Dr. Otto Schaefer – Posthumous Slander

A friend once told me, “Monika, perfection is the enemy of the good.” Sometimes I am slow to publish because I want to create the perfect article, with extensive background and information, and everything that might be pertinent to the story. It takes a while to get it done, or to even to get it started. So here I am remembering my friend’s wise words and will simply get to it. There will be more later, as things develop, and as I pull more threads together.

This is about my father, Dr. Otto Schaefer (1919 – 2009).
In brief: he immigrated to Canada from Germany with the express purpose of going to the Arctic to live among the Eskimos as they were then called, whom we now more commonly refer to as the Inuit. He had a life-long fascination with their culture and their ability to survive and thrive in a harsh environment in the far north. He became a doctor, and long story short: he dedicated his life and career to the health and well-being of the Aboriginal people, in particular the Inuit. 

Together with his wife Editha, my mother, and my older siblings, the family lived in the far north during the 1950’s. By the time I came along, the family had moved south to Edmonton Alberta, however Otto continued his work in the north, travelling quite extensively during those years. In Edmonton he worked at the Charles Camsell Hospital. Our family moved to Whitehorse in the Yukon for two years during the early sixties, and then returned to Edmonton.

What a surprise it was for me when I was driving home after a regular Tuesday Night music jam, and I heard the name Otto Schaefer being spoken on the car radio. Oh! did I hear right? there must be another Otto Schaefer… then they said the name again, this time with the “Doctor” in front of the name, and then something about Edmonton and the Charles Camsell Hospital. It was clear they were indeed talking about my dad within a context of bad stuff. I was flabbergasted!

Upon arriving home I searched CBC Radio online and found the broadcast that had just finished on the radio, and listened to it in its entirety. I slept not a stitch that night. I was livid. Everything has been turned on its head. [That IDEAS episode can be heard here.]

Here is the letter I recently submitted to the Ombudsman of the CBC: 

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2026 June 23

Defamatory statements were made about Dr. Otto Schaefer during a recent CBC radio program, for which there was a complete lack of hard data and evidence. I am asking that the CBC make a formal retraction and a public apology for slander.

I happened to tune in to the tail end of the CBC radio program called IDEAS on May 12^th, 2026. Imagine my surprise when I heard my father’s name Otto Schaefer being spoken, and then the shock when I realized that he was being smeared. I heard things being said about my father which I knew to be false and unfounded. As soon as the program finished, I searched online and found the show in the CBC radio archive for that day and was able to listen to the entire broadcast. It was called “How Canada forgot it once had a segregated health system”, and the host was Nahlah Ayed. The discussion revolved around a book written by the late Elaine Dewar called “Oblivious: Residential Schools, Segregated Hospitals, and the use of Indigenous People as Slaves of Race Science”. Elaine Dewar had been interviewed shortly before she died, and the voice of her daughter and others who attended the recent book launch (posthumously for the author) were heard as well.

Otto Schaefer worked for many years at the Charles Camsell Hospital in Edmonton, and he was the founding Director of the Northern Medical Research Unit of the Department of National Health and Welfare Canada during the nineteen-sixties, seventies and eighties. He dedicated his life to the health and wellbeing of the aboriginal peoples of the north, in particular the Inuit. But because of my father’s country of origin – Germany ‒ and because of the time during which he attained his medical degree ‒ WW2 ‒ Elaine Dewar made assumptions about his motivation and about his goals, none of which she could verify. In her own words, all her red flags went up when she saw his name and learned from where and whence he came, because she was “a Jewish girl”. The host had introduced her as a Holocaust survivor one generation removed.

During the program the term “medical experiments” was used repeatedly, thus invoking rather sinister images. Conducting research on the health of the Inuit during a time of rapid changes in their lifestyle and nutrition is a very different thing from doing “medical experimentation”.

Elaine Dewar characterized Otto Schaefer’s research as “nonsense studies”. For example, she scoffed at his study of differing alcohol metabolic rates in different peoples. It just so happens that my father’s motivation to study this came after he found that the Whitehorse police were consistently releasing Caucasians from the “drunk tank” sooner than the Indians, after collecting the drunks off the streets the night before. (Presumably they were being protected from violence or from freezing to death in case they passed out on a cold winter night.) Schaefer complained to the police that they were being racist, always letting the White guys out first. So the Police Chief invited him, “Otto, please come tomorrow morning, and you make the determination whom to let out, and when.” Lo and behold, Otto found that the Whites were completely sober, but the Indians were still drunk in the morning. My father, having a curious mind and being very scientifically oriented, then set out to determine why this was so.

By coincidence some years later, a Swedish acquaintance of mine wrote to ask me if there was any connection between myself and Dr. Otto Schaefer, and I proudly told him that I was his daughter. This man had come across Schaefer’s ground-breaking research which explained the differences in metabolic processes between races on account of different enzymes which were either present or not. It seems to me this information is actually quite important. But according to Elaine Dewar, this was a “nonsense study”. And she called it racist. Ironically, it was my father’s concern about police racism which led him to conduct the study.

Elaine Dewar also spoke about the fact that Schaefer was the organizer of “so-called consent”, again, mocking him. She said that whichever language he was speaking [he spoke German, English, Inuktitut, and French], “everyone said it all sounded German anyway, so nobody could understand him.” Therefore she concluded that their informed consent was meaningless.

I can surmise wherefrom Dewar got this idea. It so happens that our family donated all of Otto Schaefer’s papers, books, slides, and journals to the University of Alberta. We felt that his important life’s work would be of greater use there than in one of his children’s basements. [Would we do that if we had any doubt about his impeccable character and integrity?] Elaine Dewar had access to all those donated materials. So, what might she have found that led her to the above mockery?

My father was a very humble man, and he liked to tell a self-deprecating humorous story about one of his lectures which he had delivered in French. He had started his talk with an apology for his imperfect French. A colleague in the audience quipped in a joking manner, “that’s okay Otto, it all sounds German anyway!” and everyone laughed. My father kept detailed journals and I imagine this was in one of those journals which Dewar had read.

Otto worked very hard at learning Inuktitut, the native language of the Inuit. He also made use of interpreters, to be certain of clear communication. The very doctor who was responsible for and insistent upon the informed consent protocol was now being slandered by Elaine Dewar as having done exactly the opposite. She had no hard data for her defamation of a much-loved and respected doctor. I say much-loved, because I was astonished and moved by the volume of tributes and letters we received from the north, from the Inuit people themselves, after his death in 2009. It was clear that they dearly loved my father.

Otto Schaefer quarrelled many times with his boss, the Deputy Minister for Northern and Indian Affairs, because he was constantly advocating for the Inuit. He was a man of integrity and compassion. He had great respect for the Native people and their ability to survive and thrive in such a harsh environment. When he saw injustice, he sought to rectify the situation.

In 2021 there were rumours and allegations about medical experiments and bodies buried on the grounds of the Charles Camsell hospital. The owner of the former hospital conducted an investigation. He excavated the grounds and found nothing. However, it leaves me to wonder if Dewar was still affected by those false rumours when she made her unsubstantiated remarks about “experiments”.

The Canadian government apology to the Inuit just over a year-and-a-half ago for the alleged slaughter of a thousand sled dogs during the 1950s and 60s has relevance to this current complaint. I wrote a letter at that time to the CBC but never received a response. Here is the link to the article I published, which includes my letter: https://freespeechmonika.com/another-canadian-apology-for-alleged-wrongs-the-slaughter-of-inuit-sled-dogs/

The obituary which appeared in the International Journal of Circumpolar Health is far more indicative of my father’s work and character, than the speculative, biased and prejudiced characterizations made by Elaine Dewar. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.3402/ijch.v68i5.17600?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200pubmed

The IDEAS program “How Canada forgot it once had a segregated health system” has put a blot on the reputation of my father. That stain must be removed. The CBC must publicly retract the defamatory statements made on that program, and make a public apology for having allowed all those unsubstantiated statements and accusations against the late Dr. Otto Schaefer.

I look forward to a positive response about this serious matter.

Sincerely,

Monika Schaefer

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There is a back-story to the “medical experiments” meme. This IDEAS program did NOT appear in a vacuum. There is much animosity being stirred up against Canadian people of European descent, and we have been accused of genocide of the Indigenous people. In 2021, the Kamloops band announced the 215 unmarked graves [never investigated to this day] and in that same year, (as mentioned in my letter above,) there were rumours and allegations about medical experiments and bodies buried on the grounds of the Charles Camsell hospital. Fortunately, the former hospital was in private hands by then, and the owner / developer did the right thing and paid a pretty dime to have the grounds excavated and investigated, to search for bones and bodies. Nothing was found and so that story quietly went away. That private developer paid out of pocket to the tune of about a quarter million dollars. There were no government grants, unlike the Kamloops band who have been paid many millions to excavate, and never dug one shovelful. Where did those millions go?

At that time I was thinking that if that man had not done the digging on the grounds of the former Charles Camsell hospital, the rumours would have escalated into hysteria similar as for the Kamloops grave story, and my father would be transformed into the next Josef Mengele (who, by the way, is the second most lied about man of those times in Germany). Well, it seems they are not done with this narrative and will push it any way they can. My relief about the rumours having been put to rest were short-lived.

There is another story being hyped now, and I observe the escalation of lies and exaggerations first-hand. It is about those sled-dogs. When I wrote my letter and article just under two years ago in response to the Canadian apology and pay-out to the Inuit for the “slaughter” of sled-dogs, they said it was just over a thousand sled-dogs through the 1950’s and 1960’s, and in a recently produced video on Youtube (go to minute 7:30), the narrative has turned into “tens of thousands of sled dogs” were killed, in order to destroy the Inuit way of life. Will it soon be six million?

I see this as being part and parcel of the war against people of European descent. Let us see what response will be forthcoming. Stay tuned. Thank you for reading.

P.S. I will upload the “feature image” as soon as possible. Currently, the “server is busy”… whatever that means.