Calling of an Angl: Rene Caisse and Essiac Tea--14by Dr. Gary L. Glum |
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CHAPTER FOURTEENRene Caisse's family-dozens of nieces and nephews and cousins-is scattered all over Canada and the United States. Some of them barely knew her or what she was doing. Others were close to her. One of her nieces, Valleen Taylor, helped manage the clinic in the 30s. But even those who were supportive of Rene have tended to play down the family connection, to shy away from publicity of any kind. They saw the crushing pressures Rene lived under, and they haven't been keen on the outside world intruding into their own lives. Cracking through the walls the family has built around itself over the decades is not an easy task. I was thrilled when one of Rene's close relations who knew her best-and is said by other family members to be extremely knowledgeable about the history of Essiac-agreed to see me after I'd been in town a few days and talking to people who'd lived there all their lives. In his eighties, but healthy and alert, he was polite, even warm, when the conversation was about the natural beauties of the Canadian northwoods and his own past adventures on several different continents. But he refused to let me turn on my tape recorder and when we began to discuss Rene, he pleaded ignorance and a failed memory-which was clearly not something he suffered from and quickly shifted into the role of questioner. Why was I there? What was I doing? We stood in my motel room and fenced like that for about fifteen minutes, and then he was giving me a friendly goodbye and shaking my hand, then walking down the hallway He hadn't told me anything about Rene, and he hadn't been rude by refusing to see me. I was impressed. To this day I don't know for sure why he agreed to the meeting. I think he was just curious to meet this stranger who was going around town asking all the questions about Rene. He was willing to spend a few minutes to size up the situation, but he wasn't about ready to open himself up to an outsider, even one sympathetic to Rene. I had the strong feeling that I'd seen more evidence of the paranoia among the people who surrounded her during her life. But one of her relatives did open up to me. When I contacted him, he said he'd been wanting to tell his story for a long time. He was dying to talk to someone. For years he hadn't shared what he knew even with his own friends. It caused too many problems. He was afraid for his family. He was afraid for his business. He was afraid of the authorities. Hearing that someone was, after all these years, writing a book about Rene was enough to prompt him to talk. He wanted to talk. Would I be able to guarantee-absolutely guarantee-his anonymity? I said yes, and meant it. He said he couldn't wait to see me. That night he drove to my motel, the Muskoka Riverside Inn in Bracebridge, and spent two hours reminiscing in front of my tape recorder about his relative Rene Caisse and his personal experience with Essiac. In his own words, here's his story: I can remember when she ran the clinic. I can remember going in the clinic and what it was like, and I can remember seeing people waiting there. I knew people who were in the clinic. She wore a nurse's uniform. She was very good, very accommodating to everybody. She was looked highly upon by the whole municipality and the surrounding area. She was always very professional, quite an astute lady in the respect that she could be very hard and she could be very tender, and really quite business-like. Being very heavy and very much out of shape, and in not the best of health, I was amazed at what she accomplished. One of my aunts had cancer of the breast, I think. I didn't delve into it, but someone had to actually carry her into Rene's clinic. That was back in the 30s, I guess, and apparently the doctors had given up on her. She's still alive today. After the clinic closed, it was kind of a mystery to me. I knew she had people coming to her house, and it was pretty well all on the QT because it was against the law for her to give this medicine out. So the family never talked about it very much, but we were all very supportive and proud of her. I can remember asking: If this is such an important thing and it was so viable, why wasri t she able to accomplish something legally with it? I would go and visit her quite often. She really liked to have visits from everybody. She quite openly talked about it, and many times I would ask her: Why is it that you can't do something? Well, she would explain that she could have sold the formula for money, but the people were going to experiment with it on animals without giving it to human beings, and all of her life she had been experimenting with animals. She had gone to clinics in the states and in Montreal and all over, and as far as she was concerned, she had done all the experimenting that was necessary. All she wanted to do was cure humanity with the thing. But she was astute enough to realize that she wasn't going to give it to just anybody. She didn't want to make a million dollars on it; that wasn't her goal. But she really wanted to make sure it didn't get into the wrong hands. She was dreadfully afraid. She was afraid that people would use it to their advantage to make a lot of money without helping humanity. That was really what she was afraid of. She was afraid of exploitation. She didn't mind the rich getting hold of it, if they would use it for humanity, but she was afraid that would just use it to make money for themselves. But really, I never did have it explained to my satisfaction why something couldn't be done to promote this thing and accommodate her needs at the same time. I never could get it through my head. I never did have it explained to this very day why it couldri t have been done. She felt that the medical association was her mortal enemy, and the Cancer Society was her mortal enemy. The Cancer Society to her was bureaucratic, evil. They were hoodwinking the public, the money wasn't being spent where it should have been spent, and she told me of many instances. Right from the day I met her until the day she died, the medical association and the Cancer Society were her very deep foes. She felt very strongly that the Cancer Society did not want to find a cure. She said that over and over again. "They do not want to find a cure." There are too many people making too much money out of funds and grants for cancer. She claimed that it was bureaucratic larceny. It was a public fraud to beat all public frauds. She was in a total state of frustration for most of her later life because her phone would be continuously ringing from people wanting help, and she very seldom turned anybody down. But she was so scared of the Mounties coming and putting her in jail. She would say that over and over again. I would go for medicine. I would go for a little-the whole family got medicine from her-but she would never let me watch her make the Essiac. She might have let some of the family in, but I don't think so. She made the formula in the evenings by herself-other than Mary helped her. She would always wrap the bottles in newspaper and she would put it in a brown paper bag and say, "Now you carry that out as though it's Christmas cake or something." I'm sure she did this with everybody. I've gone to her home many times and people would be there. She'd tell me, Oh, that person's from such and such and that person's from Saskatoon, and this person came up from Albuquerque. People would phone her and beg her for medicine. I don't think she really charged. I really don't. I know that she got a lot of gifts from people. She would point out gifts that she got from somebody shed cured. If she got money, she didn't get a lot of money. I don't think she asked for money She might have asked for a donation, but I know that she gave a lot of it away for sure. Oh, I know she had a hard time getting the herbs. The amazing thing I really can't get through my head is: You take the supposed cures they have for cancer now A lot of the cures have a very ill-effect on the human body. These herbs never hurt anybody. As a matter of fact, she insisted that they were a tremendous blood purifier. When I was 18, I quit school and got a job prospecting with a mining company. They'd found uranium. I was out for about six months, I guess, and when I came back, I was out drinking beer with the fellas and I started bringing up blood. They took me to the hospital and I had a duodenal ulcer, a very bad ulcer. The doctor gave me a long list of things that I had to eat and a bunch of milk. He said you keep taking it and by the look of that ulcer, it's going to take about six months to cure. When I got home, my mother phoned Rene and sent me over. I got a couple of bottles of her Essiac and I took it for about a month. You take it before you go to bed every night, the way she tells you to take it in a glass of warm water, and it's super stuff. Like, you feel good. Mentally it does you a hell of a lot of good. It's like taking a tonic. It's no big deal. It's just a bunch of herbs. I went for a regular X-ray and the ulcer was completely cured. The doctor couldn't figure it out. There wasri t even a trace of an ulcer. The doctor couldn't believe it. He showed me. I can remember him showing me the two X-rays. The one showed a huge ulcer. The other was clean. But I didn't tell him I'd been taking Essiac. Under oath I couldn't tell him about the Essiac. It was something you never talked about. I never talked to my friends about it. She would go to jail if anyone talked about it. Just to show you how deep it is, the whole family took Essiac, and only one person in the family ever died of cancer. And she was the one who didn't take it. Rene was death against the knife, and she was death against radium, and she was death against this chemotherapy. She said it was just like water and oil, Essiac and this chemotherapy. People who knew I was related to Rene Caisse would come to me and say, "Listen, how do I get hold of Essiac?" If I knew them well enough, I'd say, "Well, I'll try and get you a bottle, or two bottles, or whatever." Rene would ask me two or three questions. Shed say, "Is your friend taking chemotherapy? If they're taking chemotherapy, then I don't even want to give it to you. It's just a waste. Have they had surgery? Are they taking radium treatments?" If they had chemotherapy, she wouldn't give it. If they'd had a knife or radium treatments, she would give them the medicine, but she said once they have the knife, the knife seemed to produce more cancer. When they tried to cut the cancer out, it seemed to inflame the cancer and spread it. That was her theory. The radium-she felt it did more harm than good. She said it killed a lot of cancer, but it also killed a lot of people. But she felt her medicine could still help and could still take away the pain. She said it would definitely relieve pain. Just that, if it did nothing else, it would relieve the pain, and if it did nothing else, it would purify the blood. She also stated that it was good for the prostate, obviously good for ulcers, and it was just a complete cleansing. That's why I've been taking it on and off all my life. I can remember in the 50s-or maybe the late 40s-going to visit her quite a bit. She really liked to have us come. She was a heavy woman and found it hard to get around. It was an effort for her to go to the front door, but she baked for everybody, she gave everybody presents for Christmas, even the little kids and the nephews. She was always cheery. She had a good sense of humor, and she was always strong. I remember one time she broke a hip, and you could tell that she was in great pain, but she would never let on. She also painted. She was extremely prolific. She would do maybe four or five paintings a week, or more, and she was always giving away her paintings. Like you couldrit go there without getting something because she always wanted to give you something. My impression was that she was a very strong person, an extremely strong person, not only strong-willed, but strong physically. I was actually surprised that she lasted as long as she did, and I think the reason was that she had a goal in life. Her goal was to let the world know about Essiac so that people could get better by it. If she hadn't had that goal, I think she would have died years ago. The worst thing that could be said about Rene was that she was stubborn. She was a strong person who would say her piece, and she was able to stand up on her hind heels and talk in front of an audience. But they could never say that she wasn't fair or a humanitarian. I would be safe in saying that anybody who knocked on her door would be let in, and under duress for Rene. Like anybody who phoned her long distance and said, "If I come to your door, can you help me?" I can remember her saying to me that she had to say no to these people, but I also know that she relented under pressure from these people, saying, okay, come on. You know what's funny is that a lot of doctors-and I could never figure this out-felt that she was helping people. But the doctors wouldri t admit it. In this little community, as an example, she knew a couple of doctors who really believed in her. She also knew quite a few doctors who were dead against it, and she kind of felt that the doctors who believed in her were scared to say anything. She felt that the doctors had a bit of occupational loyalty to the medical association, and she felt that the medical association held a wand over these doctors. I know there were doctors who came to her to get Essiac for patients, and yet they didn't help her. They didn't help her! It's kind of a mystery to me, it really is. I know just lately there are doctors in this community who will give out Essiac. I have talked to one doctor and told him that I'd heard that he would give out Essiac if his patients have cancer. He said, "Who told you that?" I said, "Well, I just heard it, and I happen to be one of Rene Caisse's relatives. I just want you to know that I admire you for doing it." He said, "Well, you don't have to tell anybody." She felt that money was the big thing behind it all. She felt that the Cancer Society was a farce. She felt it was a moneymaking scheme that would be an everlasting money-making scheme as long as a cure for cancer was never found. As far as the medical association was concerned, she felt that they were so powerful that the doctors daren't breathe a word. It wasn't so much money with the medical association. The doctors were afraid of losing their credibility, losing everything. But she insisted it was strictly money with the Cancer Society. I think the reason she finally released the formula to Resperin was because they promised her that they would actually use it on human beings. They would give it out to people who actually had cancer. I'm not sure she lived long enough to realize that Resperin wasn't getting very far. I feel really bad about that. I felt good at first when that article came out in Homemaker's. I thought, oh, gee, at last she's going to get recognition and it's going to start going. Now that she's dead and the Resperin Corporation doesn't seem to be doing anything with it and Mary's on her last legs, you know, it doesn't look good at all. I've often wondered, is this formula just going to evaporate? Is nothing going to happen with it? I feel very bad about it, very sad. We need to be able to give to humanity what's there, what is available right in front of us, and nobody is doing it. The very fact that this thing may die, it's just making me sick. Just making me sick. My perception is that she helped thousands of people. She used to help all kinds of people that I knew I'm talking about people who significantly benefited. She always used to say that she only got the people that the doctors gave up on. She never got the people before they were either treated or the doctors gave up on them. She had a cure for cancer. She has got a cure for cancer. We all knew A lot of the family were cured. I think even maybe Valleen has been cured. We knew that she could cure cancer, and I think something that we were always afraid of-every single one of us-was the fact that we knew somebody in the family who could cure cancer and that this cancer cure was going to die with Rene. We weren't going to be able to be cured someday in the future. Rene was afraid of that, too. She wanted to make sure that the family was looked after. The frustration of having the cure, but not being able to talk about it was terrible. Terrible. What can we do to help her? How can we help? Even today, the whole thing has connotations of a mystery type of thing. Unfortunately, people are forgetting about Rene. She was a legend, especially when she had the clinic, but even in her later years just before she died. But I would say now that most people younger than 60 really aren't aware that something very special was going on here in Bracebridge. Introduction I 1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5 I 6 I 7 I 8 I 9 I 10 I 11 I 12 I 13 I 14
All of the events and characters depicted in this book are non-fictional
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