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Phoenix: The Life of Norman Bethune
In Phoenix: The Life of Norman Bethune Roderick and Sharon Stewart provide the intriguing details of Bethune's controversial career as a surgeon, his turbulent personal life, his passionate crusade to eradicate tuberculosis, and his pioneering commitment to the establishment of medicare in Canada. They also examine the reasoning that led Bethune to embrace Marxism and show the depth of his faith in the triumph of communism over fascism - a commitment that drove him to take risk after risk and ultimately led to his death from an infection caught while performing battlefield surgery in remote northern China. Based on extensive research in Canada, Spain, and China, and in-depth interviews with Bethune's family, friends, colleagues, and patients, Phoenix: The Life of Norman Bethune is the definitive Bethune biography for our time.
496 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 3, 2011
A year or so ago I read a short bio of Bethune that fed my interest in reading something more substantive. This newly-published book is all of that. I should think the authors have written the definitive bio of this remarkable man who has become an iconic figure in 2 countries (Canada & China). Neither hagiography nor indictment, this is a "warts and all" account that leaves judgments to the reader. An important book.
January 7, 2022
This is the definitive warts-and-all biography of Norman Bethune. He comes off as being completely insufferable as a friend, comrade, co-worker and lover, but inspired by a manic zeal to achieve great things. A fascinating read. Excellently written.
July 3, 2025
Fascinating read and fascinating to think if the CCP hadn’t beaten out the Kuomintang he likely wouldn’t have been remembered.
October 7, 2021
"I have burnt all my bridges.... I have no money. I have no job. I have nothing. So I'm going to China."
-- Norman Bethune
An absorbing biography of the most famous Canadian of all time -- most famous because he is remembered with reverence by more than one billion Chinese. Phoenix draws on a rich store of oral testimony, official records and correspondence to trace the path of a man born in 1890 to sternly religious parents in Gravenhurst Ontario, and who died fifty years later of blood poisoning in a peasant hovel in the hills of rural China.
The Chinese revere Bethune to this day and there is no denying his utter commitment to his fellow man. It was an extraordinarily unusual thing for a western-trained surgeon to attempt to provide medical care to a ragged guerrilla force, as the Red Army then was. The authors hint that the medical supplies sent by the Communist Party of Canada to China that were intended for Bethune, may have been diverted by the Chinese Communists because Bethune was operating in remote regions and it was easier to send the much-needed supplies to other battlefield fronts. In fact, reading of Bethune's travels through the mountains on horseback and on foot, often in driving snow or rain, or skirting the Japanese forces, makes for an interesting counterpoint for the modern traveler stuck in a stifling hot train station or jammed into a subway.
The book is titled Phoenix because when Bethune went to China, his life was in ashes and he desperately wanted to redeem himself and prove to himself and others that his life mattered. His drinking problem and his personal demons had helped sabotage his career and even caused his comrades in the Spanish Civil War to demand his recall to Canada. By publicly acknowledging he was a member of the Communist Party, Bethune effectively turned his back on his old life as a doctor and surgeon in North America.
In rural China, away from city life with its distractions and temptations, Bethune gave himself completely to the Chinese -- training the "barefoot doctors" who served the army, setting up training centers, and insisting on getting to as close to the fighting as possible so he could save more lives. To people in need he was often incredibly compassionate and empathetic. He saw the Chinese soldiers and peasants he helped not as a strange alien race but as members of suffering humanity deserving of care. In the last 12 months of his life he produced "an amazing number of letters, articles and reports," to help publicize the desperate straits that the Chinese faced as they resisted the Japanese occupation. He shared his own rations with his patients and he donated his own blood and encouraged others to do so, at a time when the idea of donating blood was foreign to many Chinese.
Although he could stoop to help those in need, what he could not do is deal with people as equals. Roderick and Sharon Stewart, the authors of Phoenix, chronicle the fact that Bethune was abrasive, self-centered, doctrinaire, often irresponsible and miserable to deal with. He was insubordinate to his supervisors and caustic to those working under him. He was unable to maintain friendships, especially with women, and he bullied and dominated his wife. He also alienated the medical profession in Canada and the U.S. by arguing that health care should be socialized. (And just as parents who are afraid of vaccinations are too young to remember the dangers of polio, mumps and smallpox, perhaps libertarians should read about the passages in Phoenix which describe health care in Canada and the U.S. when poor people could not afford operations or treatment for fatal but curable illnesses like tuberculosis).
Bethune was not even intended to be the head of the medical mission being sent to China. That post was reserved for one Dr. Charles Edward Parsons. Bethune could be an angry drunk but according to the authors of Phoenix, Parsons was a hopeless alcoholic who was shipped back to the United States after he drank all the seed money intended for the mission, so it is Bethune who found immortality in the hills of Shanxi Province. Had Parsons stayed with the mission, Bethune undoubtedly would have quarreled with him and probably burned another bridge. Instead he died, fighting a raging fever and an infection which even his stubborn will-power could not overcome. But by the time he died, he had made himself a legend to the Chinese soldiers and peasants in the region. The cult of Bethune was not a Mao invention. In Phoenix, we learn that the "villagers of Jun Cheng built a tomb for Bethune, walking thirty miles to a quarry each night through Japanese lines to bring back marble for it."
-- Norman Bethune
An absorbing biography of the most famous Canadian of all time -- most famous because he is remembered with reverence by more than one billion Chinese. Phoenix draws on a rich store of oral testimony, official records and correspondence to trace the path of a man born in 1890 to sternly religious parents in Gravenhurst Ontario, and who died fifty years later of blood poisoning in a peasant hovel in the hills of rural China.
The Chinese revere Bethune to this day and there is no denying his utter commitment to his fellow man. It was an extraordinarily unusual thing for a western-trained surgeon to attempt to provide medical care to a ragged guerrilla force, as the Red Army then was. The authors hint that the medical supplies sent by the Communist Party of Canada to China that were intended for Bethune, may have been diverted by the Chinese Communists because Bethune was operating in remote regions and it was easier to send the much-needed supplies to other battlefield fronts. In fact, reading of Bethune's travels through the mountains on horseback and on foot, often in driving snow or rain, or skirting the Japanese forces, makes for an interesting counterpoint for the modern traveler stuck in a stifling hot train station or jammed into a subway.
The book is titled Phoenix because when Bethune went to China, his life was in ashes and he desperately wanted to redeem himself and prove to himself and others that his life mattered. His drinking problem and his personal demons had helped sabotage his career and even caused his comrades in the Spanish Civil War to demand his recall to Canada. By publicly acknowledging he was a member of the Communist Party, Bethune effectively turned his back on his old life as a doctor and surgeon in North America.
In rural China, away from city life with its distractions and temptations, Bethune gave himself completely to the Chinese -- training the "barefoot doctors" who served the army, setting up training centers, and insisting on getting to as close to the fighting as possible so he could save more lives. To people in need he was often incredibly compassionate and empathetic. He saw the Chinese soldiers and peasants he helped not as a strange alien race but as members of suffering humanity deserving of care. In the last 12 months of his life he produced "an amazing number of letters, articles and reports," to help publicize the desperate straits that the Chinese faced as they resisted the Japanese occupation. He shared his own rations with his patients and he donated his own blood and encouraged others to do so, at a time when the idea of donating blood was foreign to many Chinese.
Although he could stoop to help those in need, what he could not do is deal with people as equals. Roderick and Sharon Stewart, the authors of Phoenix, chronicle the fact that Bethune was abrasive, self-centered, doctrinaire, often irresponsible and miserable to deal with. He was insubordinate to his supervisors and caustic to those working under him. He was unable to maintain friendships, especially with women, and he bullied and dominated his wife. He also alienated the medical profession in Canada and the U.S. by arguing that health care should be socialized. (And just as parents who are afraid of vaccinations are too young to remember the dangers of polio, mumps and smallpox, perhaps libertarians should read about the passages in Phoenix which describe health care in Canada and the U.S. when poor people could not afford operations or treatment for fatal but curable illnesses like tuberculosis).
Bethune was not even intended to be the head of the medical mission being sent to China. That post was reserved for one Dr. Charles Edward Parsons. Bethune could be an angry drunk but according to the authors of Phoenix, Parsons was a hopeless alcoholic who was shipped back to the United States after he drank all the seed money intended for the mission, so it is Bethune who found immortality in the hills of Shanxi Province. Had Parsons stayed with the mission, Bethune undoubtedly would have quarreled with him and probably burned another bridge. Instead he died, fighting a raging fever and an infection which even his stubborn will-power could not overcome. But by the time he died, he had made himself a legend to the Chinese soldiers and peasants in the region. The cult of Bethune was not a Mao invention. In Phoenix, we learn that the "villagers of Jun Cheng built a tomb for Bethune, walking thirty miles to a quarry each night through Japanese lines to bring back marble for it."
January 27, 2012
The extensive research that went into this book blew me away; I learned things about Bethune I never knew before,and even the facts and incidents I had already heard about were fleshed out, expanded on, and written about in ways that made them come alive far more vividly than in other accounts.
I'm not an academic, so I can't judge the book that way. I'm a reader and writer with an interest in fiction, politics and philosophy who cares very much about style. I found this book satisfying in many ways. Roderick and Sharon Stewart are writers and researchers with obvious literary ability. The amount of detail is breathtaking, and I came away with a renewed interest in Bethune, and a deep admiration for his biographers.
Bethune was no saint; in some ways he was rather repugnant. It's to the credit of the writers that they didn't shy away from the less savoury aspects of his character. The account they give is complex and well-rounded, and made for fascinating reading.
I'm not an academic, so I can't judge the book that way. I'm a reader and writer with an interest in fiction, politics and philosophy who cares very much about style. I found this book satisfying in many ways. Roderick and Sharon Stewart are writers and researchers with obvious literary ability. The amount of detail is breathtaking, and I came away with a renewed interest in Bethune, and a deep admiration for his biographers.
Bethune was no saint; in some ways he was rather repugnant. It's to the credit of the writers that they didn't shy away from the less savoury aspects of his character. The account they give is complex and well-rounded, and made for fascinating reading.
December 1, 2015
The last sentence his poem "red moon" is "who died for us, we will remember you".
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews