Brock Chisholm

George Brock Chisholm (18 May 1896 – 4 February 1971) was a Canadian psychiatrist, medical practitioner, World War I veteran, and the first director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO). He was the 13th Canadian Surgeon General and the recipient of numerous accolades, including Order of Canada, Order of the British Empire, Military Cross, and the military Efficiency Decoration.

Background Brock Chisholm was born on 18 May 1896, in Oakville, Ontario, to a family with deep ties to the region. Under Sir Isaac Brock, his great-grandfather fought against the Americans during the War of 1812. His great grandfather’s brother, William, was Oakville’s founder. His father was Frank Chisholm, who ran a coal yard.

Career Canada Chisholm as a captain in the Canadian Expeditionary Force at the end of World War I.

In 1915 during the First World War, age 18, Chisholm joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force, serving in the 15th Battalion, CEF as a cook, sniper, machine gunner and scout. His leadership and heroism were twice rewarded (after being twice wounded): with a Military Cross for his efforts in a battle outside of Lens, France; and the Bar. He rose to the rank of captain, was injured once, and returned home in 1917.

His bar's citation:

After the war, Chisholm pursued his lifelong passion of medicine, earning his MD from the University of Toronto by 1924 before interning in England, where he specialized in psychiatry. After six years in private practice in his native Oakville, he attended Yale University where he specialized in the mental health of children. During this time, Chisholm developed his strong view that children should be raised in an "as intellectually free environment" as possible, independent of the prejudices and biases (political, moral and religious) of their parents.

The WHO became a permanent UN fixture in April 1948, and Chisholm became the agency's first Director General on a 46–2 vote. Chisholm was now in the unique position of being able to bring his views on the importance of international mental and physical health to the world. Refusing re-election, he occupied the post until 1953, during which time the WHO dealt successfully with a cholera epidemic in Egypt, malaria outbreaks in Greece and Sardinia, and introduced shortwave epidemic-warning services for ships at sea. As a result, for the first time in human history, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.

Beliefs

Chisholm was a controversial public speaker who nevertheless spoke with great conviction, and drew much criticism from the Canadian public for comments in the mid-1940s that children should not be encouraged to believe in Santa Claus, the Bible or anything he regarded as supernaturalism. Calls for his resignation as Deputy Minister of Health were quelled by his appointment as Executive Secretary of the WHO, but his public perception as "Canada's most famously articulate angry man" lingered. and served as Moderator of the American Unitarian Association. In April 2024, an internet fact-checker came to the conclusion that, although Chisholm wasn't the source of a widely-circulated quotation, this provocative sentence was nonetheless a valid summary of an article Chisholm had published in 1946 "barring the reference to 'individualism'". In their Facebook post, this fact-checker was highly critical of Chisholm's strongly-felt view "that 'morality' and the 'poisonous certainties' fed to us by our 'parents, Sunday school teachers, priests' and others should be thrown away in favor of SELF-directed 'intellectual freedom'."

Marriage

On 21 June 1924, Chisholm married Grace McLean Ryrie. They had two children, Catherine Anne and Brock Ryrie. 1967: Companion of the Order of Canada Another reviewer asserted that "There were no tears, in Canada or anywhere else, when Chisholm announced his retirement at age 57 in 1953... Chisholm’s vision for the WHO was impractical and a failure. The organization evolved almost literally in spite of its director general."

At his death, the New York Times remembered Chisholm as a "small-town doctor who became director general of the World Health Organization" and also called him "Prophet of Disaster."

Historica Canada notes he was an early leader in warning about the "danger of pollution, overpopulation, and the nuclear arms race."

Works

Social responsibility, and three memorial papers by Gordon W. Allport (New York: Association Press, 1948) World health problems. Barriers to world health (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1953) Nations are learning to live together (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1954) Prescription for survival (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957) Can people learn to learn? How to know each other (New York: Harper, 1958)