Bethune, Norman, 1890-1939 : Norman Bethune, the son of a clergyman, was born in Gravenhurst and educated at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Medicine. During World War I he enlisted with the first contingent of the Canadian Expeditionary Force and, after being wounded, served as a lieutenant-surgeon in the Navy.
After the Armistice, Bethune practised medicine in England and Canada, and in Detroit where he learned that he had tuberculosis, spending the next year in sanitoriums and recovering in 1927. He later joined Dr. Edward Archibald, the tuberculosis specialist, at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, where he helped organize the Montreal Group for the Security of the People's Health, an organization devoted to establishing socialized medicine. During the Civil War Bethune set up a blood transfusion service in Spain and in 1938 he went to China to attend to the wounded during the Sino-Japanese War. He died there the following year.
Bethune's fame resulted from his status as a hero in the People's Republic of China and the impact of this on Sino-Canadian relations.
Endicott, James G. (James Gareth), 1898-1993 : James Gareth Endicott was born in 1898, in Szechuan Province, China, the son of missionary parents. James and his family returned to Canada in 1910 and saw service with the Canadian Artillery in World War I. Following the war he attended Victoria College, University of Toronto, from which he graduated in 1925 as an ordained minister of the Methodist (soon to be the United) Church.
In 1925 James married Mary Austin of Chatham, Ontario, and together they moved to Chungking in Szechuan, where Endicott took up a posting as a missionary with the West China Mission of the United Church. There he became unusually fluent in the Szechuan dialect and something of an authority on the teaching of English as a second language. James' speaking ability and progressive political interests also combined to make him an increasingly public figure, a trend which culminated in his being loaned by the Church to the New Life Movement of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek. In 1941 James returned to Canada on furlough, where, despite growing misgivings about the reactionary nature of the Chinese Nationalist government, he lectured widely on behalf of its war effort. He returned to China in 1944.
James Endicott's progressive political activities were increasingly at odds with the non-involvement of the rest of the Christian Church, and he resigned from the West China Mission in May of 1946. In 1947 he returned to Canada to prosyletize for the Chinese Revolution. This activity led naturally to a consideration of the larger questions of international relations during the Cold War, a concern reflected in the organization of the Canadian Peace Congress in 1948. James Endicott was chair of that body from its founding until 1972, and also occupied prominent positions in the World Council of Peace for many years. James Endicott's Chinese name was Wen Yiuzhang. He died on 27 November 1993 in Toronto.
