Page 6 July 1982 Cassiar Courier ALAN DAVIES - CHAIRMAN ONE YEAR DIRECTOR He and his wife Cheryl have lived in Cassiar for 3 years and have 2 children. Alan is Catering Supervisor at Cassiar Resources and prior to coming to Cassiar spent 3 years in Clinton Creek. IDA WALTERS - ONE YEAR DIRECTOR Ida and her husband have been here 2% years now and have a family of 3 kids. She is working as Bar Asst. Mana- ger. Her hobbies are squash, belonging to clubs and swim- ming. PAT RIDDLE - SECRETARY TWO YEAR DIRECTOR Pat has been here for 15 years and is presently working at the Cassiar Courier office. She has a daughter Jaime, age 2 and is a single parent. Pat is interested in becoming active in community affairs concerning children. JOHN GWILLIAM - TWO YEAR DIRECTOR John has lived in Cassiar 15 years and is employed as Asst. Stores Supervisor at the Warehouse. He has a family of 5 children. He enjoys curling in the winter and camping and camping and fishing in the summer months. MARY ELHORN- TWO YEAR DIRECTOR Mary and her husband Ray have been here 15 years and have 3 school age children. Mary worked as a nurse before taking the role of home-maker. Her hobbies are reading, gardening and swimming.. She is interested in school act- ivities. CARMEN BONDESEN- TWO YEAR DIRECTOR Carmen and her husband Jim live at Erickson Gold Mine site. They have 2 children Shelly in Gr. 1 and Sam in Gr.2. He AS Ae 2A. 2 2 2A fe 2 2 OS AE Ae 2 fe 2k HC 2 2K 2 C2 2g He a ofc ake 2 2k fe 2 Ea 2K 2k fe 2c oe oi 2K oe 2 2k oie a 2 fe ag ot aie 2c ok 9k 2K 2k The Parents Advisory Board started a new term as of June 1, 1982 following the elections held on May 28th. Two members, Stefan Dyk and Peter Jones are beginning their second term. Newly elected members are Al Davies, Ida Walters, Mary Elhorn, John Gwilliam, Carmen Bond- esen and Pat Riddle. Executive elections were held at the meeting. Al Davies is chairperson and Pat Riddle was elect: ed secretary. There were three guests in attendance. They were Sherry Sethan, Owen Corcoran and Dave Pewsey. We were informed that the funds have been released for the new Cassiar Elementary School. It could be in any time between October and December. At the time that the elementary and secondary schools become separate. George Millar will be the principal at the elementary school and Keith Lanphear will commence his position as principal of the secondary school. Dease Lake was not so fortunate, they will not be get- ting a new school this year. More public support for the School Board meetings is encouraged. Cassiar has the lowest public attendance in the district. The next meeting will be held in August. Watch for the date. Mr. Donald Best has been appointed for the position of Secretary-Treasurer of School District No. 87. CUB SCOUTS The lst Cassiar Cubs and Scouts had a camping trip to Boya Lake on June 11th, 12th, and 13th. With great anticipation we left the Rec Centre at 6:00p.m. on Friday night and arrived at Boya Lake at 7:00p.m. By 8:30 all tents were up and the campfire was ready. It was hotdogs and marsh- mallows then off to bed. On Saturday it was a full day of Canoeing, obstac- le course and hiking. Completely exhausted. Then there was a game of Scouts catch Leaders and Leaders catch All Scouts. Finally it was campfire time with songs and popcorn. On Sunday there was a picnic where the Beavers joined us at the lake. The boys who participated in the camp were: Se eae eer iconpiene ig Memes ais | The Demise of Bunkhouse No. 37. Cub Mark Prince Cub Harris Andrews Cub Stephen Ryan Cub Chad Beaudry Cub Gordon Dancetovic Cub David Lanphear Cub Jan Wypych Cub Warwick Elhorn Cub Harbinder Mangat Cub Rene Boileau Cub Travis Penno Scout Brian Day Scout Shawn Penno Scout Mark Boileau Scout Andy Gowan Scout Shawn Pearson Also in attendance were: Beaver Patrick Ryan - Age 8 Beaver Mark Wypych - Age 5 Rhonda Gowan - Age 4 I would like to take this opportunity to thank the following people who came to help run our camp. Jan Wypych - for his assistance with the boys. Ruth Gowan - for keeping the campfire going. Laura Boileau - for all the cooking and good food. Mike Boileau - for running the obstacle course. Gordon Pearson - for hiking the boys around. Gordon Giles - for helping with the canoeing course. Fran Beggs - for her medical assistance (Thank heaven we didn’t need it.) Scout Master Scott Morrison - for keeping the bears away with his snoring. I would also like to give a special thank you to Park Rangers Jack and Pearl for all their assist- ance and cooperation. All in all it was a good year for Cubs - if there are any Cubs here in August. I would appreciate it if parents would let me know so Mike and I can take them out camping. Till next year. Mary & Mike Ryan LIBRARY NEWS SHUTDOWN HOURS Beginning Sunday, June 27th, and continuing throughout July, the Library will be open Sunday and Monday evenings only, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. On the B.C. Day weekend, the Library will be closed Sunday, August | and Monday, August 2. Regular hours will resume Tuesday, August 3. NEW BOOKS AT THE LIBRARY NON—FICTION Zenas Block. It’s All on the Label, Informative guide to food additives and nutrition. Remar Sutton. Don’t Get Taken Every Time, A former car salesman tells you what to do, and what not to do, when you go looking for a used car. Mike Crammond. Raltareneace: Bears are danger- ous; and anyone who goes into bear country should know what to expect. Includes interviews with those few who have survived attacks. Not for the squeamish. John Bierman. Righteous Gentile. The story of Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish ambassador to Hun- gary, who risked his life to get Jews out of Nazi territory between 1943 and 1945. After the war Wallenberg disappeared into the Russian Gulag. Richard Meehan. Getting Sued and Other Tales of ’ Engineering Life. Meehan is a civil engineer whose career has taken him to many places in the world; and he tells, in anecdotal style, of his encounters with companies, projects and people. FICTION Antoinine Maillet. Pelagie (in English). Highly ac- claimed novel by the author of La Sagouine, win- ner of France’s Prix Goncourt. _ Timothy Findley. Famous Last Words. ‘The Can- adian author’s fictionalized account of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Marie Herbert. Winter of the White Seal. Spell- binding story of a young man marooned on an un-charted Antarctic island in 1819. Hugh Pentecost. Sow Death, Reap Death. Thriller. John Simpson. Moscow Requiem. In the tradition epitomized by Trevanian’s Shibumi, of the all- too-believable novel about what might come to pass in international politics. Gordon Glasco. Second Nature. A marriage break- down and a different kind of love-triangle are the substance of this sensitive and honest novel about human beings and their sexualities. LIONESS NEWS by Mary Ryan The Lioness Club had their last meeting on Monday, May 28th and will be taking a break dur- ing the summer. Mary and Ruth returned from the Fairbanks Convention where they were able to talk to other Lioness Clubs -and exchange ideas. Watch for some different functions next year. On Sunday June 20th, there is a Father’s Day Brunch planned. We hope to see a lot of Dads there eating up a storm. Installation of new officers will, be on Satur- day, June 19th, with the Lions Club. The Lioness Club is supplying the entertainment. We hope everyone will enjoy it. We are all happy to have Pam Krawczyk and Hilda Cooper back in our club. Welcome. Well, that’s it for this year, see you in Septem- THANKS I would like to thank everyone who took the time and effort to come out and vote for me in the Parents Ad- visory Board Elections on May 28, 1982. Carmen Bondesen Donald Jack. Roques, Rebels and Geniuses: The Story of Canadian Medicine, Doubleday, 1981. In most. cases, a country’s international reputation rests. on its great politicians and soldiers; Washington, Lin- coln, Roosevelt, Paton; Nelson, Wellington, Churchill; Napoleon, deGaulle; and so on. But a good argument could be made for the proposition that Canada’s inter- national reputation rests mostly on its great medical men. Who outside Canada is likely to remember Robert Borden or Sir Isaac Brock? But Wilder Penfield, Wilfred Grenfell, Banting and Best, and the magnificent William Osler — these medical giants are known the world over, and neith- er medicine nor the world would be the same without them. For a billion Chinese, Canada means only one thing — Dr. Norman Bethune. All these, and many more men and women of incred- ible dedication and physical courage, have their stories told in the pages of Donald Jack's a ome Geniuses, The history of medicine cannot be limited to one country, and Jack rightly begins his story with two back- ground chapters: one on European medicine from the classical age to the early seventeenth century, when Car- tier‘s and Champlain’s medicos arrived in the St. Lawrence . valley; and the other on aboriginal medicine. He reminds { us that, when the two cultures first met in the seventeenth century, there was very little to differentiate one from the other, so far as effects were concerned. Indian medicine’s trappings of chants and rattles may have filled the ‘sophis- ticated’ Europeans with disdain, but its herbal medicines and its treatment of wounds were better than anything European medicine, addicted to bloodletting and purges, could produce. One strong merit of the book is that, unlike many books coming out of Ontario, it avoids central-Canadian provincialism. Medicine and medical practitioners from Cape Breton to Victoria, from Talbotville on Lake Erie to Coppermine on the Arctic coast, come alive on Jack's pages. It is an amazing and intriguing story, full indeed of rogues, rebels and more than our share of geniuses. It is the stories and anecdotes of the country practitioners and their herculean labours to bring medical care to their pa- tients-over rough miles. and through horrendous eit that stick in the mind. There are also the oddities of medical history: — James Barry, inspector—general of military hospitals in Canada in 1857, and later head of the entire British Army Medical Service, was gicove tad on his death- bed to be a woman; — William Rawlin Beaumont, doctor in Upper Canada in the 1840's, invented a device for passing sutures in dif. ficult places that was credited with being the inspir- ation for the sewing machine patented by Isaac Singer in 1851: ; — the first woman to be delivered of a child under gen- eral anaesthetic (London, 1847) was so grateful that, she named her daughter Anaesthesia; — Joseph Lister, the father of antiseptic procedure, dem- onstrated the truth of air-borne sepsis by means of Cassiar Courier July 1982 Page 7 four flasks of urine ‘which he carted about the coun- try with him and put on display, for several years. There are flaws in this book. There are more printing errors than there ought to be: inert for inept, now for not, papper for pepper, for instance. And Jack‘seems unable to use a simple phrase if an obscure (and not infrequently an obtuse) one suggests itself to him instead: ‘carronade’. for instance, where the more familiar ‘cannonade’ would have done perfectly well, and a face ‘stalactited with beard’. But the book's most serious flaw is Jack’s uncontroll- ed self-indulgence. It would have been a much better book if his editor at Doubleday had curbed his splenetic outbursts, persuaded him to climb down from his soapbox and convinced him to resist beating his hobby-horses to death. A book of this nature is bound to be anecdotal; what Jack is really doing is assembling a story of medicine in Canada:by piecing together a great many stories, Unfor- tunately, Jack is unable to mention anyone or anything in his text without turning aside to tell a story about them, and the book frequently rambles where a tighter organiz- ation would have better served his historical purpose. And the mood of the anecdotes, and .consequently of: the whole book, is supercilious and irrascible. Jack must take a potshot at everyone he mentions. Great or insignificant, ‘achiever or failure, he treats his characters as though he despises them all. But if there is even the most remote suggestion that in their early years they might have possibly been pervert- ed by Christian teachings on morals and values, he un- leashes his withering scorn at them. (He has plenty of op- portunity, too, since it seems that nearly all the great med- ical figures in Canadian history were the sons and daugh- ters of the parsonage): Was one'a great man? Then it was in spite of so inauspicious an upbringing. Did one work hard? Then he was a helpless slave to the work ethic. Was one repulsed when members of his Arctic expedition ate each other to stay alive? He just showed how Christia‘ity always spoils: the sport of the great human adventure. Did one think it was possible to believe both Genesis and - geology? Hypocrisy and superstition. Did one prefer so- briety to drunkeness? Typical lack of humanity common amongst dogooders. ~ Jack’s condescension:and his opinionated stance lead him into serious errors of judgement on the people he dis- cusses, and on larger issues as well. He says, for instance, that Christianity opposed*the use of anaesthetic when it was first introduced, on the grounds that ‘pain is good for you.’ Religion, like medicine, is conservative, and doubt- - less some Christians did express this notion, just as many doctors dismissed Lister's antiseptic procedure as hogwash and continued to do operations dressed. in frock coats, holding the scalpel between their teeth in between in- cisions. And undeniably Christianity — like most of the world’s great religions and philosophies — has said that suffering in a noble cause against injustice and tyranny is a noble thing. ‘But pain itself has never been regarded as anything but evil. And yet, in an age when obscene, an- nihilating, mind-destroying pain was inevitable, Christian- ity had to make an effort to help people bear the pain by placing it somehow within a context of meaning and ul- timate goodness. The alternative was to leave the indiv- idual to suffer alone, his life obliterated and his world re- duced to an inchoate mass of screaming nerve-ends in a malicious universe that laughed at his outcries.’Such’ an effort, no matter how feeble, no’ matter how hopeless, is nonetheless worthy and understandable. Jack’s casual dis- missal of things he doesn’t care to understand, here and elsewhere, badly mars his work. ; This is, nonetheless, a book that is wel] worth reading and will reward the reader with many laughs, not a few tears, and an ungrudging admiration for the men and wo- ’ men who pioneered medical care in this country.