Bird Art

 John Gould

   I happened to notice the image above, which is from a Gould work found in the Collection of Barbara and Ira Lipman which is being auctioned by Sotheby's. It is only one of the 269 items being offered and the starting bid for the Gould folio is $80,000. It is not the most expensive work in the lot. A 'Babe' Ruth baseball card is expected to fetch between $300,000 to $500,000 U.S.  You will have to hurry since the auction begins closing on Dec.16. Details about all of the books and manuscripts and odds and ends are easily found on the website of Sotheby's. 

   If you go to the Sotheby's site you will find enough to keep you busy for a long while. If you are interested in our subject for today - Bird Art - and the bird artist John Gould, then you need to visit The John Gould Ornithological Collection at the University of Kansas. Those of you who are tired of my prose, can go directly to the site to view thousands of beautiful bird illustrations.

   John Gould was born in Dorset in 1804 and over the years produced, along with his wife and Edward Lear, over 50 large illustrated volumes with alluring titles such as A Century of Birds From the Himalaya Mountains. He is an interesting character and it will be easy for you to learn more about him. 

   The story relating to how the Gould works came to reside in Kansas is also interesting.  It involves a compulsive collector of all things avian - Ralph Nicholson Ellis, Jr. He was so obsessed and so eager to spend his inheritance on bird books that his mother had him institutionalized and his wife filed for divorce. During all of these problems he had  his 65,000-item collection shipped in two boxcars which ended up on a siding in Kansas where the head of the Museum of Natural History in Lawrence, agreed to store them. The rest is history, as they say, and more details are provided in "The Story of the Gould Collection" by Karen Cook which is found on the University of Kansas website provided above.  For more about Ellis and his "galloping bibliomania" see Basbane's,  A Gentle Madness, p.21.

   With the financial assistance of the NEH, more than 6,000 drawings, lithographs and watercolours were digitized and  are viewable online. Here is the formal description of the collection:
This collection of the large-format bird books published by John Gould (1804-1881) also includes several thousand pieces of pre-publication artwork produced by Gould and his artists. It is part of the Ralph Nicholson Ellis, Jr. natural-history collection in Special Collections, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.

The Bonus Material:

   If you are a 'birder' and interested in bird books, have a look at the Soffer Ornithology Collection at Amherst. Although the books have not been digitized it is interesting see the notes about the books which were provided by the collector. There are several Gould books listed.

   Perhaps you are wondering whether the university closer by has any Gould books. Here is the answer:

Books by John Gould in the Western University Libraries

(This list was gathered by me. For a thorough account you should check with a Western Librarian.)

Gould, John, 1804-1881. Birds of Asia. Illus. from the lithographs of John Gould. Text by A. Rutgers.   London : Methuen, 1969, c1968.

QL674.G668.(storage)

Gould, John, 1804-1881.  Birds of Australia. Ill. by John Gould. Text by Abram Rutgers. London, Methuen [1967]

QL693.G58.(storage)

Gould, John, 1804-1881. Birds of Europe. Illus. by John Gould. Text by A. Rutgers. London, Methuen [1966]

 QL690.A1G64.(storage)

 Gould, John, 1804-1881. Birds of New Guinea. Illus. from the lithographs of John Gould. Text by A. Rutgers. New York, St. Martin's Press [1971, c1970

 QL694.N4G68 1971.(storage)

Gould, John, 1804-1881. Birds of South America. Illus. from the lithographs of John Gould.  Text by A. Rutgers. London, Eyre Methuen [1972] 

QL689.A1G68 1972.(storage)

Lambourne, Maureen. Birds of the world : over 400 of John Gould's classic bird  illustrations / Maureen Lambourne.

London : Studio, 1992. QL674.L35 1992. (DBWOVR)

Gould, John, 1804-1881. John Gould's Birds of Great Britain / introduction by Maureen Lambourne. London : Eyre Methuen, 1980.

QL690.G7G76 1980.(storage)

Gould, John, 1804-1881. The Mammals of Australia / John Gould ; with modern notes by Joan M. Dixon. South Melbourne : Macmillan 1983.

QL733.G7 1983.(storage)

For biographical details see:

John Gould: The Birdman: A Chronology and Bibliography, by Gordon C. Sauer, 

QL31. G67S28 1982 (storage)

John Gould’s Contribution to British Art: A Note on Its Authenticity, Allan McEvery

QL31.G67M3 1973 (storage)

The Ruling Passion of John Gould: A Biography of the Bird Man, Isabella Tree, 1991

QL31.G67T74 1991 DBWSTK

See also Basbane’s A Gentle Madness… TX907.C67 2001, DBWSTK

Bird Eggs: If you are interested in beautiful pictures of eggs see: Oology and Ralph's Talking Eggs: Bird Conservation Comes Out Of Its Shell, Carrol Henderson. ( a copy is available at the Taylor Library at Western.)

"In Oology and Ralph's Talking Eggs, Carrol L. Henderson uses the vast egg collection of Ralph Handsaker, an Iowa farmer, as the starting point for a fascinating account of oology and its role in the origins of modern birdwatching, scientific ornithology, and bird conservation in North America. Henderson describes Handsaker's and other oologists' collecting activities, which included not only gathering bird eggs in the wild but also trading and purchasing eggs from collectors around the world. Henderson then spotlights sixty of the nearly five hundred bird species represented in the Handsaker collection, using them to tell the story of how birds such as the Snowy Egret, Greater Prairie Chicken, Atlantic Puffin, and Wood Duck have fared over the past hundred years or so since their eggs were gathered. Photos of the eggs and historical drawings and photos of the birds illustrate each species account, Henderson also links these bird histories to major milestones in bird conservation and bird protection laws in North America from 1875 to the present. While wild bird conservation has come a long way in the last hundred years, this book is a call to action for conservationists because some modern-day threats to bird life are far more insidious than threats posed to birds a century ago by market hunting and the plume trade."--BOOK JACKET.

For additional research about birds at Western, visit AFAR, which I described here: For the Birds. 

Bob Dylan

 $300 Million Blowing in the Wind

   I paid passing notice to the fact that Bob Dylan recently sold his music catalogue to the Universal Music Publishing Group for an estimated $300 million. Maybe he needed the money, although I thought he had finally met with the Nobel Prize people and picked up that small cheque for about another million. The music business and the associated rights are too complicated for me, but I do suppose that we will now hear his melodies and lyrics in advertisements for such things as insurance and drugs. Perhaps President Trump will be able to use Dylan's tunes at his campaign rallies in 2024. To learn more, look for news stories in early December. For example: "Bob Dylan Sells His Songwriting Catalog in Blockbuster Deal: Universal Music Purchased His Entire Songwriting Catalog of More Than 600 Songs in What May Be the Biggest Acquisition Ever of a Single Act’s Publishing Rights," Ben Sisario, New York Times, Dec.7, 2020 or, "What Bob Dylan Selling His Music Catalog Does and Doesn't Mean," Simon Vozick-Levinson, Rolling Stone, n.d.

The Bob Dylan Archives

   I paid more attention about three years ago when around 6,000 personal Dylan items, including his old wallet from 1965 and Otis Redding's business card, were purchased and deposited in the archive at ----Are You Ready?--- the University of Tulsa. It is not in Minnesota where Robert Allen Zimmerman was born.  The city of Tulsa is home to George Kaiser and the Foundation bearing his name and he ponied up the reported $20 million for the purchase. He had already provided another $3 million to acquire for the University, the archives of Woody Guthrie. Apparently Mr. Kaiser is only marginally interested in either gentlemen. He is more interested in other things and gave $200 million for a park along the Arkansas River. If the border re-opens you will find the Bob Dylan Archive housed in The Helmerich Center for American Research at the Gilcrease Museum. It is predicted that, "So many people will be going to Tulsa," says the historian Brinkley. "Eventually, this will be one of the most important 20th-century literary and musical archives anywhere."

The Bonus:

  The University of Tulsa also has material from "One of the most influential man of letters in the twentieth century..." Edmund Wilson.  This collection even includes glass window panes inscribed by such individuals as Stephen Spender and Dorothy Parker.

His son is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Modern Languages & Literature at Western University and lives here in London, Ontario.

Sources:

   For more about George B. Kaiser see: "A Billionaire's Quirky Quest to Create a Mecca for Dylan Fans," Karen Heller,  Washington Post, Oc. 12, 2017.

The Bob Dylan Archive at the University of Tulsa. 

The Edmund Wilson Archive.

The Edmund Wilson Library. 

Factlet (6)

 

Extraordinary Times....         Desperate Times.....

That's Billions With a 'B'

   For review, a Factlet is true, whereas a Factoid is only widely believed to be true. I have not provided a Factlet for a while, so here are a bunch of them in one post. My last one was about the Opioid Epidemic and was negative, and this one is about the Covid Pandemic, but is positive. The pandemic has been profitable for some and not just the manufacturers of Purell or the makers of plexiglass. To wit:

   To put the chart in context, consider this:

A Wealth Tax??

   Jeff Bezos has already decided to give $10 billion to causes relating to climate change. He started by donating $791 million to various organizations, including $100 million each to: The Environmental Defense Fund, The National Resources Defense Council. The Nature Conservancy, The World Resources Institute and The World Wildlife Fund.  This will certainly help, since in 2019 only 2% of the $730 billion given globally was for the fight against climate change.

   Elon Musk has decided to move from California to Texas. The decision may be related to the fact that the Lone Star State has less regulations and lower taxes.

   Short of pleading for these individuals to be more philanthropic, what could be done? Instituting a wealth tax is one option and it is being considered in the UK. It is suggested that the tax could be a one-time one and there appears to be a fair amount of public support for it. That would likely be true here, but perhaps not in the Lone Star State during the time of Trump.

Sources:

   The chart is from a report produced for Americans For Tax Fairness and The Institute for Policy Studies. The title: "Net Worth of U.S. Billionaires Has Soared by $1 Trillion - To Total of $4 Trillion - Since Pandemic Began." A sub-heading indicates that the "Wealth Increase in 9 Months Exceeds Likely $908 Billion Cost of Covid Relief Package GOP Has Stalled as Too Costly."

   The charitable actions of Bezos are reported in the Washington Post - see: "Bezos Makes First Donations From $10 Billion Earth Fund For Fighting Climate Change," Steven Mufson, Nov. 16, 2020.

Bezos owns the Washington Post.

   The title of the Wealth Tax Report is: "A Wealth Tax For the UK", Wealth Tax Commission Final Report, by Arun Advani et al. The full 126 pp final report is available. 

The defining feature of a one-off wealth tax is that it would be a one-off exceptional response to a particular crisis. Individuals would only be taxed once based on the wealth they owned valued at a particular date. They would still be allowed to pay the tax in instalments over a number of subsequent years, to reduce the cost in any single year, but the amount of tax would be based on their wealth on the initial assessment date.

For two articles about the report: "Economic Cost of Covid Crisis Prompts Call For One-Off UK Wealth Tax," Richard Partington, The Guardian, Dec. 9, 2020 and "U.K. Urged To Levy $350 Billion Wealth Tax to Fund Pandemic," Andrew Atkinson, Dec. 9, 2020.

The Bonus: 

   You will have noticed the names of three Waltons in the chart. To see what Alice did with a bit of her money a few years ago, read this earlier post or, when the pandemic is over, travel to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

Local Currencies

    In an attempt to support local businesses, I did just venture out for a bit and went to the abandoned Kellogg factory which now is a destination of sorts - do have a look and visit soon, 100 Kellogg Lane.  The line-up was too long and I am now again back blogging to avoid shopping. 

   I gather that a number of local vendors were available and, as an incentive, early arrivers were to be given "Merry Money" to spend. It was the mention of funny currency that drew my attention and provides me with the excuse to blog. I am sure you have seen examples of local currencies before and you certainly have held Canadian Tire money in your hands. If you wish to go downtown shopping you should get some Downtown Dollars.  As we become more concerned with buying locally and buying Canadian, we are likely to see more examples of local money which will probably look as legitimate as those colourful ones printed at the mint.

LETS - Local Exchange Trading System

   LETS is the technical term and here is the place to learn all about Local Currency Programs. It was not such an easy subject to find information about a decade ago. I recall students asking about it for a project and was able to find some information. It was written up for a little newsletter we produced: The Bottom Feeder, July 2006. Here is what was provided:

LETS

This acronym was new to us and discovered while assisting in an undergraduate research project that was tougher than we expected. Researching the subject is much easier if you look at some of the sources we provide here. LETS typically stands for "Local Exchange Trading System" and less frequently for "Local Employment and Trading System". A good definition is found in a book about the subject: Bridges into Work? An Evaluation of Local Exchange Trading Systems, by Colin Williams, et. al. "Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) are non-profit making associations that use local currencies to encourage members to trade services and goods with each other" (p.vi). Two other books in our collections relate directly to the subject: Community and Money: Men and Women Making Change, by Mary-Beth Raddon and Currency Movements as a Challenge to Globalisation? A Case Study of Manchester's Local Currency Networks, by Peter North. While the former book does give some Canadian examples, we will provide here some links to Canadian sites where "community currencies" or "alternative money" is being used in 2006. For information about "Toronto Dollars" see the site of Toronto Dollar Community Projects Inc.

"Calgary Dollars" are described here: http://www.calgarydollars.ca . The Victoria LETS is found at http://www.lets.victoria.bc.ca To find additional examples and to learn more about the use of community currencies see the very interesting journal we discovered along the way. Links to the International Journal of Community Currency Research are provided by searching that title in our catalogue. If you happen to be heading to the West Coast, you can buy some Salt Spring Dollars at http://www.saltspringdollars.com.

  Although the URLS provided are unlikely to work, you can find many local currencies. Here, for example, is information about Salt Spring Dollars and here is an article about how they were attempting to use them in Comox: "Why Comox Valley Is Launching Its Own Currency." 

  Now I think I have stalled long enough and won't have to go out shopping again today.

Be Careful What You're Woke For

   

   When you think of Baltimore,  you are probably more likely to associate it with "The Wire" than you are with works of art. It does have some fine museums, however,  including the Walters Art Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art, which is still the home of the painting above. I wrote 'still' because recently the museum put Warhol's "The Last Supper" and a couple of other paintings up for sale.

   The purpose of the sale was an admirable one, one would think. It was a reaction to the "Black Lives Matter" movement and the money was to be used to support diversity and equity and to raise the salaries of the lower paid employees who were likely not the same colour as the higher paid ones. What could go wrong?

   The selling of a painting by a white Warhol and other white artists to raise $65 million in a city that is largely Black, surely should be a sure thing.  An earlier sale to raise money to purchase more works by women and Black artists had been successful, but this effort was not. The sale has been cancelled, some board members have resigned and one potential $50 million gift was withdrawn (it gets even messier - the name of one of the anonymous donors was revealed.)

   Deaccessioning is the problem and in this case it Trumped the ones related to race relations. There are rules governing the sale of art works housed in non-profit museums. For example, if you donated a painting to the local gallery, you would be pleased if there was a rule to prevent the selling of it to support a grand office party, or even to repair the plumbing. The Association of Art Museum Directors enforces restrictions related to such matters and they have recently relaxed them since many museums are experiencing budgetary problems, some of which are related to the pandemic. One has to be careful in such circumstances as this statement indicates: “If you start monetizing the value of the art on the walls, it raises a whole host of problems and leads to a slippery slope,” Laurence Eisenstein, a leading critic, said. “Next time the state or city are thinking about giving money to the museum, it leads to people asking questions like ‘why don’t you sell some works?’”

   This post is in response to an article I read this morning and because blogging is easier than Christmas shopping. A couple of years ago I did write about this issue when a Canadian deaccessioning controversy occurred. The attempted sale of a Chagall by the National Gallery, caused all kinds of problems. Years before that there was a dispute here in London when the University of Western Ontario sold a Cropsey. You can read more about it in this post: Jasper Cropsey ,which I will feature today.

Sources: 

"A Baltimore Museum Tried to Raise More Money by Selling Three Pricey Artworks: It Backfired Stupendously," Sebastian Smee and Peggy McGlone, Washington Post, Dec. 6, 2020.
See also: "Baltimore Museum Halts Sales of Three Painting, Including Warhol's "Last Supper," Just Hours Before Auction," Peggy McGlone, Washington Post, Oct. 28, 2020.

The Bonus:

  I gather that the University close by is also addressing the Black Lives Matter movement and attempting to do something about the systemic racism that exists there, apparently in clear violation of the HR rules and provincial regulations relating to such things as promotion and hiring. Princeton is doing the same thing as you will learn from the first few paragraphs found in this nicely titled article:
"Keywords: Hoist, Petard: On How Princeton's Crusade Against Systemic Racism Has Backfired," Roger Kimball, New Criterion, Nov. 2020.

Perhaps we ought to have included “chickens” and “roost” among the keywords as well. For many years now, woke administrators, professors, and other activists at all the toniest colleges have been like the parade of flagellants in The Seventh Seal: skirling in public about their sins, above all their institutional or (as we have lately been taught to say) their “systemic” racism. Their cries are accompanied by the demand for alms—$50 million at Yale to support “diversity,” $100 million at Brown for kindred exercises in political penance, and so on.

On September 2, Christopher L. Eisgruber, the president of Princeton University, made a major contribution to this emetic genre. In an open letter to the university “community,” he beat his breast about America’s overdue “profound national reckoning with racism.” He didn’t exclude his own university. Indeed, he beat himself harder as he bemoaned Princeton’s long history of “intentionally and systematically exclud[ing] people of color, women, Jews, and other minorities.” Nor, according to him, has that history ended. “Racist assumptions from the past,” President Eisgruber sobbed, “remain embedded in structures of the University itself.”

His confession did not go unnoticed. On September 16, the Department of Education sent President Eisgruber a letter. The letter minutes an interesting discrepancy. Since Christopher Eisgruber became president of Princeton in 2013, the university has received more than $75 million in taxpayer funds. It has also “repeatedly represented and warranted to the U.S. Department of Education . . . Princeton’s compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” What’s Title VI? Among other things, it’s the law that stipulates that no institution receiving federal funds may discriminate against anyone because of “race, color, or national origin.”

The Delicate Subject of Cartoons

  

   A distinction should be made between the act of drawing a cartoon and the beheading of a person. Many seem to think that the decapitators are better citizens than the cartoonists. I tend to side with the cartoonists and the silent minority on this issue. I can’t imagine a cartoon as bad as a beheading. Although I strive to avoid current events, at least this post does not again mention still-President Trump. It does involve our Prime Minister.

   The issue concerns the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. Five years ago, twelve staff members at the publication were killed because they published cartoons of Muhammad. The killers are now going on trial, so the magazine decided to re-publish the images. A teacher chose to show the cartoons and discuss the issue of ‘freedom of the press” with his class. He was beheaded for doing so. I suppose the majority wonder how stupid the cartoonists and the teacher could be, while I think the beheaders deserve more criticism.

   President Macron apparently felt the same way and when he sought support, none was forthcoming from our Prime Minister. Trudeau had second thoughts, and just a few days ago the Leader of the Opposition had a few of his own, here are some of them:

“Regrettably, in the wake of the recent Islamist attacks in France, killings committed as acts of revenge for our freedoms, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insisted he did not believe in free speech if it could be used to offend someone. To be frank, these words are unworthy of a Canadian prime minister. They once again show Trudeau bowing to ideological Twitter mobs rather than standing up for a founding principle of our country.

Let’s be clear: no dogma, whether political or religious, is immune from criticism. As my colleague Gerard Deltell put it so well in the House of Commons, “Freedom of expression does not exist only when it suits us … It must exist especially when it does not suit our business.” And I will go further: tolerance, which truly defines our country, should not be a one-way street.”

   It does definitely seem like we are on a one-way street. If you are heading the wrong way, you are labelled  an 'Islamophobe' and criticism of Islamists can be classified as a hate crime or deemed 'blasphemous'. If you are among the politically correct and heading in the right direction you perhaps secretly admire those who are really good at cancelling culture, or at least the Western version of it.

   A few brave people spoke up about the issue of freedom of speech, but fewer still were willing to go much beyond that. I fear a fatwa myself for this rather mild critique, but will take the slight risk and go a step further and present a few jokes - but, certainly no images. The jokes are not mine, but I will give no source since the author of them may wish to avoid the fate of Salman Rushdie.

   These jokes were offered after the writer of them noticed that a major American newspaper was providing advice for the increasingly Muslim audience of readers, Here they are, but there are no pictures:

“Which way is Mecca? Ten Timely Tips for Budget Hajj Travel”

“Modern Romance: How Many Wives is Too Many?”

“Healthy New York: Maintaining Vitamin D Sufficiency Under the Burka”

“Food: Top 100 Kebob Houses in Lower Manhattan”

“Sunday Styles: Goat Tending for City Dwellers”

“Five Times A Day: Suing Employers Who Don’t Provide Prayer Rugs”

“Best of New York: Local’s Guide to Men-Only Tea Houses”

“Know Your Tenant’s Rights: Halal Animal Slaughter on the Balcony”

“Summer in the City: Cool Lightweight Burkas that Beat the Heat”

“Taxing Matters: Time for a Municipally Collected Jizya?”

“Healthy New York: Female Genital Mutilation Without Tears”

“CityScape: The 100 Most Beautiful Mosques on the Upper East Side”

“Modern Romance: How Young Is Too Young for Child Marriage? 14? 12?”

“Mosque and State: Time to Rethink the Founding Fathers?”

“The Feminist Muslim’s Guide to Politically Correct Wife Discipline”

   Some of the advice offered involves women and I was reminded of a curious incident that took place in Massachusetts. It concerned signs that were posted around the town of Winchester. The signs were plain and rather innocuous, but still perplexing as this headline indicates: "'Islam Is Right About Women': Odd Signs Spark Confusion in Local Town," Boston 25 News, Sept. 18, 2019. Was the sign poster being sarcastic? Is Islam right about women? Or Wrong? Here is the clever sign that is likely just a bit of troll bait.

Sources:

"Freedom of Expression a Founding Principle of Canada,"Erin O'Toole, Toronto Sun, Nov. 13, 2020.

See also: "Trudeau Shamed Into Supporting France, Freedom of Expression," Brian Lilley, Toronto Sun, Nov. 6, 2020.  These quotations are from this article:

"It’s a sad statement when leaders from around the world stand with France but Canada doesn’t.

The central question is whether it is ever acceptable to insult religious figures, specifically by showing images of Mohammed.

Islam forbids showing images of Mohammed, but I’m not a Muslim and shouldn’t have to live by that rule any more than their rule against eating bacon.

What he should have said is that while he may find the cartoons of Mohammed offensive and understands why Muslims do, it is a fundamental freedom to show them, publish them or discuss them."

Post Script:

I am too cowardly to use the image of you-know-who and hope the cartoon of Erdogan is not overly offensive. I am not the only coward. In 2009, Yale University Press published THE CARTOONS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD, by Jytte Klausen. Oddly enough, there is not one cartoon in it.

If you are interested in the debate over this issue, go back to the spring of 2005. At that time PEN awarded Charlie Hebdo a freedom of speech award. You will think that PEN members would be automatically in favour of presenting such an honour, but the event was boycotted by some. Of course Salman Rushdie, a former PEN president agreed since he had to go into hiding for several years, after the publication of Satanic Verses. Canadian author Michael Ondaatje, among others, protested.

On Osler

   You will likely recognize the name 'Osler' and know that Sir William Osler was a famous Canadian physician, who is sometimes called the 'Father of Modern Medicine'. That phrase was even used in a recent article which went on to suggest his name should be erased from our memory.

   You will be able to judge easily from the headline, the sin of which he is now found to be guilty: "Sir William Osler's Revered Status in Medicine Shaken As Racist Views are Revealed," Marco Chown Oved, Toronto Star, Nov. 9, 2020. That article is reporting on another one with this rather sarcastic title, especially when appearing in a professional medical periodical: "William Osler: Saint in a White Man's Dominion", which is found in the Nov. 9th issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.  Some of Osler's views are now considered by some to be reprehensible (he died in 1919) and it is suggested that his name needs to be removed from various objects and replaced by the names of others now more acceptable. That would include, here in London, Osler Street and the Osler Society up at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry. 

   I was not convinced by the arguments presented, that Osler needs to be eliminated. I admit, as well, that I am more concerned about the skills of my cardiac surgeon than her political views. There are others better equipped to defend Osler including some close by, to wit: "Dr. Vivian McAlister, a surgeon and professor at Western University in London, Ont., warned against people reading Osler's words and judging them by the standards of today. "(Historical figures) all said things that would make us cringe today, but they were still very noble people," McAlister said. "(Osler) inspired all physicians of all races and all backgrounds to do better. He continues to do that today. That is his legacy." (that is from the Star article.) 

   I made a similar point in my post about the current Historical Censoriousness:

“The dispensing of moral judgments upon people or upon actions in retrospect,” wrote Butterfield, is the “most useless and unproductive of all forms of reflection.”

   Both the articles are available to you and you can decide for yourself. As well, you should read the long biographical essay by Charles G. Roland in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, or the shorter one by him in the Canadian Encyclopedia.  There is a good profile of Osler at Johns Hopkins where he was physician-in-chief.  At McGill University, however, his legacy is under attack and, "This summer, Montreal emergency pediatrician and McGill professor Dr. Samir Shaheen-Hussain penned two columns asking why medicine still puts racists on pedestals." Apparently hiring policies at McGill are more liberal now than admissions standards once were, since the discriminatory policies against Jews were not changed until after World War II. While the Dr. above may not be Jewish, if he is really concerned about all the past injustices, he will likely be busier as a polemicist than a physician.

Osler's Other Controversies

   If the Thought Police wish to be thorough in their indictment of the evil Osler, they should include three other incidents which indicate he did not have the character required for the period in which we live. The first two are reported in the DCB profile of Osler mentioned above. For very sensitive readers I should place here one of those warnings one gets before TV shows, but the sentence so far should suffice.

"William was an active and mischievous child, and numerous stories describe his jokes and pranks, one of which ended in an overnight stay in jail."

and

"Sometimes, Osler’s spirits bubbled over into literary practical jokes. One such instance of joie de vivre almost backfired. While living in Montreal, he concocted a spurious and ribald account of the supposed sexual and obstetric practices of an Indian tribe in Quebec, sending it under a pseudonym to a friend who edited a journal. The joke got out of hand when the article was accepted and almost published. A few years later, a similar piece by him was published."

(It is fortunate that I have few readers, none of whom would read carefully enough to notice the involvement of the Indigenous in the episode above. Although the people at Hopkins seem to be aware of all this horrid stuff, if this information spread widely in Canada, Osler would surely be in deep trouble.)

   The third charge against Osler is far more serious. In 1905 he was widely condemned in the North American press for recommending that the elderly be euthanized. He made the suggestion during a talk he delivered as he was leaving Hopkins and it was quite controversial. It shouldn't be. The idea that we should all be allotted a "FIXED PERIOD" was taken from Trollope, but Osler's,  "attempt at jocularity failed when the American yellow press sensationalized the story, claiming that Osler had seriously recommended that all older persons be chloroformed."  His name became a widely used eponym and we can apply it artfully here and say the debate about Osler should be "Oslerized." Sir William Osler likely had both a better bedside manner and a better sense of humour than your current GP. 

Sources:

"Nationwide ridicule of “The Fixed Period” address included cartoons such as this one, showing haloed William Osler dispensing chloroform to aging men. Image courtesy of the Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.

All the above from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6413966/

For the article in the CMAJ. 

"William Osler: Saint in a “White Man’s Dominion,”

CMAJ November 09, 2020 192 (45)

Information about the "Fixed Period" fiasco is easy to find and you can begin with the Wikipedia entry.  A thorough account is found in the following article which also provides these eponymous examples:

“To Oslerize” entered the American lexicon as a synonym for euthanasia, but the Baltimore News went further:

Osler; v.—To retire, to be retired. Example: “I am about to Osler.” “We have decided to Osler the janitor.”

Oslerization—The process of applying the Osler. Example: “Your services are no longer required.”

Oslerumni—Those who have been Oslered or Oslerized; divided into two classes—the material but declining and the spiritual but declined.

Osleresque—Having the quality of early retirement; prematurely languid; that tired feeling at 40.

Osleritis—See lazy.

From: "Osler Goes Viral: "The Fixed Period" Revisited," Charles S. Bryan, Proceedings- Baylor University, Medical Center, 2018-10-02, Vol. 31 (4). p.550.

A new article about Osler has just been published, but I was not able to access it. Here is the abstract:

Charles S. Bryan, "Sir William Osler, Eugenics, Racism, and the Komagata Maru Incident, "Baylor University Medical Proceedings, Published online: 09 Nov 2020

Abstract

A recent critic levels two new charges against Sir William Osler: (1) that in 1912 he was a vice president of the First International Eugenics Congress; and (2) that in 1914 he asserted Canada should remain a “a white man’s country.” Osler was indeed among the 31 vice presidents of the First International Eugenics Congress, but he did nothing further in this area. Osler indeed asserted that Canada should remain a “white man’s country,” but his context was the Komagata Maru incident during which most Canadians felt the same way about 376 passengers from the Punjab Province of British India who sought to defy Canadian immigration law. There is little or no indication of racism elsewhere in Osler’s deeds and writings, and the idea that race is largely a social construct emerged only after his death. Advocates for racial equality should view Osler not as an adversary but rather as an ally in today’s battles for global justice and also for human survival.

Charles S. Bryan (2020) Sir William Osler, eugenics, racism, and the Komagata Maru incident, Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, DOI: 10.1080/08998280.2020.1843380

Bonus Information:

Did you know that the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame is in London and has relocated to 100 Kellogg Lane, The Tower, 4th Floor. 

There is an Osler Society up at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry:

"The Osler Society at Western was founded as a permanent historical society at Western’s Medical School in the 1920s. It is named after Canadian doctor William Osler (1849-1919), who emerged as the ideal modern physician for his stance on the importance of practical instruction teaching in the laboratory, at the bedside and in the morgue. Osler’s The Principles and Practice of Medicine became a landmark textbook, going through eight editions in Osler’s lifetime and sixteen in total, and established him as the authority in modern medicine. His lay sermons include ethical and moral lessons relevant for physicians past and present."