BRUEGGEBOSS
BRUGALETTE
BRUHM
BRUMPTON
BRUNT
BRUSCH
BRUEGGEBOSS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-06-11 published
Notice To Creditors And Others
All▼ claims against the estate of Heinz
BRUEGGEBOSS, late of 1870
Cora Drive, Cavan, Ontario L0A 1K0, in the Township of Cavan,
in the County of Peterborough, who died on or about the 8th day
of, January, 2003, must be filed with the undersigned personal
representative on or before the 4th day of July, 2003, after
which date the estate will be distributed having regard only
to the claims of which the Estate Trustee then shall have notice.
Dated at Mississauga, this 11th day of June, 2003.
Niebler, Liebeck
Per: Dieter
NIEBLER
Estate Trustee Without A Will
Niebler, Liebeck
Barristers and Solicitors
1469 Indian Grove
Mississauga, Ontario
L5H 2S5
Page B12
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BRUEGGEBOSS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-06-18 published
BRUEGGEBOSS,
Heinz - Notice To Creditors And Others
All▲ claims against the estate of Heinz
BRUEGGEBOSS, late of 1870
Cora Drive, Cavan, Ontario L0A 1K0, in the Township of Cavan,
in the County of Peterborough, who died on or about the 8th day
of, January, 2003, must be filed with the undersigned personal
representative on or before the 4th day of July, 2003, after
which date the estate will be distributed having regard only
to the claims of which the Estate Trustee then shall have notice.
Dated at Mississauga, this 11th day of June, 2003.
Niebler, Liebeck
Per: Dieter
NIEBLER
Estate Trustee Without A Will
Niebler, Liebeck
Barristers and Solicitors
1469 Indian Grove
Mississauga, Ontario
L5H 2S5
Page B8
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BRUGALETTE o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2003-11-26 published
Howard Kenneth
HOLMES
In loving memory of Howard Kenneth
HOLMES who died unexpectedly at
home on Tuesday, November 18, 2003 at the age 72 years.
Beloved husband of Joyce (née
VINEY.)
Loved father of Bonny and
husband Douglas
KILGOUR of Fort McMurray, Kenneth and wife
Evelina of
Longlac, Joe and wife Joyce of Bidwell Rd., Manitowaning, Diana
HOLMES and friend Williard
PYETTE of Tehkummah, Sharon and Robert
Case of the Slash, and predeceased by son Douglas (1957). Cherished
grandfather of Allison
KILGOUR and friend Jason, Heather and husband
Gopal BRUGALETTE,
Kenny
HOLMES and friend Sarah, Crystal and husband
Rob PERIGO, Nick
HOLMES and friend Melanie, Pam
SHEAN, Pat
SHEAN,
Scott CASE,
Brock
CASE. Forever remembered by four great
grandchildren Jazzlynn, Taylor, Faith and Nikaila. Will be missed
by brother Clarence and wife Guelda of Mitchell and sister Dorothy
and husband Gordon
GERMAN of Crossfield, Alberta and in-laws Harry
VINEY of Gore Bay, Charlie (wife
Lillian predeceased)
VINEY of
Wikwemikong Manor, Glenn and wife Margaret
VINEY of Kinmount, Gladys
(predeceased) and husband Harry
JAGGARD of Manitowaning. Predeceased
by Grace and husband Carmen
HUNTER,
Ruth and husband Bill and Loretta
and husband Neil
McGILLIS.
Visitation was held on Thursday, November
20. Funeral service was held on Friday, November 21, 2003 all at
Island Funeral Home. Burial in Hilly Grove Cemetery.
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BRUHM o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-06-18 published
Nova Scotia's marathon man
Cape Breton boy was Boston's most surprising victor
By Kevin COX
Wednesday,
June 18, 2003 - Page R5
Halifax -- Johnny
MILES was first the determined champion, then
the gentle grandfather of Canadian distance running.
His first major running prize was a sack of flour in North Sydney,
Nova Scotia, in 1922 -- he finished third in the three-mile race
but was first to sprint by the store. After four years of training
including sprints behind his grocery cart, the humble, unknown
20-year-old Cape Breton delivery boy and Sunday-school teacher
stunned the running world by defeating its best athletes to win
the prestigious Boston Marathon.
It was a win that Mr.
MILES and his father had calmly predicted
to a policeman and a race official the day before. But even Johnny
MILES had his doubts on that chilly April Monday as he pounded
along the 26.2-mile course on his 95-cent shoes from the Co-op
store in his hometown.
At the 22-mile mark, Mr.
MILES was running stride for stride
with leader and Finnish running legend Albin
STENROOS when he
looked over and saw a blank and exhausted expression on his rival's
face.
"I knew right there that I had him and I had to make a move,"
he recalled with the gleam of a fierce competitor in his eye
in an interview 54 years later. "He was rubbing his side and
he had a stitch, so I didn't look back. I speeded up and I think
that took the heart out of him."
He is still widely hailed among running raconteurs as the most
surprising victor in the 107-year history of the event. Mr.
MILES's
time -- then a world marathon record -- was so unbelievable that
race officials measured the Boston course -- and found it 176
yards short of the classic 26-mile, 385-yard distance.
"I don't know what all the fuss is about," he said in an interview
in 1995. "I had a God-given gift and I used it."
Mr. MILES, his father and his mother arrived in Boston by train
a few days before the marathon. The day before the race, father
and son walked the course, got lost and ended up asking a burly
Irish policeman for directions and received some advice that
was not exactly a vote of confidence.
"My son needs to know the route because he's entered in tomorrow's
race." The friendly officer smiled and said, "Tell your son to
just follow the crowd."
On race day, Mr.
MILES wore a red, homemade maple leaf on a white
undershirt. His performance shattered the 1924 record held by
the other race favourite, Clarence
DEMAR, the four-time winner
of the event.
"That boy ran the best marathon since that Indian [Canadian Tom
LONGBOAT] in 1907," a stunned Mr.
DEMAR was reported to have
said.
A year later, he again challenged the gruelling course but suffered
an embarrassing setback when he had to withdraw from the race
with serious burns to his feet. His dad had taken a pair of his
95-cent sneakers and shaved down the soles with a straight razor
so they wouldn't be so heavy. His feet -- tops and bottoms --
had bled.
It was a rare retreat. Mr.
MILES, who trained on rural Cape Breton
roads, dominated Canadian distance running through the late 1920s
and early 1930s. He captured the Boston crown again in 1929 and
won a bronze medal at the British Empire Games in 1931 and also
ran the marathon in the Olympic Games in 1928 and 1932.
Born in Halifax, England, on October 30, 1905, Mr.
MILES moved
with his family to Cape Breton the following year. He worked
as a grocery delivery boy at the time of his big win. But his
first job as a young teen was in the Cape Breton coal mines.
He went to work there to help support his family when his father
went off to fight in the First World War.
Mr. MILES left the mines a few years later and entered his first
contest -- a three-mile race in Sydney, Nova Scotia -- with the
hopes of winning some fishing supplies.
He is revered in his home province of Nova Scotia even though
he moved to Hamilton, Ontario, to train and take a job with International
Harvester in 1927.
After his victories, some parents even named newborn children
after the marathon hero. One of those babies, Johnny Miles
WILLISTON,
went on to become a driving force in establishing the Johnny
Miles Marathon in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia.
The victories on the tracks and roads by a local boy who had
worked as a child coal miner at the age of 11 injected some joy
and hope into Cape Breton's coal-mining towns at a time when
the industry was going through tough times and work underground
was brutish and dangerous.
After he hung up his thin-soled racing shoes in 1932, Mr.
MILES
became an ambassador for fitness and clean living. He became
a manager at International Harvester and worked in many parts
of the world for the company after being told by a company executive
that he could make something of himself if he put the same effort
into his work that he exerted in running.
When running regained popularity in the 1970s, he was startled
to become a celebrity among the new set of competitors who recognized
his accomplishments. While Quebec runner Gérard
CÔTÉ would dominate
the Boston Marathon in the 1940s, winning it four times, Johnny
MILES's time of 2: 25:40 stood as the Canadian record for the
event until Jerome
DRAYTON ran 2: 14:46 in 1977.
He was taken aback in 1967 at being named to the Canadian Sports
Hall of Fame.
"That I should now be in the same illustrious company as the
great stars of hockey, football, track and field, and other Canadian
sports was a bit mind-boggling," he told author Floyd
WILLISTON
in the biography Johnny
MILES: Nova Scotia's Marathon King in
He was also caught off guard by being named to the Order of Canada
in 1983.
"It's not going to change my life -- same hat size and shirt
size," he told the New Glasgow Evening News.
Mr. MILES, who regularly attended races in the Hamilton area
as a spectator in the 1980s, wondered how well he might have
run with the technology offered to runners today.
"I think now I wouldn't eat steak before a race and I'd get these
cushioned shoes and I'd know how to train," he said in an interview
in New Glasgow at the marathon that was created and named after
him in 1975 and still bears his name.
Mr. MILES and his wife
Bess were fixtures at the Johnny Miles
Marathon, which took place this past Sunday shortly after his
death. Runners best remember him for his personal attention,
anecdotes, quiet kindness and his enthusiasm for the sport.
Jerome BRUHM, a long-time Halifax runner and historian, remembered
his first encounter with the running legend at the Johnny Miles
Marathon in 1981.
"He was there and I'm nobody -- I'm just a runner. He came over
and I said it was my first marathon and I was kind of nervous.
He took me aside and talked to me and he said, 'Do you think
you'll win the marathon'? Mr.
BRUHM recalled this week. "I
said, 'No, I'm a slow runner.' So, he said, 'Then go out there
and do that -- finish the race and enjoy it.' He came over to
me after the race and asked me how I did and how I felt. I thought
that was fantastic that he would talk to me before the race and
come over and check on me after the race."
He was a humble, personable man, Mr.
BRUHM said.
"When he was inducted into the Canadian Running Hall of Fame,
I went over to talk to him and he only wanted to talk about other
people, not about what he had done."
Nova Scotia Premier John
HAMM praised Mr.
MILES for bringing
international attention to his home province.
"We will always remember with pride his athletic accomplishments
at the Boston Marathon and numerous other competitions as well
as his success in business and accomplishments in life," the
Premier said Monday.
In 2001, Boston Marathon officials celebrated the 75th anniversary
of his startling 1926 win -- but at the age of 95, Mr.
MILES
said his health prevented him from attending the festivities.
However, he promised to try to attend the 75th anniversary of
his last Boston triumph.
Will CLONEY, long-time Boston Marathon official, had only praise
for Mr. MILES. "
There hasn't been a Johnny
MILES in Boston since
Johnny MILES."
Now there never will be.
Kevin COX is Atlantic correspondent of The Globe and Mail. He
has completed 50 marathons -- including the Johhny Miles Marathon
and the Boston Marathon.
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BRUMPTON o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2003-01-22 published
Harry O. BRUMPTON
In loving memory of Harry O. Brumpton who passed away peacefully at
his home on January 7, 2003 at the age of 86 years.
Beloved husband of the late Juanita (1999). Dear father of Patricia and Ken
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON, LaSalle. Dear brother of Margaret
WALTER, Hemet, Ca. Also
survived by several nieces, nephews and cousins. Mr.
BRUMPTON was
the former Commissioner of Parks and Recreation for the City of
Windsor and retired in 1982 after 23 years of service. He served
with the R.C.A.F. during WW2. Harry will be missed by many Friends
in McGregor Bay, especially Ann and Godfrey
McGREGOR, with whom he
held a special relationship. Upon his death, Mr.
BRUMPTON honoured
the Whitefish River First Nation Community by making a generous
bequeathment towards a student bursary.
Visitation was held at The Walter D. Kelly Funeral Home and Cremation
Centre, 1969 Wyandotte St. E. The funeral service was held on
Thursday
January 9, 2003 with Reverend Paul
ALMOND officiating.
Cremation with interment later in St. Christopher's Church Cemetery, McGregor Bay, Ontario.
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BRUNT o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-10 published
FULTON quietly kept the Canadian Football League in running order
By Stephen
BRUNT,
Wednesday,
December 10, 2003 - Page S8
Less than a month back, during Grey Cup week, Greg
FULTON picked
up his phone to answer a few questions from a reporter.
Frail health had kept him from making the trip to Regina, but
in conversation he was sharp as a tack and again proved himself
to be a one-man encyclopedia of Canadian football history.
Paul MARTIN, the prime minister to be, was going to make a much
publicized pregame appearance at Taylor Field, fresh from the
Liberal leadership convention.
Aside from Pierre
TRUDEAU,
FULTON was asked, did he remember
any other prime minister taking the time to attend the Grey Cup?
"Well," he said, "I don't remember Mackenzie
KING being there.
Or Louis SSAINTURENT."
Of course, he knew because he was there. It seemed he was always
there -- a player beginning in Winnipeg in 1939, a statistician
and treasurer for the Calgary Stampeders from 1950 to 1966, a
fixture in the Canadian Football League office from 1967 on,
and, finally in his last job, the Canadian Football League's
honorary secretary and official historian, a title surely unique
in all of pro sports.
The National Football League still has a few owners with connections
to the game's early days, and in hockey and baseball there are
at least a handful of sportswriting elders who still remember
when. But only the Canadian Football League actually employed
someone who had an inside view extending back more than 60 years.
Considering how tumultuous some of those seasons have been and
considering the game's highs and lows and the cast of strange
and wonderful characters who came and went, what a tale
FULTON
could tell.
He was 84 when he died on Monday, and with him, sadly, is lost
much of the anecdotal story of the league. (Commissioner Tom
WRIGHT, who during his relatively short term on the job had come
to appreciate
FULTON's special role, planned to have
FULTON's
memories committed to tape and transcribed. Sadly, that didn't
happen before
FULTON fell ill.)
FULTON's tenure with the league office was perhaps the only significant
legacy of Keith
DAVEY's 54-day reign as commissioner in 1967.
Davey lured
FULTON to Toronto from Calgary to act as the league's
treasurer. When Jake
GAUDAUR took over from
DAVEY, he decided
to keep FULTON on.
"It would be the most important decision I would make,"
GAUDAUR
says now, which, given the events of his 16 years in office,
is quite a statement. Every subsequent commissioner -- and there
have been a bunch -- endorsed and echoed that original decision.
Not that anyone on the outside would really understand. "All
of those beneficial things he did for the league were all out
of public view,"
GAUDAUR said. "He never received any sort of
media credit, nor did he want any. Clearly, it was a labour of
love for him. That's kind of corny to say that, but I really
believe it was."
In those early days, the league was a two-man, two-secretary
operation.
FULTON, an accountant by profession, kept the books,
kept an eye on club finances and kept the minutes during league
meetings -- all during a period when the game grew into a multimillion-dollar
sports business. He was also charged with producing the schedule
every year, a trickier proposition than it might seem, given
the uneven number of teams, the east-west split and the importance
of certain dates in certain places.
At one point,
GAUDAUR remembers, they turned the task over to
a computer. And then, after the computer coughed out its work,
they handed it to
FULTON, who fixed it. "He had what I consider
to be a computer mind,"
GAUDAUR said. "It was an incredible mind."
The Canadian Football League took a turn for the worse after
GAUDAUR left the post. Commissioners came and went, the league
at times teetered on the brink of insolvency, the disastrous
U.S. expansion played itself out and the owners at times resembled
a bag of mixed nuts.
But there was always
FULTON, quietly keeping things in running
order, breaking the tension with his wry, quiet sense of humour,
loyal first and foremost to the game he loved.
"He was a remarkable person,"
GAUDAUR said. "It really was a
pleasure to be around the guy."
Several generations of those who spent time in the Canadian Football
League orbit share those sentiments and mourn the loss.
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BRUSCH o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-13 published
'What else could it have been but a miracle?'
Rene CAISSE died 25 years ago without gaining the recognition
some cancer survivors believe she deserved. Without Essiac, her
mysterious remedy, they wouldn't be alive today, they tell Roy
MacGREGOR
By Roy MacGREGOR,
Saturday,
December 13, 2003 - Page F8
Bracebridge, Ontario -- These days, when she looks back at her
remarkable, and largely unexpected, long life, Iona
HALE will
often permit herself a small, soft giggle.
She is 85 now, a vibrant, spunky woman with enough excess energy
to power the small off-highway nursing home she now lives in
at the north end of the Muskoka tourist region that gave the
world Norman
BETHUNE and, Iona
HALE will die believing, possibly
something far more profound.
A possible cure for cancer.
Twenty-seven years ago, Mrs.
HALE sat in Toronto's Princess Margaret
Hospital and heard that terrifying word applied to her own pitiful
condition. She was 58, and had already dropped to 75 pounds when
her big, truck-driver husband, Ted, finally got her in to see
the specialists who were supposed to know why she had stopped
eating and was in such terrible pain.
Mrs. HALE remembers awakening in the recovery room after unsuccessful
surgery and being told by a brusque nurse, "You're not going
to live long, you know, dear."
"That's what you think!" she snapped back.
Ted HALE had often heard stories of a secret "Indian" medicine
that an area nurse had supposedly used to cure cancer patients,
but he had no idea where it could be found. He had asked a physician,
only to be told, "That damned Essiac -- there's nothing to it."
When they returned to their home near Huntsville, Ontario --
with instructions to come back in three weeks, if Mrs.
HALE was
still around -- Mr.
HALE set out to find the mysterious medicine.
With the help of a sympathetic doctor, he discovered Rene
CAISSE,
a Bracebridge nurse who claimed to have been given the native
secret back in 1922. Pushing 90 and in ill health, she agreed
to give him one small bottle of the tonic, telling him to hide
it under his clothes as he left.
Mr. HALE fed his wife the medicine as tea, as instructed, and
it was the first thing she was able to keep down. A few radiation
treatments intended to ease the pain seemingly had no effect,
but almost immediately after taking the Essiac, she felt relief.
When the painkillers ran out and Mr.
HALE said he would go pick
up more, she told him, "Don't bother -- get more of this."
Twice more, he returned to get Essiac, the second time carrying
a loaded pistol in case he had to force the medicine from the
old nurse. He got it, and, according to Mrs.
HALE, "the cancer
just drained away." She returned to Toronto for one checkup --
"The doctor just looked at me like he was seeing a ghost" --
and never returned again.
"What else could it have been," Mrs.
HALE asks today, "but a
miracle?"
There is nothing special to mark the grave of Rene
CAISSE.
It lies in the deepening snow at the very front row of St. Joseph's
Cemetery on the narrow road running north out this small town
in the heart of Ontario cottage country, a simple grave with
a dark stone that reads: "
McGAUGHNEY
Rene
M.
(CAISSE) 1888-1978,
Discoverer of 'Essiac,' Dearly Remembered."
On December 26, it will be 25 years since Rene -- pronounced
"Reen" by locals --
CAISSE died. But in the minds of many people
with cancer, the great question of her life has continued on,
unanswered, well beyond her death. Did she have a secret cure
for the disease?
Ms. CAISSE never claimed to have a "cure" for cancer, but she
did claim to have a secret native formula that, at the very least,
alleviated pain and, in some cases, seemed to work what desperate
cancer sufferers were claiming were miracles.
She had discovered the formula while caring for an elderly Englishwoman
who had once been diagnosed with breast cancer and, unable to
afford surgery, turned instead to a Northern Ontario Ojibwa medicine
man who had given her a recipe for a helpful tonic.
The materials were all found locally, free in the forest: burdock
root, sheep sorrel, slippery elm bark, wild rhubarb root and water.
The woman had taken the native brew regularly and been cancer-free ever since.
Ms. CAISSE had carefully written down the formula as dictated,
thinking she might herself turn to this forest concoction if
she ever developed the dreaded disease. She never did, dying
eventually from complications after breaking a hip, but she remembered
the recipe when an aunt was diagnosed with cancer of the stomach
and given six months to live. The aunt agreed to try the tonic,
recovered and went on to live 21 more years.
The aunt's doctor, R.D.
FISHER, was intrigued enough that he
encouraged Ms.
CAISSE to offer her remedy -- which she now called
"Essiac," a reverse spelling of her name -- to others, and by
1926 Dr. FISHER and eight other physicians were petitioning the
Department of Health and Welfare to conduct tests on this strange
brew.
"We, the undersigned," the letter from the nine doctors read,
"believe that the 'Treatment for Cancer' given by nurse R.M.
CAISSE can do no harm and that it relieves pain, will reduce
the enlargement and will prolong life in hopeless cases."
Instead of opening doors, however, the petition caused them to
slam. Health and Welfare responded that a nurse had no right
to treat patients and even went so far as to prepare the papers
necessary to begin prosecution proceedings.
But when officials were dispatched to see her, she talked them
out of taking action, and for years after, officials turned a
blind eye as she continued to disperse the tonic. She made no
claim that it was medication; she refused to see anyone who had
not first been referred by their regular physician; and she turned
down all payment apart from small "donations" to keep the clinic
running.
Her work attracted the attention of Dr. Frederick
BANTING, the
discoverer of insulin, but an arrangement to work together foundered
when he insisted they test the tonic first on mice, and Ms.
CAISSE
argued that humans had more immediate needs.
Her problems with authority were only beginning. A 55,000-signature
petition persuaded the Ontario government to establish a royal
commission to look into her work, but the panel of physicians
would agree to hear only from 49 of the 387 witnesses: who turned
up on her behalf -- and dismissed all but four on the grounds
that they had no diagnostic proof. The commission refused to
endorse Essiac, and a private member's bill that would have let
her continue treating patients at her clinic fell three votes
short in the legislature.
She quit when the stress drove her to the verge of collapse,
moved north with her new husband, Charles
McGAUGHNEY, and dropped
out of the public eye. But not out of the public interest.
"You need proof?" laughs Iona
HALE. "
Just look at me -- I'm still
here!"
Not everyone in the medical establishment dismissed Essiac. Ms.
CAISSE had permitted the Brusch Medical Center near Boston to
conduct experiments after Dr. Charles
BRUSCH, one-time physician
to John Kennedy, inquired about the mysterious cure. Tests on
the formula did show some promise on mice, and the centre eventually
reported: "The doctors do not say that Essiac is a cure, but
they do say it is of benefit." Dr.
BRUSCH even claimed that Essiac
helped in his own later battle with cancer.
Other tests, though, were less encouraging. In the early 1970s,
Ms. CAISSE sent some of her herbs to the Sloan-Kettering Institute
for Cancer Research in Rye, New York but when early tests proved
negative, she claimed Sloan-Kettering had completely fouled up
the preparation and refused further assistance.
Through it all, she refused to disclose her recipe -- until a
rush of publicity after a 1977 article in Homemaker's magazine
persuaded her to hand over the formula to the Lieutenant-Governor
of Ontario for safekeeping and to give a copy to the Resperin
Corporation of Toronto in the hopes that, eventually, scientific
proof would be found.
She died without gaining the recognition some cancer survivors
believe she deserved, and in 1982, the federal government declared
Resperin's testing procedures flawed and shut down further studies.
The story of Ms.
CAISSE's medicine carried on, however, with
more and more people turning to the man who would have been her
member of Parliament to see if he could help.
Stan DARLING lives in the same nursing home as Iona
HALE.
Now
92, Mr. DARLING spent 21 years in Ottawa as the Progressive Conservative
member for Muskoka-Parry Sound. He's remembered on Parliament
Hill for his crusades against acid rain, but of all his political
battles, Mr.
DARLING says nothing compares to his fight to gain
recognition for Rene
CAISSE's mysterious medicine.
"So many people came to me with their stories," he said, "that
I couldn't help but say, 'Okay, there must be something to this.'"
Mr. DARLING put together his own petition, 5,000 names, and went
to the minister of health and argued that so many were now using
Essiac it made sense to legalize it.
His bid failed, but he did persuade the medical bureaucrats to
compromise: If Essiac were seen as a "tea" rather than a "drug,"
it could be viewed as a tonic, and so long as the presiding physician
gave his approval, it could be added to a patient's care -- if
only for psychological reasons. "On that basis," Mr.
DARLING
says, "I said, 'I don't give a damn what you call it, as long
as you let the people get it.' "
The doubters are legion. "There's no evidence that it works,"
says Dr. Christina
MILLS, senior adviser of cancer control policy
for the Canadian Cancer Society. That being said, she says, "There
is also little evidence of harmful side effects from it," but
cautions anyone looking into the treatment to do so in consultation
with their physician.
No scientific study of Essiac has ever appeared in an accepted,
peer-reviewed medical journal. But those who believe say they
have given up on seeing such proof.
Sue BEST of Rockland, Massachusetts., still vividly recalls that
day 10 years ago when her 16-year-old son, Billy, sick with Hodgkin's
disease, decided to run away from home rather than continue the
chemotherapy treatments he said were killing him.
He was eventually found in Texas after a nationwide hunt and
agreed to return home only if the treatments would cease and
they would look into alternative treatments, including Essiac.
No one is certain what exactly cured Billy, but Ms.
BEST was
so convinced Essiac was a major factor she became a local distributor
of the herbal medicine.
Rene CAISSE, she says, "spent a whole life trying to help people
with a product she found out about totally by accident -- and
being totally maligned all her life by the whole medical establishment
in Canada."
In some ways, Ms.
CAISSE has had an easier time in death than
in life. Today, there is a street in Bracebridge named after
her, a charming sculpture of her in a park near her old clinic,
and Bracebridge Publishing has released a book, Bridge of Hope,
about her experiences.
The recognition is largely the work of local historian Ken
VEITCH,
whose grandmother, Eliza, was one of the cancer-afflicted witnesses:
who told the 1939 royal commission: "I owe my life to Miss
CAISSE.
I would have been dead and in my grave months ago." Instead,
she lived 40 more years.
Don McVITTIE, a Huntsville businessman, is a grandnephew of Rene
CAISSE and says she used her recipe to cure him of a duodenal
ulcer when he was 19. Now 71 and in fine health, he still has
his nightly brew of Essiac before bed.
"There's something mentally satisfying about having a glass of
it," he says. "I think of it more as a blood cleanser. That's
what Aunt Rene always said it was. I think she'd be disappointed
it hasn't been more accepted."
"Look," Ken
VEITCH says, "this all started back in the 1920s.
And I've said a number of times that if there was nothing to
it, it would be long gone.
"But there is something to it."
Roy MacGREGOR is a Globe and Mail columnist.
The secret revealed
Debate rages in Essiac circles about the correct recipe. The
most accurate rendition likely comes from Mary
McPHERSON,
Rene
CAISSE's long-time assistant. Ms.
McPHERSON, currently frail
and living in a Bracebridge nursing home, swore an affidavit
in 1994 in which she recorded the recipe in front of witnesses.
It is essentially the same preparation distributed today by Essiac
Canada International, which operates out of Ottawa. The formula
appears below:
61/2 cups of burdock root (cut)
1 lb. of sheep sorrelherb, powdered
1/4 lb. of slipper elm bark, powdered
1 oz. of Turkish rhubarb root, powdered
Mix ingredients thoroughly and store in glass jar in dark, dry
cupboard. Use 1 oz. of herb mixture to 32 oz. of water, depending
on the amount you want to make. I use 1 cup of mixture to 256 oz. of water.
Boil hard for 10 minutes (covered), then turn off heat but leave
sitting on warm plate overnight (covered).
In the morning, heat steaming hot and let settle a few minutes,
then strain through fine strainer into hot sterilized bottles
and sit to cool. Store in dark, cool cupboard. Must be refrigerated when opened.
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