KEEPING UP WITH DR. W. GIFFORD-JONES
The 94-year-old surgeon and writer extols the virtues of sex, rum and rappelling 30-storey buildings, Flannery Dean writes.
Here’s hoping you reach your 90s with even half of the vigour and vitality of Ken Walker. The 94-year-old surgeon, newspaper columnist (Dr. W. Gifford-Jones) and author of 90+ How I Got There (Act Natural Corp, 2015) puts most 40-year-olds to shame in terms of energy, mental clarity, work ethic and sheer nerve.
“I’m always coming up with ideas,” he says over the phone from his home in Toronto. “That scares the hell out of Susan, my wife, when I say I’ve got an idea. That’s when she starts to worry,” he quips.
Some of those ideas have been good — some fall into the category of “good intentions.” In June, he decided it would be a good idea to take part in a charity event led by his son, a longtime Wish Granter for the Make-A-Wish Foundation that raises money to grant wishes to children with life-threatening illness. The Rope for Hope challenge required him to rappel 30 storeys down the side of city hall in Toronto. “My wife was not amused and my son worried.”
The daredevil confesses that even he wondered if he was crazy when the day came (for the record: not only had he never rappelled before, he’d never even heard of it).
“I must admit when I drove up to city hall and when I saw some people rappelling down like flies, I thought Aie-yi-yi.”
The ride was “bumpy” and he flipped upside down at one point. “I banged my head a bit and ended up with a few bruises. But I made it to the bottom.”
Ask him what’s the secret to longevity and the author attributes it to the combination of “good genes, good luck, good sense and good rum.”
Exercise, weighing yourself daily, skipping processed foods and dessert, not smoking and not taking prescription drugs all fall under the “good sense” rubric for Walker (advice he details in his book, which was published when he was 92).
His approach to health is provocative — even a bit rock ’n’ roll. He rages against do-gooders who preach abstemiousness and believes that alcohol, when enjoyed in moderation, is a health tonic (and so much so that he believes there should be a pub in every hospital).
He also advocates an active sex life. “Sex is good exercise. If you have sex three times a week in a year, you’ll burn off 7,500 calories. I’d rather do that then jog 35 miles to burn those calories,” he says.
Sex and rum aside, it’s not easy following his advice. “It’s hard work,” he says. But committing to that effort may play a role in aging well, too. A quick survey of Walker’s full life reveals he’s never been one to shy away from hard work.
The self-confessed workaholic has divided much of his adult working life between two full-time jobs. When he wasn’t administering to his patients in his gynecology practice, the Harvard-educated surgeon was writing. His first book, Hysterectomy: A Book for the Patient (University of Toronto, 1961), was published under the pseudonym Dr. W. Gifford-Jones, a moniker he chose to avoid being accused of using a public profile to solicit for patients.
“The publisher of my first book said when I gave him the name: ‘I like the ring of it and I have the image of a silver-haired surgeon to the Queen of England!’ ”
Fourteen years and two books later (he’s written nine in total), he made his debut in the Globe and Mail. Today, he’s syndicated in more than 80 papers in Canada and the U.S.
Though he’s retired from his gynecology practice — he saw his last patient at the age of 87 — he’s still writes daily. When asked which of his careers he’s preferred — the doctor’s life or the journalist’s — he says, “both.” That affection for serving the public, both in his practice and as a medical journalist, has seen him stick his neck out in support of controversial health topics over the years.
“I was always for women’s rights and that got me into trouble,” he confides.
His early support for a woman’s right to abortion and access to birth control came at a steep private cost for both him and his family, who were then based in Niagara Falls, Ont. After the law permitting limited abortions in Canada was passed in 1969, “doctors began referring abortions to me and I did them. That’s when life became very difficult,” he shares.
He received death threats and spent nearly a year sleeping with a gun under his pillow.
A fierce advocate for patients’ rights, he’s used his profile to push for more humane medical care.
In 1979, he penned a column advocating that pharmaceuticalgrade heroin be made legal to use as a pain killer for terminal cancer patients, a compassionate practice that had been legal in England for more than a century at the time.
The column struck a chord. “I had 1,200 readers write to me.” He ran with that public support and became an advocate for change.
Eventually, he would deliver 40,000 letters of support to the Minister of Health in Ottawa and was instrumental in seeing the practice legalized in 1984. (It’s remained controversial and has been subject to much back and forth politically. It was banned by Conservatives at one point, but is currently permitted.)
He’s also long been publicly in favour of assisted dying. “We should all have the right to determine our own life and freedom of choice about how we die,” he says.
The good doctor is blunt in his assessment of those who oppose it on the basis of spiritual or ethical concerns. “As Aristotle once said, ‘there’s a stupid corner in the brain of every wise person.’”
Asked if he would do it all again, he hesitates briefly before saying yes. “If I didn’t do it all again, I would be a hypocrite.”
And yes, he’d like another crack at rappelling, too.
“I think I could do it better.”