By: Ian A. Cameron, MD,
Book review: Quarantined: Life and Death at William Head Station, 1872-1959
Issue: BCMJ,
vol. 56, No. 8, October 2014,
Page 382 News
By Peter Johnson. Victoria: Heritage House, 2013. ISBN 978-1-927527-31-3. Paperback, 312 pages. $22.95.
Peter Johnson is a good writer, and the assembled pictures of William Head wonderfully evoke the time, place, and historic process quarantine played in our country. The images are also all that the average Canadian is going to see of the old quarantine station, unless they are more fortunate than I was in getting past the prison guard. The author does a commendable job of describing the rocky road leading to the development of a world-class maritime quarantine station with its specialized equipment, dangers, and the ever-present problems of politics, media, and accommodating the class expectations of the day. At the end of the book, his interviews with people who lived and worked at William Head are an engaging human touch.
The author does have related recurring themes in the book: the hypocrisy of the inscription on the Statute of Liberty, protecting the public vs infringement of civil liberties, and his favorite--British snobbery, classism, and racism. With the third theme, it is as if he thinks his audience won't get the point unless he frequently reminds them of it. He also gives unreferenced opinions. He refers to the federal government's "niggling neglect." A primary reference to the auditor general's report from the year in question would have been much more convincing. Historical novelists use their own adjectives to describe historical figures. So does Peter Johnson. In British Columbia's first quarantine debacle he describes Mayor Lewis of Victoria "grinning like a Cheshire cat" and says that the quarantine officer, Dr Matthews, "simpered about, vaccinating everyone in sight." This technique may enliven the story but it is at the expense of credibility.
Farley Mowat said of himself, "I never let facts get in the way of a good story." Has Peter Johnson sacrificed focused scholarship for the sake of his story?
--Ian A. Cameron, MD
Sherbrooke, NS