Phil Gold book recounts Jewish life in Montreal and six decades at « The General » with warmth, humour and humanity

At age 87, Dr. Phil Gold is still not quite yet ready to add the letters "ip" to the end of his first name.

When Gold began his illustrious medical career at the Montreal General Hospital (MGH) some 65 years ago, he had already established a firm policy – even while growing up poor on St. Lawrence Boulevard – of simply being called "Phil" Gold.

"We were so poor, the family couldn’t afford the 'ip'," Gold said in a recent interview with La Voix sépharade.

It is also one of the first sentences contained in Gold’s Rounds: Medicine, McGill, and Growing Up Jewish in Montreal, his warm and evocative life memoir released recently (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023).

Gold may now be officially retired after serving 15 years as MGH’s first Jewish Physician-in-Chief and 65 years in all at the MGH, but he is definitely not "retired", nor is he the retiring type.

Gold continues to lecture at McGill University as a professor of medicine, physiology and oncology to fresh-faced medical students and periodically accompany them on first rounds.

"I walked in the front doors on Cedar Avenue and never left," he says.

Gold remains devoted, however, to issues related to medical and scientific research.

It is a level of devotion that has been duly recognized many times.

On Oct. 5, the Pavillon de recherche Phil Gold became a newly-titled reality at MGH.

His long list of honours and awards now include Companion of the Order of Canada, a Grand Officer of National Order of Quebec, and a member of the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame.

But Gold is perhaps most famous for his discovery in 1965 of the carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), a once elusive genetic marker for cancer whose discovery he co-published with Samuel O. Freedman, a research scientist whom Gold described as the "dean" of CEA.

CEA, however, is popularly known as the "Gold" antigen, and is used as a genetic marker for more than 70 cancers.

It is an accomplishment that some believe warranted a Nobel Prize, but Nobel Prizes in general are rarely awarded to Canadians, Gold noted.

Still, Gold, who remains an affable, self-effacing family man ever-devoted to Evelyn, his wife of 63 years, and to their accomplished offspring Ian, Joel, and Josie.

Gold’s Rounds recounts a life in Jewish Montreal well-lived and often marked by what he calls the "fortunome," the word he coined to describe the unforeseeable elements of luck that can so influence life’s fortunes.

So many of those elements, indeed:

Gold’s Rounds began at his wife’s prompting when he found he had little to do once homebound at the onset of the Covid pandemic in March, 2020.
"Why don’t you write a memoir?," Evelyn encouraged him.

Eighteen months later, he had finished it. Without his knowledge, a friend sent the manuscript a to McGill Queen’s University Press, who did not hesitate to accept it.

"The thing is, you remember the things you want to and don’t remember the things you don’t want to," Gold said.

Still, Gold’s Rounds depict a rich and full life in the heart of Jewish Montreal.

It is all there, doled out in a series of resonant recollections that capture Gold’s deep sense of empathy for others, his abiding humanity, his lack of egotism, as well as his foibles and the antisemitism he and contemporaries endured.

He was an only child till age 9, when sister Malk came along. He spoke Yiddish exclusively until Grade 1 at Bancroft School. His best friend remains Mort Levy (they still touch base almost every day). He was called "maudit Juif" in the street for "killing Christ." He learned from Bancroft teacher Esther Hoffman to "not teach facts. Tell stories." His life-time medical mentor was Sir Arnold Burger, who died just a year ago at 100. Gold saw baseball great Jackie Robinson play a Delorimier Stadium. Or fabled Baron Byng High School, where the school in its heyday included a Who’s Who of great Jewish accomplishment.

Then were numerous "fortunomes":
Such as entering McGill in 1959 with Mort Levy just as Quebec gave McGill instructions to open itself up to more Jews. Or the serendipity in choosing to take a physiology course while not yet decided on medicine as a career. Or forgetting Evelyn’s last name after a great first date but meeting her again by pure luck for the second one that led to marriage. Or quitting smoking 50 years ago.

There also were many challenges.

In the memoir, Gold remembers making a makeshift defibrillator to help save a patient. Or holding the hand of a dying man for hours on the MGH’s sixth-floor terrace so he would not have to die alone. Or the trauma of seeing a young patient "die on my watch."

Gold says the state of Quebec health care has changed greatly over the years.

"The Quebec government has kept things on the edge," Gold said. "We never had 200% more people in the ICU or emergency room" as now.

Things also "'fell of the cliff' after the onset of the pandemic," he added.

Bureaucracy, what Gold refers to as the "administratum" is Gold’s bane, despite the multiple advances in medicine and research over the decades.

"When I started, the half-life of knowledge was 50 or 60 years. Now it’s five or six," with the more important advances being in neurology, cardiology, immunotherapy, Gold said.

One of the most important lessons Gold learned over the years has been that, "You don’t make doctors, they make themselves," Gold said.

"Patients don’t care so much about what you know. They just want to know that you care."