Bill Spence, a Surgeon’s
Surgeon Reminisces
James Rutka and William Spence
I met with Dr. William (Bill) Spence this summer in the
Departmental office in the Stewart Building. He informed
me that he has been associated with the Department
of Surgery at the University Toronto now for an unbelievable
66 years! His career in Toronto began at the
Toronto General Hospital (TGH) in 1957. As many of
you are aware, Bill has been a stalwart supporter of the
Department of Surgery and has attended all of the Gallie
Day Celebrations, save two, over the past 41 years. Bill
conducted his clinical practice in general surgery at TGH
and retired from active practice at age 70, but kept seeing
patients in his office practice until age 88. He is now 91
years of age, but looks decades younger in my opinion.
Bill grew up on a farm with his family in Perth
Ontario. He went to a 1-room schoolhouse until high
school where he took 11 courses in his final year. He was
just shy of 17 years of age when he finished high school.
As a child, he enjoyed hockey and softball. Interestingly,
he became a school teacher for about a year after high
school because of the need for and short supply of teachers
in the province. Ultimately, he decided to go on to
Queen’s University for medical school. In the summers,
he worked on the railroads, and performed surveys for
the Department Highways in Tweed Ontario. Bill completed
his rotating internship at Queen’s University after
medical school before coming to Toronto for surgical
experience.
It was a pleasure to hear from Bill the state of surgery
in the 1,450-bed hospital at the TGH after insulin was
discovered. There was a public ward side on College
Street, and the Surgical Floor was on the eastern part
of the building, and ward 6 was the public ward. The
F ward was for obstetrics. Private patients were looked
after on the University wing ward, and as a trainee in
surgery he lived basically on the 4th floor in the College
wing. His very first rotation was in emergency medicine.
Throughout the course of our conversation, Bill
related to me the many colleagues, family members and
friends on whom he had operated and of whom he had
taken care. One he remembered was Duncan Graham
who died eventually from cancer of the pancreas.
But it was truly my pleasure to learn from Bill his
impressions of the past Chairs of Surgery. When Bill
arrived in Toronto in 1957, Dr. Gallie had just retired
and Dr. Janes had taken over. However, Bill remembers
the jovial nature of Dr. Gallie, and he actually worked
with Dr. Gallie’s son, Hugh, in general surgery. It was
Hugh who helped Bill perform his first appendectomy.
Bill spent one year at Sunnybrook where he did general
surgery, urology and hernia repairs using the living
suture technique from fascia lata that Dr. Gallie had
popularized.
For Dr. Janes, Bill was his Chief resident and helped
look after Dr. Janes’ patients. Basically, as Bill relates, Dr.
Janes got what he wanted, when he wanted it, and did
not have a great sense of humor.
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Dr. Janes was able to secure operative time essentially
any time he wanted. In those days, general surgeons did
everything from caring for fractures, to dealing with
multi-trauma, to performing thoracotomies, to doing
head and neck surgery. Dr. Mustard was the Head of the
Head and Neck Program at that time. Bill remembers
doing a parotidectomy with Dr Janes, and seeing the
delicate dissection of all the branches of the facial nerve in
a superior technical manner. However, Dr. Janes concentrated
his efforts primarily on thoracic surgery procedures.
One of his colleagues at that time was Dr. Norm Delarue.
He was also the team doctor of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
It was quite common for general surgeons to do thyroid,
rectal, and transverse colon cancer surgeries. It was Dr.
Delarue who discovered the correlation between sputum
samples from smokers, and early onset lung cancer. In
addition, breast cancer surgery in those days represented
quite mutilating surgery with radical mastectomies being
performed more often than not. In 1965, Bill went on
a James Travelling Fellowship and came back to help
with the surgical load at Toronto General Hospital. Dr.
Janes sponsored Dr. Wilfred Bigelow to help develop the
Cardiac Centre at the Toronto General Hospital, one of
the first of its kind in the world.
There was a Janes’ Surgical Society, which rivaled the
Gallie Club. Dr Janes had contacts with many surgeons
in England, Glasgow and Edinburgh in addition to
North American Centres like Detroit and New Orleans.
Dr. Kergin followed Dr Janes as Professor of Surgery.
He came as an Oxford graduate and Rhodes Scholar. He
was known as “fearless Fred” and he performed mostly
thoracic surgery. He was very confident. Interestingly,
he was a heavy smoker, and was extremely authoritarian.
He reorganized the emergency room at that time. It was
during Kergin’s time that Sunnybrook changed from a
military hospital to a University of Toronto hospital. Dr.
Kergin was well known for his treatment of ruptured
abdominal aortic aneurysms, and ultimately also became
the Assistant Dean of Medicine at the University. His
son Michael became the Canadian ambassador to the
United States.
Following Dr. Kergin in sequence was Dr. Drucker
who was recruited from the University of Rochester. He
was an American surgeon, and had not come through
the University of Toronto system. As such, he was a bit
out of his element. The word on the street was that Dr.
Druker was not a particularly adept technical surgeon.
But he was quite connected with the academic side of
surgery, and with systems approaches to surgery. His
term lasted for 5 years.
Following Dr. Drucker, Dr. Wilson became the next
Professor of Surgery. He had the tact of gentle persuasion,
which was a wonderful approach to help serve his
needs and purposes. He was considered an excellent
technical surgeon, and helped to form the cardiovascular
group at the Toronto Western Hospital. Under his leadership,
the Department of Surgery thrived and moved
forward. Dr. Wilson had the vision to initiate Gallie
Day as we know it. In addition, he helped to develop all
of the specialties in surgery, as we know them today. He
had good collaborations with Ray Heimbecker from cardiac
surgery, Paul Tremble in thoracic surgery, and John
Callaghan who helped develop the pacemaker.
Another name that sprang forward from our conversation
included Bruce Tovee who developed the technique
for splenectomy in patients with leukemia. He was also
the surgeon for the police and ran a clinic in the Stewart
Building to look after the Police officers. Dr. Tovee’s wife
was an army nurse they had 2 sons, Paul and Steve with
whom I went to highschool.
We also talked briefly about Gordon Murray’s contributions,
of which there were many to the Department
of Surgery. In addition to his work on the development
of renal transplant systems, and the use of heparin, Dr.
Murray developed a technique of bone grafting using a
portion of the clavicle as the donor source.
It was my great pleasure to meet with Dr. Bill Spence,
and to spend an afternoon chatting with him. It reminded
me how fortunate we are that our historic tradition
carries on in the memories of those who worked at some
of the most interesting times in the establishment of the
Department of Surgery. Bill shows no signs of slowing
down at age 91, and we do hope we will continue to see
him at many future Gallie Day events.
James T. Rutka, RS McLaughlin Professor and Chair
Department of Surgery, University of Toronto
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