Norman Bethune:
The Most Famous Canadian

Norman Bethune (b.1890 in Gravenhurst, Ontario; d.1939 in China) was a medical surgeon and a political activist. After serving in the First World War, he became a well-known surgeon in Montreal and invented a number of surgical instruments. After a visit to the Soviet Union in 1935, he joined the Community Party, and the following year went off to support the communists in the Spanish Civil War. There he organized the first mobile blood-transfusion service, before moving to China in 1938 to teach and to support Chinese communist efforts to fight off the Japanese invasion. After he died of blood poisoning, Chinese leader Mao Tse Tung made him a national hero. He thus became on of the most famous Canadians abroad - though few of us know of him in Canada.

 

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* Lecture Notes *

Reading:

C. Sanders, "Comrade Beth," in Flamboyant Canadians ed. E. Stafford (Toronto: Baxter, 1964), 330-58. [LINK]

 

IN MEMORY OF NORMAN BETHUNE

Mao Zedong

December 21, 1939

 

    Comrade Norman Bethune, a member of the Communist Party of Canada, was around fifty when he was sent . . . thousands of miles to help us in our War of Resistance Against Japan. He arrived in Yenan in the spring of last year, went to work in the Wutai Mountains, and to our great sorrow died a martyr at his post. What kind of spirit is this that makes a foreigner selflessly adopt the cause of the Chinese people's liberation as his own? It is the spirit of internationalism, the spirit of communism, from which every Chinese Communist must learn. . . .

    Comrade Bethune's spirit, his utter devotion to others without any thought of self, was shown in his great sense of responsibility in his work and his great warm-heartedness towards all comrades and the people. Every Communist must learn from him. There are not a few people who are irresponsible in their work, preferring the light and shirking the heavy, passing the burdensome tasks on to others and choosing the easy ones for themselves. At every turn they think of themselves before others. When they make some small contribution,

. . . Comrade Bethune was a doctor, the art of healing was his profession and he was constantly perfecting his skill, which stood very high in the Eighth Route Army's medical service. His example is an excellent lesson for those people who wish to change their work the moment they see something different and for those who despise technical work as of no consequence or as promising no future.

. . . We must all learn the spirit of absolute selflessness from him. With this spirit everyone can be very useful to the people. A man's ability may be great or small, but if he has this spirit, he is already noble-minded and pure, a man of moral integrity and above vulgar interests, a man who is of value to the people.

 

Additional Sources:

To visit Bethune's Birthplace in Gravenhurst, Ontario, see Bethune Memorial House National Historic Site of Canada

 

Books

Ted Allan and Sydney Gordon The Scalpel, The Sword, Montreal: McClelland and Stewart, 1952, revised 1971, reprinted 1981.

Linda Capacchione, Jim Endicott, Caroline Perly Bethune: His Story in Pictures. Toronto: NC Press, 1975.

Chih-cheng Chung Norman Bethune in China. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1975.

Anne Corkett Norman Bethune, Series--People Who Have Helped the World. Milwaukee: Gareth Stevens Children's Books, 1990

Sylvia DuVernet Canada-China Cultural Exchanges. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989.

Jean Ewen China Nurse: 1932-1939. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1981.

Rod Langley Bethune (a play). Vancouver: Talon Books, 1975.

Libby Park, Stanley Ryerson, Wendell Macleod Bethune: The Montreal Years. Toronto: James Lorimer & Co., 1978.

David A.E. Shepard and andree Levesque (ed.s) Norman Bethune: His Times and His Legacy. Ottawa: Canadian Public Health Association, 1982

Mary Larratt Smith, Prologue to Norman: The Canadian Bethunes. Oakville: Mosaic Press, 1976.

Roderick Stewart, Bethune. Markham: General Publishing Co., 1975.

Roderick Stewart, Norman Bethune. Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1974.

Roderick Stewart, The Mind of Norman Bethune. Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1977.

Larry Hannant, The Politics of Passion: Bethune's Writing and Art. University of Toronto Press, 1998.