Of heroes and cowards

By Janice Kennedy, Ottawa Citizen
January 21, 2012
Right now it's not a great time for anyone harbouring a belief in the fundamental goodness of human nature.

This week, a ship's captain is said to have abandoned his sinking vessel before his passengers. In Montreal, a respected retired cop is alleged to have tried selling a list of informants' names to the Mafia. An officer in the Royal Canadian Navy is charged with espionage.

The implicit betrayal of trust is breathtaking.

A few months ago, video from China showed 18 passersby deliberately ignoring the battered body of a toddler hit by a car - betrayal of trust on a whole other level, breaching humanity's deepest common bonds.

It is tempting to wonder just what the heck is going on. Has our natural sense of honour or morality been so eroded by the impersonal world we've created - where real communication is subsumed by the superficial shorthand of cybergadgetry - that we're losing touch with our humanity?

Or are those deeply conservative voices right, after all? Could it be that this postmodern landscape of liberals and loonies really is an amoral place, devoid of the social and spiritual ethos that once shaped our civilization?

So much hand-wringing to do. So little time.

Follow the mainstream news, and you could get seriously depressed, convinced that the human race is headed only one place. And it's getting there in a handbasket.

Which is why an occasional dose of therapeutic perspective is indicated. With it, you realize that, dismaying news stories notwithstanding, the awful is actually aberrational.

Look around, as I did this week after an email got me thinking, and you realize there are in fact a lot of people on this planet who keep the faith every day, sometimes almost heroically.

One of them is Ottawa's Patrick McDougall, the indefatigable oneman crusade who provided my email dose of perspective. I wrote about McDougall, a retired CBC announcer, some years ago, when he was in the thick of his battle against charlatanism and those who would exploit the vulnerable.

He had taken up arms in the name of his beautiful daughter, who died of breast cancer in 2003. Desperate and willing to try anything, McDougall's daughter had gone to a local company that made extravagant claims about its products for cancer patients. She put much of her money, and even more of her trust, into an "alternative" approach that derided conventional medical therapies as it plied her with what were essentially vitamin and mineral supplements.

It was an obscene abuse of hope, the one delicate thing that drives and supports cancer patients. Because McDougall understands that so well, he insists that the hopers must never be dismissed as "naive, cowardly, stupid or even hasty." If you've ever received that terrible diagnosis, he says - as he has himself - you know that "it's terrifying beyond all description. You are more than ready to consider any alternative to surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, no matter how expensive or outlandish."

Which makes you easy pickings. For 10 years, McDougall has worked tirelessly to expose those who would prey unscrupulously on the vulnerability of others. He has researched exhaustively and lobbied tirelessly - by letter, in person, on air - trying to persuade provincial and federal governments that "alternative therapies" should be regulated and snake-oil salesmen should not be allowed the free rein they have.

But he has not prevailed. In fact, his email this week claims he's conceding defeat. He's 82 and tired of banging his head against the wall.

Since Ontario loves self-regulating professional "colleges" so much, he says, it should establish a CCCC (College of Cancer Cure Charlatans). He sounds almost bitter.

But I don't believe him. In his daughter's memory, he has made it his life's mission to protect cancer patients from those who would exploit their fragile hope. As long as that exploitation continues, it's difficult to imagine Pat McDougall staying quiet.

Is that heroic? Probably. It's also a nice antidote to recent nasty news stories, and a good dose of perspective.

For every spectacular coward in command of a sinking ship, there is a Capt. Sully Sullenberger, landing a stricken Airbus on the Hudson River in 2009 and guiding 155 people to safety. For every corrupt cop and treasonous officer, there are countless good, and sometimes heroic, men and women in police and military uniforms.

Even that horrific story out of China has its ray of light, a 58-year-old woman who stopped and tried to help the dying child. This week, she brushed off the notion that her actions were special, saying, "I just think we should save others."

Clearly, she is not alone. After this week's dismaying reports apparently signalling the end of civilization as we know it, her comment is a calming corrective.

Janice Kennedy writes here Saturdays.