Robert Buckman

From Philosopedia

Buckman, Robert (Amiel) (22 August 1948 - 9 October 2011)

Buckman, an English-born Canadian, qualified in 1972 as a physician from Cambridge University, completed his training in medical oncology at The Royal Marsden Hospital in London, and in 1985 emigrated to Toronto. An oncologist, he practices at a Toronto cancer centre and is a professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

The host of TV-Ontario’s “Vital Signs,” he has starred in and co-written three television series. His television series, "Magic or Medicine?", won him a Gemini award.

Buckman is author of fourteen books, including I Don't Know What To Say - How To Help And Support Someone Who Is Dying, a guide for friends and family; and What You Really Need to Know About Cancer - A Comprehensive Guide for Patients and Family. His autobiography, Not Dead Yet - The Unauthorized Autobiography, was published in Canada in April 1999. He also wrote Can We Be Good Without God?, dealing with the effects of belief on our history and behaviour and containing his naturalistic outlook in philosophy.

In 1994 Buckman was named Canada’s Humanist of the Year. He was a signer of Humanist Manifesto 2000. Commencing in 1999, he was President of the Humanist Association of Canada. In 2010 Simon Parcher became the new president of Humanist Canada. Parcher was the editor of Humanist Perspectives.

Buckman included in Twice Around the World and Still Stupid the following, which reminded some of his hilarious appearance on the Monty Python show. “To me,” said the President of the Humanist Association of Canada,

• . . . humanism is what you are left with if you strip away what doesn’t make sense. I was always attracted by science, and the more I learned, the more I found that many established world-philosophies (particularly among some of the organized religions) didn’t make any form of intuitive sense. Undoubtedly they bring great comfort to their believers, but I found that I was unable to sincerely believe in any divine architecture to the cosmos, or in any predetermined destiny for any race or creed or even for any individual. From my teenage years onwards, I basically came to think that we humans are a most peculiar species huddled together in a rather uneven and random way on a rather pleasant planet, and it’s up to us to do our best. I have never felt that we can look for assistance elsewhere. What we see around us is what we’ve got. Now that might sound as if I am some sort of unemotional reductionist - a B. F. Skinner playing the role of doctor - but I know that I am not. Accepting a humanist view of our world does not mean that you don’t feel love, anger, fright, tenderness - or even humour. A humanist basis simply allows you to spend less of your time twisting what you see and contorting it to fit somebody else’s idea of what ought to be. Of course I could be wrong: but if I am I don’t think I shall have done all that much damage on the way - on average, humanists don’t.

Buckman, while flying from London to Toronto on 9 October 2011, died in his sleep.

With his first wife, Joan van den Ende, Buckman had two daughters, Joanna and Susie, and with his second, Pat Shaw, two sons, James and Matthew. All of them survive him.

(See The Guardian obituary]).

Speaking in New York About Bioethics, 2005 - Photo by Warren Allen Smith

{Humanist in Canada, Summer 1999}