May 2, 2020
Oved Ben-Arie, 84, of Thornhill, Ontario, passed away on May 2, 2020, at home and surrounded by his family. Psychiatrist, cruciverbalist, contrarian and mensch, he loved the simple pleasures – olives, cheese, figs, wine, honey and anything else that could be produced in Israel. A true South African, he loved a good “braai”, a cold beer, and a swim, in a pool or in the sea. His favourite quote, which he read to his future wife, Valerie, just before he proposed, was from Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat – “We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can’t do without.” And he couldn’t do without a good cryptic crossword, books and debate. Oved was sensitive, compassionate and loved being spoiled, and to be surrounded by his thousands of books, his music and art collection, and most importantly, his family. He was a true Renaissance man. In his professional life and his personal relationships he was prepared to meet people where they were, not where he expected them to be, and once quoted actor Will Rogers, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” He treated everyone decently, and he was never concerned about a person’s station in life. Oved was modest and, like his father, he rarely spoke of his good deeds. He encouraged his children to follow their interests, passions and artistic pursuits. They could do anything they wanted in life, except drive a motorcycle or go bare-face rock climbing. He didn’t always stop their follies, believing they had to make their own mistakes. He immersed himself in trying to understand string theory, and in trying to explain it to anyone who would listen. In his downtime from reconciling quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity, he turned his grandchildren’s photographed exploits into comics on his computer, obsessing over the smallest details. An immigrant to Canada in his mid-50s he had no innate passion for hockey, or any sport, but when his grandson Noah began playing seriously, he tried to follow his games, and occasionally even learned the rules. When his other grandson, Amadeo, was diagnosed with autism, he immersed himself in research on medical marijuana treatments and CBD (“being pioneered in Israel!”), drawing on his experience treating heavy marijuana users earlier in his career. Oved was born in Cape Town, South Africa, on March 17, 1936 to Michael (“Abba”), a businessman, and Betty, both immigrants. Michael was from Rosh Pina, in the Galilee – the son of a Romanian immigrant, one of the early Zionists to Palestine, and a Sephardic woman from Tzfat – and the youngest of seven children, part of the first generation to speak Hebrew as a native tongue. Michael had come to South Africa to study law but ran out of money during the Depression. Betty, a few years older, had immigrated from Lithuania as a child, and spoke with a slight brogue from attending Scottish schools. She was one of the first female PhDs in Philology at the University of Cape Town. When Oved was three years old the Second World War broke out, and Michael volunteered for the Duke of Edinburgh’s regiment, fighting in both the East and North Africa campaigns, and negotiating the surrender of the Island of Jumbo from the Italian forces, since he could speak Arabic and Amharic with the Italian interpreters. Elisheva, Oved’s sister, was born while Michael was at war, just after he left for the front. After graduating from South African College Schools at age 16, Oved entered University of Cape Town Medical School, graduating in 1958. In 1961, after completing his residency in Durban, he moved to the United Kingdom, planning to qualify in anaesthesiology, but changing to psychiatry. This spared him having to deal with the site of blood, but disappointed his father, who thought his son was going to become “a real doctor.” He lived in London for the rest of the sixties, working for many years at Tooting Bec Hospital, living the life of a bachelor, touring Europe in his Morris Minor, going to jazz shows at Ronnie Scott’s and, in his spare time, co- authoring some of the first research papers into heroin addiction and methadone treatment. On a trip home to Cape Town in 1970 he was offered a position at Groote Schuur Teaching Hospital and the University of Cape Town. On New Year’s Day, 1971, he met Valerie and they were married ten days later. He promised her that they would have a wonderful life together and that she would never be bored. Over the next twenty years, in addition to teaching medical students and running both inpatient and outpatient clinics at Groote Schuur, he ran William Slater for a number of years, the first general hospital treatment centre for alcoholism in the country. He started a series of community mental health centres in the Western Cape, to make sure care was available to all in apartheid South Africa. He knocked down the wall that separated the races in the psychiatric waiting rooms at Groote Schuur’s outpatient clinic. He conducted some of the first research into the different ways depression manifested in mixed-race communities in the Cape and into how schizophrenia was expressed in the Xhosa people. In 1986, as President of the Society of Psychiatrists of South Africa, he published a letter in the British Medical Journal, with two other colleagues, arguing against the academic boycotts then in place. “There are fewer than 200 psychiatrists for a population of 30 million,” they wrote, “(we) seek the support and help of colleagues overseas. We need encouragement in our everyday professional tasks, in fighting those inequalities and iniquities which arise out of both the socioeconomic and political situation.” They compared the boycotts, “to failing to aid a colleague who requires help while resuscitating a patient.” In 1989 he emigrated with his family to Canada, to take up a position as a Professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He returned to South Africa in 1995 for a one-year sabbatical. In 1997, he left Queen’s and went into general practice as a psychiatrist in Toronto, retiring in 2017, after nearly 60 years as a physician. He dedicated his life to making sure that every patient received the full care and attention they needed and was therefore reluctant to retire even at 81. Oved’s favourite writers – Damon Runyon, Negley Farson, Robert Graves, Beverley Nichols, Joseph Mitchell, Herman Charles Bosman, and Jaroslav Hašek – portrayed unconventional characters and outsiders who defied society’s conventions and didn’t quite fit in. He also loved fantasy (especially Tolkien), science fiction, graphic novels and cartoons. His favourite singers – Burl Ives, Paul Robeson, Janis Ian, Paul Simon, The Inkspots, The Mills Brothers and The Mighty Sparrow – were always on in the background. Listening to Beniamino Gigli, he said, “makes me believe that God exists.” He loved Gilbert and Sullivan so much that he never quite got around to returning a book of the operettas he’d borrowed from a London library. A political iconoclast, he subscribed to both the left-wing Manchester Guardian and the right-wing National Review. “Read something from the left, and something from the right,” he’d say, “and then you’re halfway to the truth.” He loved magic, nature, jokes and, most of all, relating tales from his experiences, but always with empathy. He was impatient with fools, and you could never win an argument. “You may win the battle,” he would say, “but you will never win the war.” He was proudest of being “Daddio” to Daniella, Joshua and David; “Oupa” to Noah, “Poupa” to Amadeo (who added a ‘P’ that stuck); father-in-law to Shawn and Alejandra; brother to Elisheva, who predeceased him; and most of all husband to Valerie, for nearly 50 years, who was, in his own words, his “dearest friend and companion” and “THE mother”. A few months before his passing he told her, “I was right. In all the years we’ve been married, we’ve never had one boring day.” Donations in his memory can be made to Beit Halochem – Aid to Disabled Veterans of Israel (Canada) at https://beithalochem.ca/