive today, they tell Roy
MacGREGOR
By Roy MacGREGOR,
Saturday,
December 13, 2003 - Page F8
Bracebridge, Ontario -- These days, when she looks back at her
remarkable, and largely unexpected, long life, Iona
HALE will
often permit herself a small, soft giggle.
She is 85 now, a vibrant, spunky woman with enough excess energy
to power the small off-highway nursing home she now lives in
at the north end of the Muskoka tourist region that gave the
world Norman
BETHUNE and, Iona
HALE will die believing, possibly
something far more profound.
A possible cure for cancer.
Twenty-seven years ago, Mrs.
HALE sat in Toronto's Princess Margaret
Hospital and heard that terrifying word applied to her own pitiful
condition. She was 58, and had already dropped to 75 pounds when
her big, truck-driver husband, Ted, finally got her in to see
the specialists who were supposed to know why she had stopped
eating and was in such terrible pain.
Mrs. HALE remembers awakening in the recovery room after unsuccessful
surgery and being told by a brusque nurse, "You're not going
to live long, you know, dear."
"That's what you think!" she snapped back.
Ted HALE had often heard stories of a secret "Indian" medicine
that an area nurse had supposedly used to cure cancer patients,
but he had no idea where it could be found. He had asked a physician,
only to be told, "That damned Essiac -- there's nothing to it."
When they returned to their home near Huntsville, Ontario --
with instructions to come back in three weeks, if Mrs.
HALE was
still around -- Mr.
HALE set out to find the mysterious medicine.
With the help of a sympathetic doctor, he discovered Rene
CAISSE,
a Bracebridge nurse who claimed to have been given the native
secret back in 1922. Pushing 90 and in ill health, she agreed
to give him one small bottle of the tonic, telling him to hide
it under his clothes as he left.
Mr. HALE fed his wife the medicine as tea, as instructed, and
it was the first thing she was able to keep down. A few radiation
treatments intended to ease the pain seemingly had no effect,
but almost immediately after taking the Essiac, she felt relief.
When the painkillers ran out and Mr.
HALE said he would go pick
up more, she told him, "Don't bother -- get more of this."
Twice more, he returned to get Essiac, the second time carrying
a loaded pistol in case he had to force the medicine from the
old nurse. He got it, and, according to Mrs.
HALE, "the cancer
just drained away." She returned to Toronto for one checkup --
"The doctor just looked at me like he was seeing a ghost" --
and never returned again.
"What else could it have been," Mrs.
HALE asks today, "but a
miracle?"
There is nothing special to mark the grave of Rene
CAISSE.
It lies in the deepening snow at the very front row of St. Joseph's
Cemetery on the narrow road running north out this small town
in the heart of Ontario cottage country, a simple grave with
a dark stone that reads: "
McGAUGHNEY
Rene
M.
(CAISSE) 1888-1978,
Discoverer of 'Essiac,' Dearly Remembered."
On December 26, it will be 25 years since Rene -- pronounced
"Reen" by locals --
CAISSE died. But in the minds of many people
with cancer, the great question of her life has continued on,
unanswered, well beyond her death. Did she have a secret cure
for the disease?
Ms. CAISSE never claimed to have a "cure" for cancer, but she
did claim to have a secret native formula that, at the very least,
alleviated pain and, in some cases, seemed to work what desperate
cancer sufferers were claiming were miracles.
She had discovered the formula while caring for an elderly Englishwoman
who had once been diagnosed with breast cancer and, unable to
afford surgery, turned instead to a Northern Ontario Ojibwa medicine
man who had given her a recipe for a helpful tonic.
The materials were all found locally, free in the forest: burdock
root, sheep sorrel, slippery elm bark, wild rhubarb root and water.
The woman had taken the native brew regularly and been cancer-free ever since.
Ms. CAISSE had carefully written down the formula as dictated,
thinking she might herself turn to this forest concoction if
she ever developed the dreaded disease. She never did, dying
eventually from complications after breaking a hip, but she remembered
the recipe when an aunt was diagnosed with cancer of the stomach
and given six months to live. The aunt agreed to try the tonic,
recovered and went on to live 21 more years.
The aunt's doctor, R.D.
FISHER, was intrigued enough that he
encouraged Ms.
CAISSE to offer her remedy -- which she now called
"Essiac," a reverse spelling of her name -- to others, and by
1926 Dr. FISHER and eight other physicians were petitioning the
Department of Health and Welfare to conduct tests on this strange
brew.
"We, the undersigned," the letter from the nine doctors read,
"believe that the 'Treatment for Cancer' given by nurse R.M.
CAISSE can do no harm and that it relieves pain, will reduce
the enlargement and will prolong life in hopeless cases."
Instead of opening doors, however, the petition caused them to
slam. Health and Welfare responded that a nurse had no right
to treat patients and even went so far as to prepare the papers
necessary to begin prosecution proceedings.
But when officials were dispatched to see her, she talked them
out of taking action, and for years after, officials turned a
blind eye as she continued to disperse the tonic. She made no
claim that it was medication; she refused to see anyone who had
not first been referred by their regular physician; and she turned
down all payment apart from small "donations" to keep the clinic
running.
Her work attracted the attention of Dr. Frederick
BANTING, the
discoverer of insulin, but an arrangement to work together foundered
when he insisted they test the tonic first on mice, and Ms.
CAISSE
argued that humans had more immediate needs.
Her problems with authority were only beginning. A 55,000-signature
petition persuaded the Ontario government to establish a royal
commission to look into her work, but the panel of physicians
would agree to hear only from 49 of the 387 witnesses: who turned
up on her behalf -- and dismissed all but four on the grounds
that they had no diagnostic proof. The commission refused to
endorse Essiac, and a private member's bill that would have let
her continue treating patients at her clinic fell three votes
short in the legislature.
She quit when the stress drove her to the verge of collapse,
moved north with her new husband, Charles
McGAUGHNEY, and dropped
out of the public eye. But not out of the public interest.
"You need proof?" laughs Iona
HALE. "
Just look at me -- I'm still
here!"
Not everyone in the medical establishment dismissed Essiac. Ms.
CAISSE had permitted the Brusch Medical Center near Boston to
conduct experiments after Dr. Charles
BRUSCH, one-time physician
to John Kennedy, inquired about the mysterious cure. Tests on
the formula did show some promise on mice, and the centre eventually
reported: "The doctors do not say that Essiac is a cure, but
they do say it is of benefit." Dr.
BRUSCH even claimed that Essiac
helped in his own later battle with cancer.
Other tests, though, were less encouraging. In the early 1970s,
Ms. CAISSE sent some of her herbs to the Sloan-Kettering Institute
for Cancer Research in Rye, New York but when early tests proved
negative, she claimed Sloan-Kettering had completely fouled up
the preparation and refused further assistance.
Through it all, she refused to disclose her recipe -- until a
rush of publicity after a 1977 article in Homemaker's magazine
persuaded her to hand over the formula to the Lieutenant-Governor
of Ontario for safekeeping and to give a copy to the Resperin
Corporation of Toronto in the hopes that, eventually, scientific
proof would be found.
She died without gaining the recognition some cancer survivors
believe she deserved, and in 1982, the federal government declared
Resperin's testing procedures flawed and shut down further studies.
The story of Ms.
CAISSE's medicine carried on, however, with
more and more people turning to the man who would have been her
member of Parliament to see if he could help.
Stan DARLING lives in the same nursing home as Iona
HALE.
Now
92, Mr. DARLING spent 21 years in Ottawa as the Progressive Conservative
member for Muskoka-Parry Sound. He's remembered on Parliament
Hill for his crusades against acid rain, but of all his political
battles, Mr.
DARLING says nothing compares to his fight to gain
recognition for Rene
CAISSE's mysterious medicine.
"So many people came to me with their stories," he said, "that
I couldn't help but say, 'Okay, there must be something to this.'"
Mr. DARLING put together his own petition, 5,000 names, and went
to the minister of health and argued that so many were now using
Essiac it made sense to legalize it.
His bid failed, but he did persuade the medical bureaucrats to
compromise: If Essiac were seen as a "tea" rather than a "drug,"
it could be viewed as a tonic, and so long as the presiding physician
gave his approval, it could be added to a patient's care -- if
only for psychological reasons. "On that basis," Mr.
DARLING
says, "I said, 'I don't give a damn what you call it, as long
as you let the people get it.' "
The doubters are legion. "There's no evidence that it works,"
says Dr. Christina
MILLS, senior adviser of cancer control policy
for the Canadian Cancer Society. That being said, she says, "There
is also little evidence of harmful side effects from it," but
cautions anyone looking into the treatment to do so in consultation
with their physician.
No scientific study of Essiac has ever appeared in an accepted,
peer-reviewed medical journal. But those who believe say they
have given up on seeing such proof.
Sue BEST of Rockland, Massachusetts., still vividly recalls that
day 10 years ago when her 16-year-old son, Billy, sick with Hodgkin's
disease, decided to run away from home rather than continue the
chemotherapy treatments he said were killing him.
He was eventually found in Texas after a nationwide hunt and
agreed to return home only if the treatments would cease and
they would look into alternative treatments, including Essiac.
No one is certain what exactly cured Billy, but Ms.
BEST was
so convinced Essiac was a major factor she became a local distributor
of the herbal medicine.
Rene CAISSE, she says, "spent a whole life trying to help people
with a product she found out about totally by accident -- and
being totally maligned all her life by the whole medical establishment
in Canada."
In some ways, Ms.
CAISSE has had an easier time in death than
in life. Today, there is a street in Bracebridge named after
her, a charming sculpture of her in a park near her old clinic,
and Bracebridge Publishing has released a book, Bridge of Hope,
about her experiences.
The recognition is largely the work of local historian Ken
VEITCH,
whose grandmother, Eliza, was one of the cancer-afflicted witnesses:
who told the 1939 royal commission: "I owe my life to Miss
CAISSE.
I would have been dead and in my grave months ago." Instead,
she lived 40 more years.
Don McVITTIE, a Huntsville businessman, is a grandnephew of Rene
CAISSE and says she used her recipe to cure him of a duodenal
ulcer when he was 19. Now 71 and in fine health, he still has
his nightly brew of Essiac before bed.
"There's something mentally satisfying about having a glass of
it," he says. "I think of it more as a blood cleanser. That's
what Aunt Rene always said it was. I think she'd be disappointed
it hasn't been more accepted."
"Look," Ken
VEITCH says, "this all started back in the 1920s.
And I've said a number of times that if there was nothing to
it, it would be long gone.
"But there is something to it."
Roy MacGREGOR is a Globe and Mail columnist.
The secret revealed
Debate rages in Essiac circles about the correct recipe. The
most accurate rendition likely comes from Mary
McPHERSON,
Rene
CAISSE's long-time assistant. Ms.
McPHERSON, currently frail
and living in a Bracebridge nursing home, swore an affidavit
in 1994 in which she recorded the recipe in front of witnesses.
It is essentially the same preparation distributed today by Essiac
Canada International, which operates out of Ottawa. The formula
appears below:
61/2 cups of burdock root (cut)
1 lb. of sheep sorrelherb, powdered
1/4 lb. of slipper elm bark, powdered
1 oz. of Turkish rhubarb root, powdered
Mix ingredients thoroughly and store in glass jar in dark, dry
cupboard. Use 1 oz. of herb mixture to 32 oz. of water, depending
on the amount you want to make. I use 1 cup of mixture to 256 oz. of water.
Boil hard for 10 minutes (covered), then turn off heat but leave
sitting on warm plate overnight (covered).
In the morning, heat steaming hot and let settle a few minutes,
then strain through fine strainer into hot sterilized bottles
and sit to cool. Store in dark, cool cupboard. Must be refrigerated when opened.
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