In an uncertain time, Steini Brown has been the ‘rock’ of Ontario’s science table
One thing about Steini Brown is you can rely on him in the hard times, and maybe especially then. When the co-chair of Ontario’s science table gives regular public briefings about COVID-19, it is a serious, honest, even dour comfort; he tells you what the science says about the pandemic as best he can, and so has almost accidentally become the most trusted public health voice in Ontario. In an uncertain time, Steini Brown has been a certainty.
“So much of the pandemic has been obscured. So much is through this veil, darkly,” says John McGrath of TVO, a regular at the briefings. “And then you have Steini Brown, and you ask a question, and he gives you as clear an answer as he’s able to, and it’s like discovering a superpower.”
The best example came Feb. 11, when the tall, bespectacled Brown presented evidence about the dangers of reopening as the province prepared to reopen. McGrath infamously asked, “am I missing something here, or is this presentation actually predicting a disaster?”
“No, I don’t think you’re missing anything,” said Brown.
The province reopened; cases soared. That answer was a defining moment of the third wave.
The province’s independent volunteer science table has become Ontario’s strongest pandemic conscience, with the 50-year-old Brown — along with scientific director Dr. Peter Juni — as its most prominent face. Equity, action to avoid lockdowns, preserving hospital capacity, protecting the vulnerable: all are supported by the science, and while no model is perfect, the table has accurately captured where the pandemic is headed.
When Brown sits next to the oft-confused and oft-confusing chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Williams, it is a vision of what Ontario’s pandemic direction could have been.
“I think he’s a very good man, in this very fundamental way of being,” says Juni, the Swissborn scientist who joined the table last June. “He just really tried to move things in a direction that would be helpful for the province, for the people of this province.
“Steini is also, what is this in English, an Urgestein. A primary rock.”
A primary rock is a foundational piece, and Brown had his own primary rocks. Like many children, Adalsteinn Brown adored his father. Brown’s mother, Unnur, of Icelandic descent, shaped her only child in her own right. But Steini’s father, Dr. John Brown, a neurologist, was larger than life. He felled tall trees perfectly in the middle of a London, Ont., suburb to clear land for their house. He could do anything.
“He had one leg mangled by polio, but … he was recruited to play for the Bruins. When I was a kid and getting beaten up he took the kids’ classes with me for taekwondo and ended up winning the Canadian championship in his age category,” says Brown. “The first time he golfed he was under par; he played tennis with both hands. Just a superb athlete, and I desperately wanted to be like him. But every time I got a ball in my hand or a stick or anything else, it kind of ended up sideways.”
But Brown was bright, and found ways to succeed. At Harvard, where he studied government, he pursued effort sports: rowing until his back gave out, and then boxing. He took a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford (public health) but left early for private enterprise, and lived in New York, Palo Alto, Paris for a spell. One-time third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot bought one of the healthcare-related startups Brown worked for. Brown liked him.
And then at age 29 Brown was diagnosed with lymphoma. He had been making a lot of money and living a pretty fun life; he specifically mentions cigars. (“I know a dean of public health should never say that sort of stuff,” says Brown.)
The cancer meant radiation that would chew up his mouth, and surgery, and no smoking, ever. So Steini Brown sat down and smoked the last cigars of his young life.
“This was before cellphones, and you wouldn’t have a computer with you,” says Brown. “You just sort of sit and enjoy it. And it made me actually think about what it is I really wanted to do. It was after that I came back from New York.”
Brown took a hellacious but unspecified pay cut and came home to work on things that felt meaningful to him: a hospital report card project, the Excellent Care For All Act in 2010. He bounced between the University of Toronto and government and back again, earning stature and respect, and eventually rose to dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
Then the pandemic arrived, and Ontario, denuded and ossified and run by a government that largely considered public health a luxury society didn’t need, was flying more or less blind.
Brown doesn’t enjoy the spotlight; he has rarely returned media calls, and when contacted for this piece he spent three days thinking before agreeing, in large part to showcase the science table. Early on, Brown and some colleagues tried to gather modellers because Ontario forecasts were all over the place. The group grew as challenges grew — Brown or his colleagues would call VPs of research and ask, who are the best people you have?
Nobody who was invited said no, and the government accepted the association, despite its natural disdain for good public advice. The first modelling was in late March. Brown doesn’t report to the government but presents the table’s findings to cabinet and the premier, and briefs the public.
“We value his steadfast commitment to helping us protect the health and well-being of Ontarians during this unprecedented time,” said Minister of Health Christine Elliott in a statement. Williams, in a statement, called working with Brown over the past 15 years in various capacities a privilege, and said, “I have always been impressed at his professionalism, honesty and intellectual integrity at all times.”
The briefings just happened: The table was asked to present once, and then offered a biweekly spot. Brown took it, like everything else, seriously.
“Sometimes you see me kind of pause,” says Brown. “It’s because I’m really trying to make sure that I’m bringing everything I’ve heard from the relevant scientists to bear on this.
“And so it really isn’t my voice. It’s 120 voices, right? Not on every issue, but it’s a really nice thing. Because if I’m trusted, it’s because there are so many people from across the province bringing intellectual expertise to it.”
Dr. Allison McGeer, an infectious diseases legend at Sinai Health, says one of Brown’s great and rare gifts is translating science to policy-makers, partly because he truly understands how to listen to people. Juni says he emphasized academic freedom and honesty when he joined the table, “so this means some of my responses were a lot less diplomatic than his. And he always had my back in all these moments, and I’m sure it was not always easy.”
“Peter’s just excellent … and Steini’s just about the best person I’ve ever seen,” says Dr. David Fisman, an epidemiologist with the Dalla Lana school, and a member of the table. “He has the ability to create this sense of purpose: that sense of why are you doing this, what are you working towards?”
Which brings us to April 15, when the table said essential workers should be protected and people needed to be safely outdoors, and cabinet responded by closing playgrounds. Juni called it the darkest day of his career; Brown called him that night, and Juni was in tears. Mostly, Brown just listened.
“He just has this, what do you call it, sixth sense for people,” says Juni. “It’s tremendously helpful in this situation.”
The following Sunday the table reconvened, angry and frustrated and in danger of losing
people. Two things Brown said stood out: he asked, are we doing this for the government, or are we doing this for Ontario? And he said the option to disband the table was there. But it was an option they could only use once.
Nobody left. When the province finally announced what looked like a responsible reopening plan last week, and Premier Doug Ford made several allusions to science table advice, table member Dr. Andrew Morris called it “a huge victory for Steini Brown, and the science table.”
Imagine Ontario’s pandemic without this group of volunteers is a grim exercise, even given everything that has happened. It is impossible to imagine without Brown bridging those gaps.
And like everyone, Brown is the product of accumulation. The way he listens comes from his dad: Patients would stop his father in the streets, or he would wait for his dad in the ER to get more time with him, and Brown would watch how his dad treated people. When Brown took a pay cut to return to Ontario he thought a lot about his dad making Sunday morning phone calls to patients after poring over their charts — stuff a doctor couldn’t bill for, but which might help the people he cared for.
Brown works for the university instead of private enterprise partly because it gives him family time, and the only thing he wishes he had more of with his parents was family time. His parents were great at making friends: Brown still calls his local barber and gets takeout from his favourite local places every week, and listens to how they’re struggling.
“I hope it comes through every once in a while, but I expect it doesn’t,” says Brown. “But these things are all really, really, really hard decisions: when you present something that says first, it’s not great news, and second, I know this is going to hurt a lot of people, or it may lead to a place that hurts a lot of people, because we don’t make the decisions.
“There’s been lots of places where there’s been advice or analysis given and it’s turned out well. I think the neighbourhood hot spots (for vaccines) is really good. I think getting the vaccines into long-term-care homes saved thousands of lives. And there have been times we’ve said, they need to do something, and whether it’s been full or partial, they’ve at least taken some action.”
In the hard times, you can rely on Steini Brown. Especially then.
The hardest time came a decade ago. Brown was 39 and his mother had just died from her fourth cancer, and it was hard on her husband of 45 years — “it was a real love story,” Brown says — and 19 days later his father wasn’t answering his phone. His dad had driven to London that day; maybe his phone was in his suitcase. But Brown had a bad feeling, so he went to the apartment. His key worked, but the metal security bar held the door shut.
So he went downstairs, and the building manager gave him a hacksaw and came back upstairs with him and watched as Brown sawed and sawed until he opened the door and found his father. He was already cold.
“Then I kind of just had to maintain control when I got to him,” says Brown. “And that was the hardest part, because it’s heartbreaking.”
Why did he have to stay in control? Because things had to be done.
“With all of these things, you don’t want things to be unseemly, you don’t want things to be inelegant, you want things to be kind of gentle and moving along. And look: this guy who came up with me, he works in a building with all sorts of old people, I’m sure he has to deal with this at times. And it’s awful for everyone involved. And I think the last thing my father would want is sobbing and tears and lack of control.
“You’ve got to deal with it, right? He’s there. OK, we’ve got to call the police. OK, got to call 911, talk to the person: he’s cold, he’s in rigor, we’re not going to be able to resuscitate, but we’ll try. You just had to get it all done. That’s how stuff gets done.”
They think it was an aortic aneurysm, at age 70; Brown has a similar aortic dilation. During the pandemic he has sometimes received appreciative notes: Your father taught me, your father cared for me, you don’t remember me, but.
“One of his students wrote to me, and he said, he was always so principled, right?” says Brown. “So if I can be principled like he was, and gentle like he was, then I would be really happy. That’s what I really try to be like.
“That’s the stuff that really counts at the end of the day.”
Like many others, Brown says he will be happy when this is over. He wants more time with his wife and family, beyond his weekly card game with his near-teenage son and a weekly talk over a Shirley Temple with his teenage daughter. He wants people to be OK.
And when the pandemic does end, and even before, Steini Brown can be proud. He isn’t his father; nobody ever is, really. But he didn’t have to be. He was enough.