Passion into prose
Battle over reproductive rights at centre of debut novel by family physician
Middenrammers John Bart Freehand Books John Bart apologizes more than once during an interview with the Herald, concerned that he is coming off as a little preachy.
But it’s passion, not preachiness, that comes across when the 71-year-old Toronto-based family physician talks about his debut novel, Middenrammers, one of three titles published this spring by Calgary-based Freehand Books.
At the centre of the novel is a social justice issue that tends to ignite passion, and anger: reproductive rights. So it’s understandable that a chat with Bart about the book can quickly turn into a conversation about the issue.
“I can’t imagine any family physician who hasn’t met the effects of denial of reproductive rights face to face,” says Bart, in an interview from his home in Toronto. “People who are against termination of pregnancy or even contraception make their opinions known and the effect, the impairment are disastrous on some people’s lives. Women have the right to be counselled as to whether they wish to proceed with an abortion and, two, to have one if they want. In that case, it should be under the safest possible conditions.
“Afterwards, the women should automatically have access to counselling. They need counselling before, during and after. I’ve seen patients who have had termination of pregnancy done by back-street abortionists. It’s absolutely horrible. To allow it to proceed without comment is not right. Anything can be done should be done to avoid that.”
Middenrammers is apparently a derogatory term, specific to the Yorkshire area in the early 1970s where the book is set. It was reserved for doctors and midwives who performed abortions.
Set in Sweport, a fictional fishing village in east Yorkshire, the novel tells the story of Dr. Brian Davis. He’s a young London-based doctor who was involved in the turbulent workers’ revolutions of Europe in the late 1960s. He arrives at the Sweport Maternity Hospital a few years later for a more quiet life, but falls in love with a passionate midwife known as Woodie. Both are faced with a hospital administration that doesn’t permit contraceptive devices or abortion, which has harrowing consequences for some of the young patients.
Bart received his medical degree in 1969 from the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine in London. While he has lived and practised in Toronto since 1973, like Davis, he spent some time in Yorkshire as a young man. It allows him to present his fictional setting with an authentic sense of time and place.
“It’s a singular place,” says Bart, who will be joining fellow Freehand authors Catherine Cooper and Ian Colford for joint book launches Saturday, May 7 at Shelf Life Books in Calgary. “That’s the place where the Vikings first landed in England. They’ve left a genetic trail that you can see. A lot of the people are tall and blond and direct, much like you’d expect the Vikings were, except, of course, they are peace-loving and not warlike. It was interesting for a lad born and bred in London to move there for awhile, which I did for a couple of years.”
Still, a novel based solely on the author’s convictions on a social or political issue doesn’t necessarily translate into memorable literature. What sets Middenrammers apart are the characters, fully fleshed out no matter which side the divide they are on when it comes to a woman’s reproductive rights.
“What I tried to do in this case was present the protagonists, Davis and Woodie, and the surgeon (Dr. Cooper) and his wife who oppose them, in the most human light possible,” Bart says. “I fully respect the right of somebody who opposes abortion to state that he does or she does. I respect the reasons that they come to that decision. I tried to present that by presenting Cooper and his wife as people of strong religious beliefs and that’s how they got to it. I tried not to conceal that.”
Bart, who has five children and seven grandchildren, has been a family physician for 40 years. Davis, he stresses, is not based on him nor his history practising medicine. He does say the people and situations are inspired by four decades providing family care.
He was an original member of the Toronto HIV Primary Care Physicians Group and the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and, it turns out, a frustrated novelist for the past 30 years. When asked about writing his debut novel, he is quick to point out that it his only his debut in the sense that none of his past books have been published.
“I’m 71, at my age to have anything new happen is interesting,” he says. “And to have a novel published? That’s great. My next two will be ever better.”