Dr. Barrie DeVeber honoured
Editor’s Note:The December 2012 Interim reported on a Euthanasia Prevention Coalition national convention held Nov. 17, in London, Ont., which included a banquet to honour Barrie deVeber. We reprint excerpts from the article as part of our coverage of deVeber’s passing last month.
After the conference, about 100 people attended a banquet honouring Dr. Barrie deVeber, and there were several speakers acknowledging his contributions to the health profession and pro-life movement; there were also about a dozen emails from medical doctors from abroad noting his influence in promoting palliative care and international opponents of euthanasia praising his fight against legalizing the killing of the sick and disabled.
DeVeber founded one of the first two local pro-life groups in Canada in a church basement in London, Ont., the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. He was also a president of Alliance for Life Canada in the 1970s, founder of the Toronto-based Human Life Research Institute in 1982 (and since renamed the deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research), and co-founded the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of Ontario (now Canada). He also founded Camp Trillium for young cancer patients and their siblings, and is professor emeritus in pediatrics and oncology at the University of Western Ontario.
Campaign Life Coalition national president Jim Hughes told several jokes that attracted both laughs and groans before becoming serious. Hughes said he “thanked God for knowing you all these years” and praised the “foundation you helped create” upon which later pro-life work could be carried out.
Palliative care nurse and EPC co-founder Jean Echlin praised deVeber’s wife Iola for “putting together a strong family that supported him” in all his work. Lawyer Hugh Scher, another EPC co-founder, thanked deVeber for becoming “a world leader in opposing euthanasia” and “putting together and marshaling the strength of the EPC.”
Margaret Cottle, who serves on the board of the EPC praised deVeber’s tenaciousness and stubbornness that allowed him to carry on in areas “in which there was hostility to his values.” She concluded, “thank you for not giving up.”
Kathy Matusiak, executive director of the deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research, said despite his numerous and varied accomplishments, deVeber is a humble man who protested the renaming of the Human Life Research Institute in 1996 when the board of directors chose to honour its founder by including his name in theirs.
Alex Schadenberg’s mother Mary van Veen of Woodstock, Ont., said deVeber changed her life. Recalling his support for her local pro-life group in the early 1970s, she said it was at his insistence that she became head of Woodstock Right to Life after her fifth son, David, was born. She said deVeber addressed the first meeting of the group in 1974 and again at Woodstock RTL’s 35th anniversary.
Bishop emeritus of London, John Sherlock, said deVeber was a man “who acted on his faith from which his pro-life values flowed,” calling him “a devoted servant of God” who “deserves our admiration and support.”
DeVeber said he was greatly influenced by his parents. He said his mother taught him in the 1930s “that everyone was equal.” That was revolutionary at the time and it stuck with deVeber his whole life. His father, he said, “was the model of a gentleman,” and both his parents made him what he became.
Of his numerous endeavours, deVeber said, “I jump into a lot of things not knowing what was going to happen,” but said he did them because they needed to be done. He said Camp Trillium, which he founded in 1984 to provide recreational experiences for children with cancer and their families to enhance their quality of life, was “the biggest thing we did.”
He concluded the evening by thanking everyone – “I’m grateful to you all who came out” – and vowed to “keep going” in the work that brought 100 people out to honour him.
