Amazing Medical Stories (13 page)

Robert found this to be just the ticket for his winter wanderings. His visits had to be mainly at nighttime so that the skis wouldn't stick in sun-melted snow. Townsfolk would often accompany him on his nightly forays, a cold ride for the rear passenger who lacked even the rude shelter provided the driver by the windshield. An instrument which was more valuable than any of his medical tools was the pair of wire cutters he used when the “snow plane,” as they called it, had to travel cross-country over wire-fenced fields. Robert left a path of demolished fences behind him on his excursions, but never a complaint was heard from the local farmers,
who knew it could be their families who might next need medical attention. An annoying glitch was that on bumps the propeller had a tendency to hit the rear skis and break, keeping Steve Hennigar busy at his lathe.

The sleigh proved to be a godsend to the community; many a baby was attended, many cases of pneumonia treated, and many an appendix removed before rupturing, thanks to its service. Among the memorable calls in the mechanical sleigh, Robert particularly remembers the night he arrived at an isolated dairy farm. As he passed the neat red barn, he heard the cows loudly mooing. The farmer's wife was in labour, and when Dr. Wright entered the house, he found the prospective father looking very anxious. “Thank God you're here, Doc! I'll leave you to tend to the wife. Those cows need milkin' some bad.” With that he hurried to the barn.

In October 1942, Dr. Wright pulled up stakes and moved to Elmsdale, a town on the banks of the Shubenacadie River about thirty miles from Noel. Here he practised until retiring at the age of seventy-eight after over fifty years of practice.

Other memorable house calls include one by speedboat over the storm-tossed waters of Grand Lake to the isolated estate of E.H. Horne, the founder of the Noranda Mines. Perhaps to compensate for years of driving a prosaic Model T, Robert later bought a Karman Ghia sports car to use for his home visits. Nights spent in the “snow plane” gliding across moonlit fields may also have had something to do with his later learning to fly an airplane. But among Dr. Robert Wright's many housecalls, none was made in a vehicle quite as exotic as the Blackburn boys' propeller-driven brainchild.

George Burden

When Dr. Joseph C. Cyr, a New Brunswick general practitioner, died in 2002, one of the obituaries written about him described him as the last surviving victim of a man whose incredible exploits inspired the 1960 movie
The Great Impostor
. Truth be known, Dr. Cyr was, in fact, only one of many individuals bamboozled by Ferdinand (Fred) Waldo Demara, an American who spent his entire life perpetrating numerous devious but brilliant hoaxes.

Dr. Cyr first meet Demara in Grand Falls, New Brunswick, in 1951, and at that time he was Brother John, a novice at a Trappist Monastery. The young physician would have found it hard to believe that this priestly fellow had a bizarre and infamous past. Since quitting high school, Demara had successfully passed himself off as a Doctor of Philosophy and a Doctor of Zoology; he had been a law student and a hospital orderly; and he had also spent time in the United States navy and army. (He had been court-martialled for going AWOL from the navy and spent eighteen months in a military jail.) Now in 1951, Demara was cleverly exploiting the mystique that his religious identity provided. This image was nothing new for him. At the age of sixteen, he had run away from home to join the Cistercian monks in Valley Fields, Rhode Island. A year later, he had transferred to the Brothers of Charity.

Brother John made a big impression on Dr. Cyr, especially when the monk revealed that, prior to joining his holy order, he been a physician. Dr. Cyr, who was a recent graduate of Laval University medical school, enjoyed discussing medical therapies with the monk and confided that he would like to obtain a licence to also practise in the United States. Years later, Demara said, “I told him that I would be only too glad to present

Ferdinand Demara, photographed in his parents' home soon after he was discharged from the Canadian Navy.
LIFE MAGAZINE

his credentials to the medical board in Maine. I didn't steal his papers. He gave them to me.”

A few months later, Brother John, now calling himself Dr. Joseph Cyr, turned up at the Royal Canadian Navy recruiting depot in Saint John, New Brunswick. The petty officer on duty was ecstatic when the “physician” informed him that he wanted to serve overseas. The Korean War was underway, and the navy was desperate to sign up doctors. That evening “Dr. Cyr” was flown to Ottawa, where he received VIP treatment; his medical credentials were subjected to a cursory review at best. Within days he was commissioned a surgeon-lieutenant, fitted for new uniforms and assigned to duty at the navy hospital in Halifax.

There Demara exercised his deceptive powers. Whenever he encountered a serious illness, he consulted a senior medical officer, who was usually flattered that his colleague would seek his advice. He also came up with what he hoped was a foolproof treatment regime: anyone who had a sore throat or a bad cough was ritually treated with large doses of penicillin.

Ken Book, who now lives in Halifax, will never forget “Dr. Cyr.” In the early 1950s, then a leading seaman in the navy, he developed painful blisters on his feet and, by chance, was seen by the “physician.” “He looked at my feet and then gave me some papers to obtain white cotton socks. He also decided that I should get a shot of penicillin. I was about to leave his office when he advised me to come back to see him the following Monday. I told him that I would be going back to sea that day. When he heard this, he informed me that he would like to give me a second shot of penicillin, which he did.”

Book says at the time he thought little of this unusual treatment, but then his condition changed dramatically. “I was staying with a friend for the weekend, and I soon developed swollen eyes and started to feel terrible. My friend got really worried and called an ambulance, which took me back to the hospital at Stadacona, where I stayed for several days. Turns out, I had a severe reaction to the penicillin, but I don't recall ever seeing Dr. Cyr again.”

In 1962, I worked at the Canadian Forces Hospital on the Stadacona naval base in Halifax as a registered nurse. There I met a medical officer who had known “Dr. Cyr.” He recalled a number of amusing incidents
and told me the following story. One evening, he and his wife had invited “Dr. Cyr” to spend the evening with them. Their guest made quite an impression when he arrived carrying a dozen red roses, which he graciously presented to his hostess. The now-enlightened naval officer commented, “He really was a smooth character.”

“Dr. Cyr's” credibility was finally questioned when he was transferred to the sick bay on the aircraft carrier HMCS
Magnificent.
Unable to hide his lack of medical knowledge, he performed poorly. The ship's commanding officer was not impressed, and in one of his reports he stated that “Cyr lacked training in medicine and surgery, especially diagnosis.”

Despite this bad review, Demara's deception remained undiscovered, and he was soon re-assigned to HMCS
Cayuga
, a destroyer bound for Korea. On his first day on the ship, the imposter's medical skills were put to the test. Ordered to report to the captain's quarters, he found Commander James Plomer in agony, demanding that the “doctor” immediately extract an abscessed tooth. Excusing himself, Demara returned to his cabin, where he feverishly consulted his medical textbooks, something he often did. Equipped with a syringe full of Novocaine to dull his patient's pain, he returned to the captain's cabin, where he managed to yank out the offending tooth.

Demara's time in Korea would prove to be his undoing, not because of allegations of medical incompetence, but because of the stories that began to circulate about his superb surgical skills. It was soon being reported in Canadian newspapers that “Dr. Cyr,” a brilliant navy surgeon, had performed many operations and amputations. Among these alleged accomplishments was a report that under extremely difficult conditions, he had performed successful chest surgery on a critically injured South Korean soldier. Demara later liked to claim that he had simply “read up” on that operation in
The Lancet
, the prestigious medical journal. No one really knows whether or not Demara actually performed any major surgery.

Demara did his best to stifle the unwanted publicity for the “life saving” surgery he had allegedly performed in Korea, but his “modesty” was to no avail. The navy's public relations staff could not afford to miss an opportunity to boast about their outstanding doctor and his extraordinary wartime achievements. Back in Canada, it seems that one of the people who read about the exploits of “Dr. Joseph Cyr” was none other

HMCS
Cayuga
, the ship on which Demara served.
DND

than Mary Cyr, the real Dr. Cyr's mother. She contacted her son to let him know that a man on a Canadian navy ship in Korea was impersonating him, and the real Dr. Cyr immediately contacted the RCMP.

Commander Plomer, the captain of the
Cayuga
, was incredulous when he received a radio message: “ We have information that Joseph C. Cyr, surgeon-lieutenant, 0-17669, is an impostor. Remove from active duty immediately, repeat immediately. Conduct investigation and report the facts to Chief of Naval Staff Ottawa.” The commander thought this was a terrible mistake. He told “Joe” he was convinced that it was “a lot of rot,” and ordered him to “ carry on with your duty.” Demara thanked him for his support, but a few days later he was ordered back to Canada. Rumour has it that he attempted suicide before returning to Canada, but individuals like Commander Plomer were convinced that this never happened.

To say the least, the Royal Canadian Navy was embarrassed that Demara had made fools of them. For some unexplained reason, they chose to let him off very lightly. They even granted him an honourable discharge, paid him the money he was owed and, it is believed, suggested “he leave the country.” It has been alleged that the navy hadn't discovered that he wasn't a doctor, just that he wasn't the real Dr. Cyr.

Dr. Cyr and the Great Impostor did meet again when Dr. Cyr was a visiting physician at a hospital in California. Looking across an operating
room, he was sure he recognized Demara, his face conveniently hidden behind a surgical mask. Demara was apparently working as a chaplain at the hospital, but Dr. Cyr choose not to “defrock” him.

For the last twenty years of his life, Demara continued to try brilliant though invariably implausible schemes. But it seems he could never recapture the excitement that he had once thrived on. A doctor who knew him during the final days called him “about the most miserable, unhappy man I have ever known.” Ferdinand Waldo Demara was sixty when he died of a heart attack in 1982. Ironically, his ashes were scattered at sea.

Many of the people who knew him, especially his old navy buddies, remember him, not as a despicable con man, but as a true folk hero. The men on the
Cayuga
even sent their former shipmate a Christmas card from Korea. Enclosed in the card were some lines of verse written by one of the officers on the ship.

BECAUSE HE'S OUR FRIEND

He may be six kinds of a liar,

He may be ten kinds of a fool;

He may have faults that are dire,

And seem without reason or rule…

But we don't analyze, we just love him,

Because — well, because he's our friend.

Many of the men he served with in Korea actually admired Demara for his amazing ability to orchestrate a number of near-perfect “masquerades.” No doubt he appreciated their admiration, and probably explained with a chuckle that what he had done had been prompted by what he liked to call “rascality, pure rascality!”

Dorothy Grant