In Canada . In 1973, following the visit of Prime Minister
Pierre Trudeau to China, the Government of Canada purchased the manse of Presbyterian Church in Gravenhurst, in which Bethune was born. The previous year, Dr. Bethune had been declared a
Person of National Historic Significance. In 1976, the restored building was opened to the public as
Bethune Memorial House. In 2012, the Government of Canada opened a new visitor centre, to enhance the experience of visitors to the site. The house is operated as a
National Historic Site of Canada by
Parks Canada. In 1979,
Dr. Norman Bethune Collegiate Institute was founded in Scarborough. In 1998, Bethune was inducted into the
Canadian Medical Hall of Fame located in
London, Ontario. In 2000, the University of Toronto inaugurated the annual Bethune Round Table on International Surgery, an annual surgical conference named in his honour. In August 2000, then-
Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, who is of Chinese descent, visited Gravenhurst and unveiled a bronze statue of him erected by the town. It stands in front of the Opera House on the town's main street, Muskoka Road. The city of Montreal, Quebec, has created a
public square and erected a
statue of him in his honour, located near the
Guy–Concordia metro station. His archives are held at
McGill University in the
Osler Library of the History of Medicine. In March 1990, to commemorate the centenary of his birth, Canada and China each issued two postage stamps of the same design in his honour. Banners with a stylized photo of him titled Local Heroes, hang in the River District of
Owen Sound with his birthdate and death and listing his accomplishments as "Surgeon, Inventor, Political Activist, Artist, Writer, Poet".
In China Virtually unknown in his homeland during his lifetime, Bethune received international recognition when Mao Zedong of the
People's Republic of China published his eulogy entitled
In Memory of Norman Bethune (), The standard elementary school text book still has the essay today: Bethune was promoted as a role model for medical workers and Communist Party members. During the
Third Front campaign to develop basic industry and national defense industry in China's interior, the eulogy was frequently assigned for Third Front workers to read. By the Cultural Revolution, Bethune's legacy was promoted throughout the Chinese population and held up as a model of
internationalism. Elsewhere in China, the Norman Bethune University of Medical Sciences () in
Changchun,
Jilin province, was one of the eleven national medical universities directly subordinated to
Ministry of Health of the People's Republic of China. The predecessor of this university was the Hygiene School of
Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region of the
Eighth Route Army (八路军晋察冀军区卫生学校 in
Chinese) founded in 1939 by Bethune's advocacy. The school developed with Bethune Hygiene School (February 16, 1940), Bethune Medical School (Jan 1946), Bethune Medical University (June 1946), (1948), (1951 in
Tianjin), moved to
Changchun in 1954, Medical College of Changchun (July 1958), Medical University of Jilin (June 1959), Norman Bethune University of Medical Sciences (March 1978), merged into
Jilin University as
Norman Bethune Health Science Center of Jilin University in 2000. There are at least three dedicated statues of Bethune in this university: in the west square of College of Basic Medicine, in the Second Affiliated Hospital and in the Third Affiliated Hospital. He is also commemorated at three institutions in
Shijiazhuang – Bethune Military Medical College, Bethune Specialized Medical College and Bethune International Peace Hospital. In Canada, Norman Bethune College at
York University, and
Dr. Norman Bethune Collegiate Institute (a secondary school) in
Scarborough,
Ontario, are named after him. The biannually awarded (), established in 1991, is the highest medical honour in China, bestowed to up to seven individuals by the
Ministry of Health and
Ministry of Personnel of China, to recognize outstanding contribution, heroic spirit and great humanitarianism in the medical field. The 2007
Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival featured as its central theme a memorial to Bethune. Bethune is among the "foreign friends of China" that
Xi Jinping cites in
his foreign policy discourses in an effort to recognize the contributions of other countries to China's national liberation.
In Spain On February 7, 2006, the city of
Málaga, Spain, opened the Walk of Canadians in his memory. This avenue, which runs parallel to the beach "Crow Rock" direction to Almeria, paid tribute to the solidarity action of Dr. Norman Bethune and his colleagues who helped the population of Málaga during the
Spanish Civil War. During the ceremony, a commemorative plaque was unveiled with the inscription: "Walk of Canadians – In memory of aid from the people of Canada at the hands of Norman Bethune, provided to the refugees of Málaga in February 1937". The ceremony also included a planting of an olive tree and a maple tree representative of Spain and Canada as a symbol of friendship.
In film and literature Doctor Bethune (), was made in 1964;
Gerald Tannebaum, an American humanitarian, played Bethune. Bethune was the subject of a 1964
National Film Board of Canada documentary
Bethune, directed by
Donald Brittain. The film includes interviews with many people close to Bethune, including his biographer
Ted Allan.
Donald Sutherland played Bethune in the 1974–75 television show
Witness to Yesterday hosted by
Patrick Watson. Sutherland's portrayal of Bethune in
Witness to Yesterday probably led to him securing the role of Bethune in two biographical films:
Bethune (1977), made for television on a low budget, and
Bethune: The Making of a Hero (1990). The latter, based on a 1952 book
The Scalpel, The Sword; The Story Of Doctor Norman Bethune by
Ted Allan and
Sydney Gordon, was a co-production of
Telefilm Canada, the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, FR3 TV France and China Film Co-production. In the CBC's
The Greatest Canadian program in 2004, he was voted the 26th Greatest Canadian by viewers. In 2006,
China Central Television produced a 20-part drama series,
Norman Bethune (诺尔曼·白求恩), documenting his life, which with a budget of
yuan 30 million (US$3.75 million) was the most expensive Chinese TV series to date. The series is directed by
Yang Yang and starred Canadian actor Trevor Hayes. The 2006 novel ''The Communist's Daughter,'' by
Dennis Bock, is a fictionalized account of Bethune's life.
Adrienne Clarkson, a Chinese-Canadian and former
Governor General, wrote a biography of Bethune and tells his story in the companion documentary
Adrienne Clarkson on Norman Bethune. The Bethune biographer, Roderick Stewart, has produced five books on Norman Bethune, including
Bethune (1973),
The Canadians: Norman Bethune (1974), and
The Mind of Norman Bethune (1990). In 2011, he co-authored with Sharon Stewart,
Phoenix: The Life of Norman Bethune, a book which Canadian author Michael Bliss, in his review in
The Globe and Mail, said, "should become the definitive basis for all serious discussion of Bethune". In 2014
Bethune in Spain, written by Stewart and co-author Jesus Majada, was published by
Oberon Press. The television miniseries ''
Canada: A People's History'', by
CBC Television, briefly mentioned Bethune's story during the episode describing Canadians in the
Spanish Civil War. When the CBC decided to produce a film version of Rod Langley's 1973 play
Bethune, they offered the leading role to Donald Sutherland. After accepting, Sutherland persuaded the CBC to allow Thomas Rickman to rework the Langley script. Rickman's script, based on Roderick Stewart's 1973 biography
Bethune, was used in
Bethune, the 1977 CBC film production. The character Jerome Martell in
Hugh MacLennan's novel
The Watch That Ends the Night is generally thought to have been inspired by Bethune, a claim MacLennan denied, though they were known to one another and MacLennan based much of his writing off his own life experiences. Canadian rock group
The Tragically Hip wrote their 1992 hit
Courage (for Hugh MacLennan) in tribute to the author and in reference to
The Watch in particular. The song's refrain 'Courage, it couldn't have come at a worse time' is a reference to the novel's climax, in which the 'Bethunian' qualities of Jerome Martell are at their peak.
The Secret History of the Intrepids, by D. K. Latta, is an
alternate-history fantasy story imagining Norman Bethune,
William Stephenson,
Grey Owl and others as 1940s superheroes. It was published in the 2013 anthology,
Masked Mosaic: Canadian Super Stories. In the science fiction novel
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, a foreigner named Mike Evans is given the nickname "Bethune" by the inhabitants of a remote area in northwestern China. Norman Bethune is a character in the novel
Los pacientes del doctor García by
Almudena Grandes, where he teaches the titular character his blood transfusion techniques in a besieged
Madrid during the
Spanish Civil War. == See also ==