Viva Echave! The spirit of humanity lives!

From Castro's revolution to the compassion of the Buddha. Live well and do good works

By Maria Turner and David Elkins

He's exuberant on this bright Sunday morning in March as he shows a visitor around his shiny new apartment on Montreal's rue de la Commune. From the rooftop terrace there's a 360-degree view of the gleaming city and the elegant avenue that sweeps along Montreal's Old Port. There's a lot of history here -- and surgeon Dr Vincent Echave is more than a casual student of history. He's lived it since the days when he was a young man in revolutionary Cuba. Back then he was in the thick of things -- in the early days of the revolution he was dating a woman named Olga who worked as an industrial architect for another doctor, Che Guevara. (Olga later married into the revolutionary dynasty -- her brother-in-law is Ra£l Castro, Cuba's first vice-premier and brother of Fidel.)

Dr Echave's been a humanitarian to this day, with a sympathy for people's suffering that has its roots in those formative days. "It was my early experiences in Cuba that opened my eyes to how the world really was," explains the nattily dressed 65-year-old surgeon. "In the 40s and 50s, Havana, where I grew up, was a fantastic city -- one of the three greatest in Latin America along with Mexico City and Buenos Aires. My family wasn't rich but we lived very well. After Castro came in I went to the country. There was unimaginable poverty and disease, parasites, infection, you name it. My experience was like the Buddha's. His parents kept him locked up in the palace to protect him from the world. Then he goes out and sees things as they are. Sickness, aging, death. The suffering in the countryside was such a shock to me. I've never forgotten it."

He's seen considerable suffering since -- on his 12 tours of duty with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), with whom he's spent his 'holidays' for the last dozen years -- and danger too. "One night in Burundi we ended up in the middle of a war zone. There was firing everywhere. We made it back to our quarters and we were so exhausted we just collapsed and fell asleep on the floor. In the morning the whole building was riddled with bullet holes." But there have also been good times. Dr Echave's most treasured memories are being able to save babies. "I've done a lot of C-sections, I still do," he says. "People there are so happy when babies are born, they dance and sing no matter how tough times are. If it's twins they really celebrate."

"I'm going again in April or May" he says casually, as if talking about a beach holiday to Florida and not six weeks doing surgery in the midst of poverty and pain in some third world hellhole. "It's an excellent way to lose weight," he jokes, gesturing to his slim frame. "Some of the young doctors are worried when they see me -- they think I might not be able to handle it," he laughs. "Then they realize I have a lot of experience."

Born in 1938 to Spanish parents who, worried that their son was getting too caught up in the fervour of the times, sent a teenaged Vincent to Spain for two years to start his medical studies. The trip did nothing to dampen his ardour for the revolution. "I went back to Cuba in June of 1959," he remembers. "I remained there during the important and romantic period of the revolution -- when anything was possible." He'd caught the dream that the Cuban revolution could remake the face of communism by injecting the dark, dour Soviet variety with the sun, colour and ebullience of the Cuban people.

The revolution of joy was not to be -- not for Cuba and not for Vincent Echave. When his family decided to leave Cuba for the US in 1962, he went with them. "I knew my parents needed me," he says without regret. "When the revolution became more radical, my father was already 65. He didn't understand, he couldn't cope with the changes." The family left Cuba for the United States and with nothing but "a box of cigars and two bottles of rum."

Surprisingly, they ended up not in Florida, but in Fort Gary, Indiana where his father had friends and could find work. His brother, John, remained in the States and is now a senior photo editor for National Geographic.

For Dr Echave, the route from the US to Canada was a circuitous one. First he went back to Spain to continue his medical studies. He graduated from the University of Madrid in 1965. He then went on to Switzerland where he started his surgical training and got married. In 1969, after four years in Switzerland, he and his wife made the move to Canada. There were two reasons they chose this country: "Canada is bilingual and it's a free country." Another influence was that the then just-elected prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, clearly intended to have cordial relations with Cuba.

With this country as a base, the couple stayed on the move. In the next 10 years he worked at the Montreal General Hospital, Miami University, McGill and Laval Universities and Mt Sinai in New York. Finally, in 1979 they settled in Quebec's Eastern Townships, where he continues to hold a position as surgeon and professor at the Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Sherbrooke -- Fleurimont. Soon after that he began doing humanitarian work overseas, first as a teacher and since 1991 as a surgeon with the Canadian chapter of Médecins Sans Frontières. In the last several years, he's been on missions to Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Colombia, the Congo, the Ivory Coast, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone, among other countries. He wishes he could do more. "In Ethiopia, I saw children dying because they came to the hospital too late. Appendicitis with peritonitis -- you can remove the appendix, but you don't have antibiotics, you don't have intensive care," he says looking down.

During the week Dr Echave lives and works in Sherbrooke, on weekends he heads to Montreal to the apartment he considers "a holiday home." The décor reflects his passions and his travels to over 100 countries. Masks, rugs, paintings and statues adorn the walls. Each comes with a set of memories. "That's from Sri Lanka, from a Hindu ceremony," he says pointing to a brightly coloured parasol. "I've been to Sri Lanka many times. I attended a festival there once where thousands of people walked on fire. There were 20 metres of burning ashes -- they gave off an incredible heat. First the young boys walked across, then everybody else, even 10-year-old girls." He falls silent for a moment. "I was in the Tamil area of Sri Lanka, where the Tamil Tigers were active," he recalls. "Young girls used to do suicide attacks."

Divorced, his own two children caught dad's travel bug and live outside Canada -- his son Pablo lives in Switzerland and has a couple of children, and his daughter Vanessa lives in California. Dr Echave plans to retire in two or three years to begin "a different kind of life." He'll divide his time between the place in Montreal and a small apartment he owns in Paris -- except, of course, when he's performing surgery in some of the most dangerous places on earth.