J. Wendell Macleod: Saskatchewan’s Red Dean (review)

This biography of J. Wendell Macleod, medical pioneer and international humanitarian, adds to the discourse in Canada on medicare. It is a reminder that some members of the medical profession were important architects of the public health system that many physicians now so harshly criticize.

The author, Louis Horlick, was an admiring colleague of Macleod’s during the 1950s at the University of Saskatchewan. The provocative subtitle, Saskatchewan’s Red Dean, indicates that Horlick considers those Saskatchewan years especially significant, but it also helps in understanding most aspects of Macleod’s long and distinguished career.

Wendell Macleod was the son of a Presbyterian minister, much influenced by the social gospel. The social gospel had a large impact on young Wendell, as it did on a generation of liberal reformers in Canada. Here was born Macleod’s concern for the poor and disadvantaged. He was a brilliant medical student at McGill in the 1920s and did graduate work in internal medicine, but his interest in medicine went beyond gastroenterology. He was president of the McGill Labour Club, when David Lewis served as secretary, and was active in the socially progressive Student Christian Movement. He attended meetings of the League for Social Reconstruction and associated with Frank Scott and Eugene Forsey at the time they were involved in the birth of the ccf. In 1934 Macleod participated in a study group established by Norman Bethune in Montreal to expose the inadequacies of the medical system during the Great Depression. Macleod developed a lasting admiration for Bethune; Horlick devotes an entire chapter in the book to the Bethune legacy.

The climax of the biography is the chapter entitled ‘The Saskatoon Years.’ From 1951 to 1962 Wendell Macleod was dean of the newly formed College of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan. It was a challenging and invigorating experience. He was attracted to the province for the same reasons that other idealistic public servants were. This was where the action was, as Tommy Douglas and the ccf attempted to create a better world. At last, for Macleod, here was an opportunity to build a progressive public health system.

One cannot deny Wendell Macleod’s accomplishments during his years in Saskatchewan. He worked tirelessly; he played a leading role in establishing a respected college of medicine; he recruited faculty and integrated the college and faculty with the new university hospital. Throughout, Macleod advocated a community-orientated and publicly funded health system. He stood with Tommy Douglas and supported the health plan and opposed the doctors’ strike. Eventually medicare became a sacred Canadian institution, and, accordingly, Wendell Macleod can be viewed as a brave innovator, on the right side of history, who took a path where the medical establishment feared to tread. This certainly is the interpretation presented in Horlick’s account.

In retrospect, the story appears somewhat more complicated. It is interesting that Macleod resigned as dean of medicine in November 1961, the same month that Douglas resigned as premier to seek the national leadership of the New Democratic Party. Macleod was under attack from the doctors of the province and, as Horlick shows especially clearly, from the president of the university for supporting the government health plan. Wendell Macleod believed in the practice of social and preventive medicine, which was reflected in the College of Medicine he headed. However, he was never able to win the support of the general practitioners, who viewed such ‘experimental idealism’ suspiciously. And it was these doctors, not Macleod and his faculty, who were in regular contact with the people. The provincial government faced much the same problem with doctors and the public that Macleod did. Opposition to the universal plan was considerable, and it played a major role in the defeat of Tommy Douglas in Regina in the 1962 federal election and the ccf provincially two years later. Thus, Macleod resigned, and Douglas was defeated. Only later did a consensus form that they had been right.

J. Wendell Macleod was an interesting and significant Canadian...