• Age: 9 to 12
• Grade: 4 to 7
• Reading age: 9 to 12

Short-listed for the 2002 Canadian Children’s Book Centre Norma Fleck Award
Norman Bethune was a doctor who devoted his life to helping others and whose story is a remarkable one, cut short by his early death in China in 1938. This biography in our Stories of Canada series traces his life from his childhood spent moving around Ontario as a preacher’s son to his experiences in the First World War and his crusades to find a cure for tuberculosis and to promote health care in Canada. But Bethune is most famous for the time he spent fighting Fascism through his profession of healing in Spain and China during the late 1930s. His story inspires us to believe that we can change the world through our actions.

John Wilson was born in 1951 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He did his early growing up on the Island of Skye and in Paisley, near Glasgow. From 1969 to 1974, he attended the University of St. Andrews where he took an Honours B.Sc.. in Geology and never played golf once. He took a position with the Geological Survey of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). In his two years there, he mapped rocks, dodged land mines and watched the country sink ever deeper into civil war. Shortly before he was due to be called into the army, John retreated back to Britain on his way to the safety of Canada. He settled on Calgary where geology was booming and the only danger was freezing to death in January. In 1979, he moved to Edmonton to take up a post with the Alberta Geological Survey. In 1988 he sold a feature article to the Globe and Mail. This fueled a smouldering mid-life crisis and he took up freelance writing full-time. With some success, John mined the experiences of his travels for articles, journalism and photo essays. He even began to express himself poetically and, with a young family, began writing children's stories. He moved to Nanaimo and then Lantzville on Vancouver Island. John has been widely published by a number of Canadian presses, with his acolades including a shortlisting for the Governor General’s Award.

John Wilson's profile page

• Short-listed, Canadian Children's Book Centre Norma Fleck Award

Clear, straightforward writing and one-page 'chapters' make this particularly accessible to younger readers.

Toronto Star

Intelligent yet accessible.

CM Magazine

Honest, accessible account of Norman Bethune's eventful and still influential work. Engages readers.

Norma Fleck Award Jury

Comprehensive, accessible. A good addition to school and public libraries.

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