McVICAR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-07-08 published
VILA,
Helen
Jeanette
59, died on Sunday, July 6, 2003, at her home in Scotch Hill,
Pictou Co., Nova Scotia. Born in Hamilton, Ontario, she was a
daughter of the late Alan P.
VILA and Jeanette
(McVICAR)
VILA.
Helen attended schools in Chippawa, Ontario, and Baldwin, New
York, where she excelled in sports and music. She graduated with
Honours in English from McGill University and with a master teacher
certificate from the Ontario College of Education at the University
of Toronto. For several years, Helen taught English at Lawrence
Park Collegiate Institute and film arts at Sheridan College in
Toronto.
Later, she and her late companion Trini
PEREZ had a
home craft business in woodworking and jewelry in Stoney Creek,
Ontario, which they continued in Pictou. In recent years, Helen
sang in the Hosannah Gospel Choir at the United Church of Canada,
Lyons Brook, served as a volunteer at the Maritime Odd Fellows
home, and worked at the job placement center and the library.
She is survived by her sisters and brothers, Mary
SHAW and her
husband Robert of Palo Alto, California; John
VILA and his partner
Terry BISHOP of Guttenberg, New Jersey; James
VILA and his wife
Tanya of Tilton, New Hampshire; Elizabeth
ROGAN and her husband
Edward of Glastonbury, Connecticut; and Anne
VILA and her husband
Steven JACOBS of Needham, Massachusetts; and by five nieces --
Catherine VILA,
Carolyn
ROGAN, Jenny
ROGAN, Julia
JACOBS, and
Anne ROGAN; four nephews -- Mark
SHAW,
Andrew
SHAW, Jonathan
SHAW and Daniel
JACOBS; four grandnieces -- Jessica, Kaeli, Alissa
and Zoë; one grandnephew -- Max; and two stepnieces -- Tracy
MESSINGER and Kerri
PACHOMOW.
Helen will be dearly missed by
her companion, Margaret
MacCULLOCH, who cared for her during
her long illness. Visitation will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. on
Friday, July 11, at the McLaren Funeral Home, 246 Faulkland Street,
Pictou. The funeral will be held at the United Church in Lyons
Brook at 2 p.m. on Saturday, July 12, Mary
MacDERMID officiating.
Interment at the Scotch Hill Cemetery will be followed by a reception
at the church hall. Her family requests that, in lieu of flowers,
memorial donations be made to the Canadian Cancer Society --
Nova Scotia Division, the Humane Society of Canada, or to Palliative
Care of the Aberdeen Hospital.
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McVITTIE 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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