Clarence Hincks: Mental Health Crusader

John H. Gryfe is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon practicing in
Toronto.

Clarence Hincks, “one of the truly great salesmen and promoters of our
age,” yet probably not an outstanding clinician, is identified as the
singlemost driving force behind the creation of organized mental health
care in Canada. A protégé of renowned psychiatric pioneer C.K. Clarke,
Hincks converted a love and fascination for the products of Toronto’s
Juvenile Court system and the “retarded and defective” nonachievers
of the West Toronto school system into a program of Opportunity Classes
that produced an unlikely group of contributors to society.

In this book, Roland, a physician and current professor of the History
of Medicine at McMaster University, has described less the growth of a
man and more the maturation of an institution. Despite insights into
Clare Hincks’s own recurrent bouts of paralyzing neuroses, the author
spends most of his effort chronicaling the formation of the Canadian
National Committee for Mental Hygiene and his tenure spanning almost
three decades.

In the prejet era, this traveling director spent months living out of a
suitcase. Unashamedly, he conceded that his family became a
“peripheral incident.”

This is the fourth volume in the continuing Canadian Medical Lives
Series, supported by grants from the Hannah Institute for the History of
Medicine. Because of its size, however, this book should not be
considered the foremost text on either the man or his obsession.