Théodore Macdonald


Théodore Harney MacDonald was a Canadian polymath, professor of mathematics, and activist of human rights.

Background

MacDonald was raised in Montreal, Quebec, as one of six children. His father was Cuthbert Goodridge MacDonald, editor of The Montreal Herald and a poet. Reports differ as to his early childhood. One account says that his mother left the family when he was ten and that the children were largely raised by the oldest daughter, then aged thirteen. Another says that he ran away from home, repelled by his father, but this seems unlikely because he gave praise for his father in a book preface. All agree that he was largely educated by Jesuits and that his precocious talents led to him finishing school curriculum several years early. All obituaries also report he obtained a first class degree or qualification in music by the age of twelve.
After this he taught music before completing a second degree in mathematics and epidemiology from McGill University at the age of seventeen.
He then worked in the Canadian Wildlife Service and did Canadian national service in the 1950–1953 Korean War. One obituary says that he was captured by North Korea but defected to them at the end of the war in 1953, aged twenty, travelling by ship with East German allies and settling there to complete a medical degree. He remained a socialist for the rest of his life. He also had a C. Psychol., possibly an MA from Columbia University, and PhD, possibly two.
In 1960 MacDonald participated in organized, nonviolent protest against racial segregation in the US southern states led by Martin Luther King and was eventually exiled from the US, probably because he also began visiting Cuba and was known to authorities as a communist.
MacDonald was in Australia in 1961 in Perth, at the University of Western Australia, and again in the 1970s, working at Monash University and the University of Newcastle, and had a Chair at the relatively young University of the South Pacific in 1972 and 1973 before being banned from entering Fiji on the grounds of 'political activity' in 1973.
In all he spent over a decade in Australia and since the early 1980s relocated to London and eventually Littlehampton in southern England, completing several books after retirement.
He was married to Elizabeth Scammell between 1962 and 1980 and adopted her two daughters, Lynda and Anne, from her previous marriage and was legal parent to her son Ross, from which he was estranged from the mid-1980s and to which, never spoke again. They had two children, a daughter Sara and son Gareth. He was subsequently married to Chris and had one child, Matthew, with another adopted, nine grandchildren and one great-grandson in 2011. One son, Matthew, was sentenced during the May Day riots in London in 2000, later establishing the Cambridge Anti-Capitalist Action Society while at the university and being expelled for various pro-poor actions.

Career

MacDonald worked a doctor, consultant, and as an academic in several disciplines. Positions known:
Aside from developing strategies for mathematics education in the 1970s and 1980s, MacDonald argued that the major causes of ill-health in developing countries are not bacteria and viruses or even war and natural disasters but poverty. He asserted that addressing inequality would reduce health inequities.
MacDonald being prolific writer, several of his later books analysed the Cuban education system and its remarkable system of training of medical personnel. This expanded into praise for Cuba's economic model, contrasted with Western market-led economies.
His broader normative agenda was to reform global finance and international trade, linked to the looming environmental crisis. The liberalization of trade, he argued, led to the privatizing of global health care, with negative outcomes for those living in poverty. In one of his books he argues for the Health Impact Assessment to precede any multinational corporate enterprise.
MacDonald was a supporter of the United Nations but a critic of the World Health Organization's failure to promote health as a basic human right, particularly after 1990.
He attained an MD from an unknown university and in an unknown year. One source says that he pursued biology research as well for a short time, but this is unconfirmed.
Brunel University still offers the Public Health and Health Promotion MSc.
He lived in Perth, Western Australia from 1961-1963. He returned to the US in 1963, living in California and South Carolina. He lived in Kingston, Jamaica in 1969. He fathered two, possibly three children. Others he claimed, had no genetic relationship to him. He never practiced medicine and most likely did not have a medical degree. He was never in the Canadian army.

Publications

MacDonald gave all book royalties to Cuba or other international projects. He mainly wrote by hand. In addition to dozens of books, are over 100 articles not all traceable.