Almost a quarter of my brother's life was spent in the Oliver Crockford wing of the Scarborough General Hospital which he entered in 1975, having had multiple sclerosis from his 19th year.

A deceptive enemy, it struck without warning and stayed with him like an army of occupation the rest of his days, slowly but inexorably taking control of more and more of his body.

MS results from a degeneration of the myelin sheath which insulates the fibers of the central nervous system. Progressively, the brain loses its ability to communicate with the body through its network of nerves, the victim losing more and more of the physical functions the rest of us take for granted day after day, every minute of the day.

By the time that death came as a liberation more than a termination, Ben could move almost no part of his body. But to all who visited him, he remained more than the helpless patient who lay before them. By radio he kept in touch with the world outside that room, listening to every news broadcast, forming an opinion on every current issue, making sure he cast his vote in every election. A television set beside his bed brought the Blue Jays and other sports personalities close to him. He went to the hospital church services and recreation events.

Best of all, he enjoyed those times when his wife, Jo, a daily visitor, wheeled him outside to enjoy the sun. Pictures of children and grandchildren were posted proudly on the wall behind his bed. Ben never thought he had ceased to be the head of his house just because he could not live there any more.

In the periods of remission that MS allowed Ben, he made the most of the opportunity to live a full life. With Jo, he raised a family of four, every one of them becoming a university graduate and entering a vocation that makes this a better world.

He and his wife bought and paid for a family home. He worked in the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests, now Natural Resources, until it was physically impossible to work any longer.

Physically helpless as he became, he retained his invincible spirit. It expressed itself in the daily round of life, when he could become irate at the suspicion an official had pried into his bank account. Or his insistence on providing his own tea bags in preference to those the hospital provided. Or laboriously reading books with the help of an overhead projector. Or making an effort to speak even after his diaphragm had become so weak he could not supply enough air to his throat to be heard.

His courage -- a quality that impressed every one of his visitors -- may have been inherited from centuries of patient Yorkshire farmer ancestors. When the two of us were boys, we earned $2.50 between us for delivering 5000 handbills. The task seemed to take forever, each of us wondering if we would ever finish, wondering if the merchant had given us more than the contracted number. But neither of us ever thought of quitting.

It was the same with Ben's job as a carrier for The Globe before that paper merged with The Mail and Empire. In then-Tory Toronto, there were not many takers of this historically Liberal organ and to make a route viable meant the carrier -- and sometimes his younger brother as helper -- had to cover an entire neighbourhood. It was like delivering those handbills. On a dark, cold morning, with no light but the lamp posts and no sound but one's shoes crunching on the crusty snow, the task seemed to take forever. But keep at the task he did as a boy, and keep at the task of living he did as a man.

But even more, his secret was contained in the simple testimony he gave me one day: "You know, my faith has helped me to fight this thing." Helpless as he was in a grip he could not shake free, Ben still thought of himself as a fighter. He could not move even a finger, but he refused to surrender that inner fortress called his soul. He had learned what St. Paul had written centuries earlier: "Though the outward person can grow weaker and weaker, the inward person can become new every day."
Reginald Stackhouse is principal emeritus and research professor at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto.