Bethune House: A Beacon for a Nation

Bethune Memorial House National Historic Site of Canada in Gravenhurst, Ontario, commemorates the life and achievements of Dr. Norman Bethune.

Dr. Bethune is most famous for the last two years of his life, which were spent in China, serving as a surgeon and teacher. His dedicated and selfless service in the Second Sino-Japanese War and his contributions to health care and training make Bethune a familiar and beloved name in China.

China’s 1.3 billion people know his story and honour his legacy, and statues, monuments, museums and schools throughout China commemorate him.

Delegations from China visiting Bethune Memorial House often bring gifts to leave at his birthplace, and an ever-increasing number of visitors from the People’s Republic of China are visiting Bethune House to honour this giant of medicine, and those visits are having an impact locally.

The night he arrived in China in 1937, he was summoned by Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. Mao invited him to supervise the Eighth Route Army Border Hospital. Within a month, Bethune decided that he would be more effective at the front, where he could treat the wounded immediately.

Near the end of October 1939, while operating on a wounded soldier, Bethune accidentally cut his finger. This led to blood poisoning, but even while he was dying, he refused to stop working. Norman Bethune died in the early hours of November 12, 1939.

When Chairman Mao heard of his death, he wrote "In Memory of Norman Bethune." Now one of Mao's most famous essays, it is required reading in China and Bethune is revered as the ideal of selfless devotion to duty. His picture appears on posters, books, and postage stamps. Sometimes only a fragment of a sentence from Mao's essay is enough to identify him: "Without thought of self."

In Canada, the federal government acquired his birthplace, the former Presbyterian manse in Gravenhurst, in 1973, and officially opened it in 1976 as a Canadian memorial. The provincial and federal governments have combined efforts on a feasibility study to help understand how to prepare for the expected large influx of Chinese visitors in the coming years.

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