Rocke Robertson: Surgeon and Shepherd of Change (review)

This book is a biography of Rocke Robertson (1912–98), who was principal of McGill University from 1962 to 1970. These years saw significant change in universities around the world, and McGill was no exception. During Robertson’s term in office the university underwent an enormous expansion in students, staff, and facilities. At the same time, McGill’s governance went through a redistribution of power among the board of governors, staff, students, departments, divisions, and faculties, while financially it became ever more dependent on the funding of the provincial government. Robertson participated in all these events – events that represented, in fact, parts of more general developments of the time. One of these developments was the worldwide anti-authoritarian youth rebellion of the 1960s. Another was the anticlerical movement in Quebec society known as the Quiet Revolution. A third one concerned the efforts of many people in Quebec to gain more political independence from the rest of Canada, a movement that culminated in the October crisis of 1970.

The key passages of the book tell the story of these events from Robertson’s perspective. We see him struggling with the provincial government to maintain the financial viability of his university. This struggle is remarkable in that it had had profound political implications for the emergent French-language universities and a climate of growing political distrust towards the old English-speaking elite. For example, it forced Robertson to deal with the idea of provincial university financing as a zero-sum game. This would have meant that if the new French-language universities got more money, McGill would get less. A related issue came from the different cultures of university funding in English- and French-speaking environments. These differences led to the demand that the grant money McGill solicited from outside should be deducted from its share of provincial funding, a demand that Robertson made great efforts to fend off. In another chapter we see Robertson dealing with political unrest among students in the 1960s student rebellion, trying to maintain his and the institution’s authority and integrity against politically motivated provocations of all sorts. Reading the story from his specific perspective is very informative and helps readers to understand the university’s position within the changing political, social, and cultural landscape of that period.

The book’s author, Richard W. Pound, is the present chancellor of McGill University. By profession he is a lawyer and partner of the law firm Stikeman Elliott. He is known to the wider public as a disputatious critic of doping practices in sports and former president of the Montreal-based World Anti-Doping Agency. His book on Robertson is based on a comprehensive study of primary archival sources, originating mostly from Robertson himself, such as his diaries, speeches, and letters. As befitting a biography, the narrative starts with Robertson’s family history and childhood, and continues with his education and medical training at McGill. One chapter is devoted to Robertson’s experience as a surgeon in the Second World War. The narrative then follows his surgical career, which, in 1959, led him to the position of head of the Department of Surgery at McGill and surgeon-in-chief at the Montreal General Hospital, a position that he gave up three years later to take on the office of the principal of McGill University. Robertson’s surgical career is relatively unremarkable but is of historical interest because it represents a typical case rather than that of an outstanding doctor and scientist.

Based on a wealth of documents, the book provides ample detail about Robertson’s life, such as his career decisions or his grades at university, which are supplemented by long quotations from his letters and speeches. Most of Robertson’s personal life events are explained satisfactorily. There are a few weak points, however. Most importantly, Robertson’s exact function with regard to the changes in McGill’s governance could have been made clearer. In which ways...