From Fishing Cove to Faculty Council - and Beyond

William Glassman is a professor of psychology at Ryerson Polytechnical
University.

C.A. “Charlie” Roberts, a major figure in the field of mental health
in Canada, recounts his own perceptions and feelings in this candid
memoir.

Roberts was born in Newfoundland, and has maintained the traditional
Newfoundlander’s directness speech. His descriptions of his life and
the events in which he participated are both touching (when describing
his ties to his parents and sisters) and blunt (when giving his views on
the current health-care system). But it is his experiences in the
various positions he held that constitute most of the book.

Roberts was head of the Mental Health Division of Health and Welfare
Canada in the 1950s and the first director of the Clarke Institute of
Psychiatry in the 1960s; he also held appointments in psychiatry in
three provinces, was a consultant to both federal and provincial groups,
and was president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association. His accounts
of this period of his life are direct, often impassioned, and always
individualistic—as, for example, when he staunchly defends Ewen
Cameron, whose controversial research Roberts describes as “not too
far from the prevalent lobotomy programs of that day.” While it is
clear that standards of care have changed in psychiatry, what is not so
clear is why anyone would defend practices that would now be seen as
abusive. But then, like Casey Stengel, Charlie Roberts calls ’em as he
seem ’em. Readers must make their own calls on the value of this one.