William (Bill) George Bensen
Physician. Physician. True Canadian. Culture enthusiast. Born May 20, 1949, in Hamilton, Ont.; Died March 15, 2017, in Hamilton; of cancer; aged 67.
William (Bill) Bensen was born in Hamilton in 1949, the son of a local physician and the grandson of a McMaster University philosophy professor. Four generations of Bensens learned or taught at McMaster and Bill was in the second graduating class from the university's medical school. As one of Hamilton's first rheumatologists, he developed a practice that was as eclectic in its approach as it was remarkable in its care.
Bill was one of the first physicians to suggest that patients – patients! – should be in charge of their own health. Revolutionary!
Knowing that many arthritis patients would never be cured, Bill developed the "Personal Best Approach" to arthritis. His motto was that even lacking a cure, a patient could always feel better.
An admirer of Sherlock Holmes, Bill – like Joseph Bell, the real-life physician who inspired Arthur Conan Doyle – was able to diagnose patients through an uncanny process of observation and deduction.
One story involves Bill watching a new patient take a few steps into his office. "Stop right there," Bill said. "You have a sore hip from old soccer injuries." The astonished and correctly diagnosed patient sat down, mesmerized by the doctor with magic powers.
Bill's Holmesian deductions were no parlour game. They established his credibility, and he knew that an important part of the healing process is the patient's belief in the caregiver. The art of medicine was as important to Bill as the science.
Bill's life was rich. He and his wife, Wynn, were prominent Canadian art and antique collectors, and he thoroughly enjoyed his family that included sons, Robert, Ryan and Jayson, and their families. They were all affectionately well acquainted with Bill's penchant for storytelling, and his ability to turn every story into a lesson on Canadian history or one of his heroes or both. (He was a great admirer of Winston Churchill, William Osler, the pioneering Canadian physician, and CPR president William Cornelius Van Horne.)
Bill was a master of joyous intrigue, and his schemes always started the same way: "Call me crazy, but I have an idea." He would cup his hand over his chin and rub his bottle-brush moustache. If he didn't have your complete attention, he would whisper conspiratorially, "I don't know if we can pull this off, but …" Once you leaned in to listen, he knew he had you, and soon you were helping him create a display of Inuit art in McMaster's Health Sciences library.
As a family man, Bill never lost his passion for the joys of childhood. He once told his boys of a mysterious, evil snowball gang to inspire them to build the best snowfort and lay in the largest arsenal of snowballs. Only after his sons grew distracted waiting for the confrontation did Bill appear from behind the house with a giant plastic bin containing his own stockpile of winter weapons. The resulting exchange of fire became Bensen legend.
Bill's life was well lived and full of achievement, but it ended too soon and with much still to do. He was intent on building the art collection of McMaster's David Braley Health Sciences Centre, writing a book about Canadian history and meeting his grandson, Elijah, who would be born two months after Bill died.
Still, the measure of Bill's life is found in what he accomplished, not in regrets. The guest book of his online obituary is signed by dozens of his patients. Many described themselves not just as patients, but as friends. Bill would have liked it that way.
Dr. John G. Kelton was Bill's friend and colleague.
To submit a Lives Lived: lives@globeandmail.com
Lives Lived celebrates the everyday, extraordinary, unheralded lives of Canadians who have recently passed. To learn how to share the story of a family member or friend, go to tgam.ca/livesguide.