creative forces

 Blog # 140…April, 2023

Saluting great women as an opening seems to be becoming a habit – so, hooray for Sarah Polley, not just for winning an Oscar for adapting Miriam Toews book into a very fine film, but for making the production a safe. collective and joyful experience for both cast and crew. And for a winning acceptance speech that had grace and substance.

Doctors are in a unique position to observe the human condition, and over the years some of them have taken to writing about it: Somerset Maugham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Michael Crichton, Anton Chekov, and of course, the wonderful Oliver Sacks, who replaced neurological case histories with stories of his patients lives. Canadian Dr William Osler (1849-1919) wrote "Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability." Three present day Toronto writers/doctors have caught my eye recently.

Former ER doc Vincent Lam is one of them - winning the Giller prize in 2006 with his debut novel Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures. Lam has moved his practise and his writing into the field of addictions and tackles the complexities and tragedies of opioid use and abuse in his latest On the Ravine. We met Chen and Fitz as medical students in Bloodletting, they've remained friends in the intervening 20 years, maintaining their very different ideas as they both work in the field of opiate addiction with opposing approaches. Lam looks at the two sides of the issue - managed use with safe injection sites or supported abstinence through their eyes. Strong cases can be made for each side  - as we’re seeing in BC and Alberta right now and as Lam leads us to explore with Chen and Fitz in On the Ravine.

Bob Bell was CEO of Toronto's University Health Network for nine years before becoming Deputy Minister of Health and Long Term Care from 2014-18. He then turned his experience towards publishing a series of crime novels beginning with Hip, in 2019 - exploring the issues involved in the world of joint replacement, followed by an international thriller New Doc in Maple Ridge in 2021. Proceeds from both were directed to work in his field of orthopaedic surgery for patients with cancer. Last year Jonah K was released - set in an indigenous community in northern Ontario. The plot deals with the tragedy of residential schools and the politics of academic health care, and proceeds are going to programs for indigenous health at UHN.

Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto has a long history of setting the standard for forward thinking , both in the plays they present and their welcoming accommodations for audiences.  Rumble, a recent production evolved from a series of translated Palestinian poems discovered by Toronto neurologist Suvendrini Lena. Born in London to Sri Lankan parents, Lena attended medical school in Toronto and currently practises at the Centre for Addictions and Mental Heath. Travelling to Gaza as a medical student and seeing the effects of bombing left her forever changed and needing to process her feelings. Writing the play incorporated that experience as well as her ongoing experiences as a physician. About theatre she says" I like it because you can deal with conflict, ideas, arguments and the audience gets to make up their own mind."

They're all medicins sans frontieres, writing about life observed through the lens of their medical training and their lived experience, exploring ideas through fiction and drama, leading us to look at our own opinions and maybe develop some clarity as we read.

Hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it. See you 'round about MayDay.