'He did so much for people'

Glen Lowther, 92, founded first community residence for people with mild intellectual disabilities

By: Katie May

Dr. Glen Lowther was working at an institution for adults with intellectual disabilities, seeing hundreds of residents who didn’t belong there. They spent years at the old Manitoba School because there was nowhere else for them to go.

It was the 1960s, and Lowther was medical superintendent of what is now called the Manitoba Developmental Centre in Portage la Prairie. His work there convinced him people with intellectual disabilities — including those who might now be labelled as having autism or Down syndrome — shouldn’t be separated from the wider community.

In the years that followed, the Scottish psychiatrist founded Canada’s first community residence for people with mild intellectual disabilities.

The group home, Kin Glen, which Lowther named after the Kinsmen Club and himself, was among the first of its kind in North America. It paved the way for the deinstitutionalization of people with developmental disabilities across the country.

Lowther died in June 2019 at age 92. He worked until he was 84, with six different retirements demarcating his long career in psychiatry — one that he kept finding himself called back to, and one that wasn’t always done by the book.

Dressed in horn-rimmed glasses, a dark suit, white shirt and slim, striped tie, Lowther was interviewed about the opening of Kin Glen for a CBC documentary by Warner Troyer, filmed roughly 50 years ago.

At the time, the idea people with disabilities should be allowed to live somewhere other than with their parents or in an institution was still in its infancy. Opponents were afraid the intellectually disabled would be preyed upon and victimized outside an institution; others didn’t want to see group homes built in their backyards.

Seated at his office desk, immortalized on grainy, sepia-toned film, Lowther spoke authoritatively. He said he believed the community, if given the chance, would take responsibility for and embrace people with intellectual disabilities.

"The only reason they are here is because there’s nowhere to send them. What we have to do about this is we have to try and develop a very definitely artificial alternative to the emotional support of the parental home," Lowther said in a thick Scottish accent.

It’s the same calm, lilting tenor of voice his wife of 30 years hasn’t been able to erase from their answering-machine greeting in the eight months he’s been gone. Hundreds of patients and colleagues over the years knew they could always reach him on his home phone (or on the landline at his cottage at West Hawk Lake, or on his cellphone, or on the pager he kept before cellphones were ubiquitous).

"I don’t think you’ll find too many doctors today that give their patients their home phone number," Marj Lowther says.

She said Lowther had a "terrible, terrible habit" of ending the calls with an offer of more of his time. "And if that doesn’t work," he’d say at all hours, "call me back."

"Let’s put it this way, as his wife, it was not always great, because we’d get like 20 calls a night," Marj says.

More often than not, he was able to help. Talking to him always seemed to calm people down. "We used to call him silver-tongued," she says.

A former patient Lowther diagnosed with bipolar disorder said it helped to know he’d always be available.

"It gave me a safety net, that I knew he had my back; that he was there for me. He was just remarkable," said the woman, who asked her name not be published.

"It gave me hope, lots of hope, that this could be beat, this could be managed. And it’s proven that way."

Born in Scotland, Lowther immigrated to Canada in 1952, after graduating medical school and working with the Royal Army Medical Corps. He hadn’t considered a career in psychiatry until he learned of a job opening at the Manitoba School, formerly known as the Home for Incurables.

Once in the field, he found a lifelong passion that vaulted him to stints working with the provincial government, where he eschewed red tape in favour of what he called "astute budgeting."

Lowther found ways to gather enough donations, in addition to his own money, to build a swimming pool and buy a summer cottage for residents at the Manitoba School. Both projects got underway without government approval in the late 1960s or early ’70s; Lowther learned to ask forgiveness instead of permission.

"He had to face the music of numerous ministers saying, ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’" Marj recalls. "He was kind of a rule-breaker."

Lowther later became the attending psychiatrist at the former Misericordia General Hospital in Winnipeg, where he worked with patients he knew were struggling financially. He made house calls, and didn’t hesitate to give them bus tickets or fast-food gift cards.

"He’d do things that weren’t really considered by-the-book, nowadays," said Dr. Jim Simm, then a ward nurse who watched Lowther work and wondered how he did it all. Eventually, Lowther inspired Simm to become a psychiatrist, too.

"His energy level — I met him when he was 65 years old — he would work most people under the table and still at the end of the day be able to go out for a scotch," Simm said. "He did so much for people. I guess I wanted to be like him."

When he wasn’t working, the father of four was often vacationing in Scotland or honouring his roots at the St. Andrew’s Society of Winnipeg. An amateur poet, he served as a longtime bard of the society and was a past-president.

"He was a brilliant raconteur, he really was," says John Perrin, the St. Andrew’s president when, thanks to a motion seconded by Lowther, the formerly all-male club began allowing women members in 2014.

"That was a major milestone for the society. Certainly, later than it should have been, but nevertheless, it was the right decision and he was an instrumental part in bringing that forward," Perrin said.

Lowther won many awards and accolades for his contributions to the medical field and Manitoba’s treatment of people with intellectual disabilities, but he still felt he had more work to do, his wife says.

"I think he was pleased to see the progress in each field, but knew that tons more needed to be done," Marj says.

"He wanted people who were mentally ill to be as accepted as people who were mentally handicapped, and people who had autism to be as accepted. (He wanted) virtually no marginalization."

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay