B 16 OBITUARIES
DR. REVA GERSTEIN
PSYCHOLOGIST DEVOTED
HERSELF TO HELPING
THE VULNERABLE
Dr. Reva Gerstein takes her turn at the podium during the 1961 Ontario Progressive Conservative Party convention
in Toronto. The next year, newly anointed head of the party and provincial premier John Robarts appointed her to serve
on the Committee on University Affairs. JOHN BOYD/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
She worked to improve education and mental-health services in Ontario, serving as
the first child psychologist in the province’s public schools, and in other key roles
LISA FITTERMAN
W
hen Reva Gerstein was a teen-
ager, she practised long hours
to become a concert pianist,
limber fingers flying over the
keys. But when she started listening to
broadcasts on a short-wave radio built by
one of her brothers – broadcasts that in-
cluded hate-filled speeches by German
fuhrer Adolf Hitler, which she understood
because she spoke the language – she de-
cided she’d be better off doing something
that helped people.
“One of my grandmother’s major life
messages was that our society would not be
judged or remembered for the size of its
waterfronts or the height of its buildings,”
her grandson Frank Gerstein said. “Instead,
she said it would be remembered for how
we treat the most vulnerable, disadvan-
taged people in it.”
To that end, Dr. Gerstein, who earned a
doctorate in psychology at a time when a
woman’s place was thought to be in the
home, spent much of her life smashing
through glass ceilings as she worked with
children, with the marginalized and poor,
with the homeless, with addicts and with
people who suffered from serious mental-
health issues, such as schizophrenia.
Her life was a series of firsts: the first
child psychologist in Ontario’s public
school system, the first female member of
the province’s Committee on University Af-
fairs, the first woman to sit at the table as a
director of companies such as Maritime
Life Insurance, McGraw-Hill Ryerson Pub-
lishing and International Nickel Ltd., or IN-
CO, and, from 1992 to 1996, the first female
chancellor of the University of Western On-
tario (now known as Western University).
Known as Mimi to her family and
friends, she was beautiful and wore fine
clothes, and at times other activists weren’t
quite sure what to make of this woman
who professed to be fighting for them. Pat
Capponi, the Parkdale-based psychiatric
survivor who has agitated for years for pa-
tients to be treated with compassion, re-
spect and dignity, recalled meeting Dr. Ger-
stein for the first time in 1983, after the lat-
ter had been appointed chair of then-may-
or Art Eggleton’s task force on discharged
psychiatric patients in the city.
“Basically, I freaked,” Ms. Capponi said.
“I thought, ‘How is this person ever going
to understand?’ And yet, she was so gra-
cious and helped us gain credibility over
the years – credibility for people on the
street, for patients shoved into rooming
houses and forgotten about. She was able
to see beneath the anger and the poverty
and she renewed my faith in human na-
ture.”
Dr. Gerstein, who despite her numerous
accomplishments was always adamant that
she was not a “women’s libber” or activist
but rather just who she was, died in Toron-
to on Jan. 6 from the inevitable complica-
tions of old age. She was 102 years old.
Paul Quinn, who first met her in 1989,
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MENTAL-HEALTH PROFESSIONAL, 102
the year she established the Gerstein Cen-
tre, a 24-hour community-based mental-
health crisis service, said she would come
to speak to the staff, always exhorting them
to be sure to listen to what the people in
crisis were telling them.
“She stressed that we don’t decide for
them what they want. They do,” said Mr.
Quinn, the centre’s former executive direc-
tor. “She also insisted that a third of the
board members be psychiatric survivors so
that the decisions it made were always in-
formed by someone who could talk about
how the issue affected them personally. In
short, she was wonderful.”
Reva Appleby was born in Toronto on
March 27, 1917, the oldest of David and Dia-
na Appleby’s three children. Her father was
in the import business but also dabbled in
real estate and factory ownership, while
her mother was a homemaker. Growing up
in working-class Parkdale, there wasn’t a
lot of money but the children never knew
it, not in a home filled with books, music,
lively Friday night Shabbat dinners and the
father’s tales of business trips to Europe,
which always seemed to be filled with ad-
ventures and life lessons. And the parents
encouraged all their offspring to follow
their passions, no matter where it led them
– and no matter that their eldest was a girl,
who might have been expected to marry,
have children and settle for a quiet life in
the shadow of her husband.
That was not to be. Indeed, in a 1980
profile of Dr. Gerstein in the Canadian Jew-
ish News, she attributed her success to her
father, who had died the year before. “He
treated me as an equal,” she said. “I’ve nev-
er known the feeling of being uncomfort-
able as a woman.”
When she told her parents that piano
was no longer her passion – that she want-
ed to do something more concrete to help
people – they didn’t hesitate, not even a
whit. They had faith that their daughter
would excel in any endeavour, as long as
she wanted to do it.
Besides, she never learned how to cook.
After graduating from Parkdale Colle-
giate, she got a bachelor of arts degree with
honours from the University of Toronto in
1938 and a master of arts the following year,
at the outset of the Second World War. She
completed her PhD in 1945, just as the men
were returning home from the front; de-
spite her brilliance and the fact that she
twice won the David Dunlap Award for ex-
cellence and proficiency, Dr. Gerstein, who
had married Bertrand Gerstein in 1939, was
passed over for a job. After all, she was a
woman and she already had the first of her
two sons, Irving (who would grow up to
become a successful entrepreneur, Conser-
vative Party fundraiser and Canadian sen-
ator).
She never looked back.
As Irving Gerstein outlined in his eulogy,
in 1946, Dr. Gerstein was hired by the East
York-Leaside Board of Health, becoming
the first psychologist in the Ontario school
system. In turn, that led to her meeting Dr.
Clarence Hincks, the founder of the Cana-
G TH E GLOBE AND M AIL
SEAMUS MALLON
dian Mental Health Association and a job
as the association’s national director of
program planning.
Through this, she created “Mental
Health Week” in Canada and began a week-
ly hour-long program on CBC radio that fo-
cused on mental health.
In the 1950s, Dr. Gerstein served as presi-
dent of the National Council of Jewish
Women and was the founding president of
the Canadian Council of Children and
Youth. In 1960, she was made a member of
the Hall-Dennis Committee that, under the
leadership of retired Supreme Court justice
Emmett Hall, was to revamp Ontario’s edu-
cation system, with a list of new goals and
objectives.
From 1959 through 1962, she taught as a
fellow at the newly formed York University
and became a driving force behind the cre-
ation of Atkinson College, where students
who worked during the day could attend
classes at night, thus opening up opportu-
nities for those who otherwise might not
have been able to pursue a higher educa-
tion.
As head of a committee setting out new
policies for the baby-boomer generation
and postsecondary education, in 1961, Dr.
Gerstein presented its findings at the Onta-
rio Progressive Conservative Leadership
Convention that anointed John Robarts as
head of the party and provincial premier.
The next year, Mr. Robarts appointed her to
serve on the Committee on University Af-
fairs (CUA), where she worked closely with
Bill Davis, then the minister of education.
In 1973, Mr. Davis, by then the Ontario
premier, made her the committee’s chair.
At the same time, Dr. Gerstein spear-
headed the creation of the Hincks Treat-
ment Centre for Adolescents, named for
her friend and mentor, which operates to
this day under the aegis of Toronto’s Hospi-
tal for Sick Children.
She was also heavily involved in an ini-
tiative that brought together street workers
and agencies with traditional institutions
such as hospitals and the police in order to
brainstorm ways to deal with growing drug
use among young people.
“My grandma covered the gamut,” Frank
Gerstein said. “She never stopped.”
In 1970, Dr. Gerstein and her husband
divorced. Nine years later, she married Da-
vid Raitblat, who was in the scrap metal
business.
Along the way, Dr. Gerstein collected a
number of honours, including promotion
in 1997 to the rank of companion of the
Order of Canada, the country’s highest ci-
vilian honour. In 1988, she was awarded the
Order of Ontario and she received honor-
ary degrees from Western, Lakehead Uni-
versity, the University of Guelph, Queen’s
University, York University and her alma
mater, the University of Toronto.
Dr. Gerstein leaves her sons, Irving and
Ira Gerstein, her daughters-in-law, Gail
Smith and Lisa Zwig, six grandchildren and
seven great-grandchildren.
Special to The Globe and Mail
| MON DAY , JAN UARY 27, 2020
POLITICIAN, 83
Political leader
helped create
and broker the
Good Friday
Agreement
AMANDA FERGUSON BELFAST
F
ormer Northern Ireland dep-
uty first minister Seamus
Mallon, one of the architects
of the 1998 Good Friday peace
agreement, died on Friday at the
age of 83, drawing tributes from
across a political divide he helped
to bridge.
Mr. Mallon was a major politi-
cal figure in Northern Ireland dur-
ing the three decades of violence
between Catholic nationalists
seeking union with Ireland and
Protestant unionists wanting
Northern Ireland to remain part
of the United Kingdom.
He went on to jointly head up
the devolved power-sharing ad-
ministration that followed the
peace deal and was remembered
as a peacemaker who recognized,
in his words, that Northern Ire-
land’s divided communities
could “live together in generosity
and compassion or we can con-
tinue to die in bitter disharmony.”
“History will remember Sea-
mus as a committed peace build-
er and a tireless champion of an
inclusive Ireland. He always op-
posed sectarianism and discrimi-
nation in any form,” Irish Prime
Minister Leo Varadkar said in a
statement.
“When others in his communi-
ty advocated violence, Seamus
had an unswerving commitment
to constitutional nationalism. He
was a peacemaker who put us on
the path to reconciliation.”
Mr. Mallon died at his home in
the Northern Irish county of Ar-
magh, a spokesman for his Social
Democratic and Labour Party
(SDLP) said.
A marcher in the 1960s civil-
rights movement that preceded
Northern Ireland’s violent “Trou-
bles,” during which 3,600 people
were killed, Mr. Mallon said his
activism was influenced by the
injustices he perceived Catholic
children suffered during his time
as a headmaster.
He grew up in a mainly union-
ist area in the British region and
broke the mould when – at the
height of the Troubles – he at-
tended funerals of killed police
officers from the then British-run
force when many Irish national-
ists dared not.
“In the darkest days of conflict,
when hope was in short supply,
Seamus represented the fierce
thirst for justice that ran through
the SDLP and through communi-
ties that had lost so much to polit-
ical violence,” SDLP Leader Co-
lum Eastwood said in a state-
ment.
“Ireland has lost one of its
most fierce champions for justice,
equality and peace.”
Mr. Mallon famously described
the 1998 accord as “Sunningdale
for slow learners,” in reference to
the short-lived Sunningdale
Agreement brokered 25 years ear-
lier that sought to set up a power-
sharing government.
In a 2018 interview with the
Press Association, he recalled
sleeping on a table during the
“frenetic” final days that led to
the peace deal still revered
around the world.
Mr. Mallon served under John
Hume as deputy leader of the
SDLP for more than two decades
when it was the largest Irish na-
tionalist party in the province,
and also alongside Northern Ire-
land first minister David Trimble
of the rival Ulster Unionist Party
until 2001.
Mr. Trimble, who was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize with Mr.
Hume for their efforts in ending
the conflict, said he had visited
the dying Mr. Mallon in recent
days and while they didn’t always
agree during their political life, “it
worked,” he told the BBC.
Politicians past and present
lined up to pay tribute to a man
remembered as much for his
bluntness as his integrity.
Former Irish foreign minister
Micheal Martin, favourite to be-
come next Irish prime minister
after a Feb. 8 election, described
Mr. Mallon as his “friend and
long-time political hero.”
British Prime Minister Boris
Johnson said the former deputy
first minister made an extraor-
dinary contribution to democra-
cy and peace in Northern Ireland.
REUTERS