John Sader - Class of 1978

C.C.H.S. Senior Soccer Team -
1978: John is seen here wedged between the team's other star players,
Andy Glew and Bruce Hills.

Memory Lane

C.C.H.S. seemed like a very big school
for me and I clearly remember being quite intimidated when going to register
and meeting the principal for the first time.

My best memories include my friends and I love them as my brothers:

I will never forget putting the music
way-too-loud at Fraser Muir's house
and listening to Billy Connolly recordings
until we were rolling on the floor with laughter.

I spent hours and hours playing tennis with Andy Glew and Andy Peart
at the then Brooklyn Park Tennis Club and then,
when the rains came, we would talk for hours
in the next-to-empty clubhouse discussing all topics
from girls to politics to computers (all of which I knew little).

I remember that summer when James Forbes and I
spent a couple of weeks at the tennis club planting all those trees
that still now stand along perimeter of those same tennis courts.
I have started to play again after all those years.

In the last year of High School, I made another close friend in Andy Mahar.
Somehow, the tall lanky guy (Andy) and the shorter stocky guy (Myself)
hit it off around music. I wrote the songs and he wrote the music.
Now we both do both. Sometimes, I'll play some of the stuff we wrote
way back then and I still think that it's good, but then I'm biased.

One of my best memories includes someone who I have lost contact with
over the years, Donald Gordon.
You see Donald was a budding comedian and would in his free time write
the most totally absurd texts that I have ever had the pleasure to read.
He would bring them into school on stapled-together loose-leaf
that all of his friends would take turns reading before passing them around.
I truly hope that he's still writing and making his friends laugh.

I remain eternally grateful to my high school teachers;
Mrs Singer and Brown, as well as
Messrs. MacDonald, Paquet, West, Bill Weeks and Wendell MacLean.

John was born in Bristol, England in July of 1961. His parents immigrated to Ville LaSalle, Montréal when he was not yet two. At age nine, his family moved to the Great White North following Quebec's hydroelectric projects; first going to the Manicouagan region and then to James Bay. The family later moved to St. Lambert when John was twelve. He arrived just in time to begin high school having learned to speak French fluently, drive a snowmobile, build a rudimentary log cabin, fish and hunt, ski and appreciate the country. Arriving in upper middle class St. Lambert in the early seventies, was not an easy adaptation for the shy kid who felt a lot like a fish out of water. All the other kids seemed to have known each other forever – and in many instances it was so. It didn't take too long however, for some great and still-enduring friendships to blossom. John recalls vividly playing soccer with Fraser Muir, tennis at Brooklyn Park with Andy Peart and Andy Glew (where he later became the Publicity Director at the ripe old age of seventeen) and learning to play guitar and write songs with Andy Mahar.

John has much gratitude for many of his teachers at C.C.H.S. He considers that many of them went beyond teaching their subject matter; teaching and influencing the students with other lessons just as, if not more important. He recalls Claude Paquet whose love of all things science was inspiring. He appreciated Stan MacDonald's love of teaching and of his students, as well as his courage in the face of those less-empathetic students who would tease him about his lisp. He was inspired by Mr. West who stood up and resisted the waves of social conformism and wasn't afraid to take a stand, whether it is against televisions` invasion of our free time and free thought, or processed food such as hot dogs or cheese. John went on to attend Champlain CEGEP after high school and then was accepted into Biology and Human Genetics at McGill University. In 1983, John had a smaller course load and first volunteered and then was paid to be the Director of S.H.O., a self-help organization for psychiatric out-patients. It was also during this, his last year at McGill, that he was offered a chance to complete a clinical individual-studies project on the topic of the hereditary patterns of alcoholism. He studied under Drs. Maurice Dongier and Roberta Palmour from the Allen Memorial and Douglas Hospitals. This opportunity would ignite a passion for Addiction Medicine and Psychiatry that would shape his career. Johns' exposure to Alcoholics Anonymous during this project would enlighten him about this movement, its members and its Self-building program. You see, when one enters such a meeting like the one at the Erskine American Church in downtown Montréal and claims to be a university student there to find out more about the program, most of the members there do not believe a word of it. Many members proceeded to try all of the tricks in the book to get John to admit having a substance abuse problem.

John says, “Little did they know that their caring for a stranger without such problems was most welcome but for other reasons. You see, like many of us, I had my own protective armour that I carried around. You know the kind that we hope protects us from harm but that also stops the good from shining in. Well, the armour melted away in the warmth of those caring individuals who wanted no more than to help. It is not too strong to say that I felt that their caring for a stranger helped to reconcile myself with humanity, and allowed me to get back a sense of connection that I'd misplaced, impossible to feel through the armour. I had found more than a research project, I had found my passion. “

This experience led him to apply to medical school at L'Université de Montréal. During this period, he did more independent studies in addiction medicine at l`Hôpital St-Luc and La Clinique du Nouveau Départ, which confirmed this was the field for him.

He then entered l'Université de Sherbrooke when he completed his studies in Family Medicine. This is also where he met Christine Fournier, who at the time was doing a rotation in Internal Medicine. John and Christine have been together ever since and over the course of the next eighteen years have had three fine children, Alec, Eric and Laurence. All three currently attend school in St. Lambert.

Professionally, now Dr. Sader, began to work at La Clinique du Nouveau Départ, a private addictions clinic in Montréal and was there until November 2007. During the sixteen years at this clinic, he was directly involved with the care of patients and became the Assistant Medical Director in 1995.

Over those years, he has been a regular invited guest on numerous television shows dealing with current events surrounding alcohol, drugs and gambling in Canadian society. Interviews include diverse talk shows but also more scientific programs such as `Découverte` on French language CBC.

He has also been in highly publicized debates with Senator Jacques Nolin concerning the Canadian Senates position on cannabis policy.

John has also collaborated with many Health Canada initiatives to inform the public about the dangers of alcohol during pregnancy as part of our public health policy aiming at the reduction of Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and Foetal Alcohol Syndrome in our society.

He has also worked with the Montréal Police Department to help create DINAD, a robot that serves as a drug-education aid for elementary and high schools. DINAD later went on display au Musée de la Civilisation in Quebec City.

John has also been hired by public addiction treatment resources to teach psychologists, social workers and therapists about gambling issues and the psychiatric co-morbidities that often accompany problematic gambling behaviour. Also on the topic of gambling, he has been the keynote speaker at the annual Public Health conference in 2005. His talk on gambling and its associated psychiatric difficulties was very well received by public health officials, increasing their lobbying within the government to become more involved. It was shortly after this conference that the decision to build a new casino complex in Le Vieux Montréal port district was abandoned.

Dr. Sader has also presented innumerable conferences about addictions to medical students, family physicians and psychiatrists. He has been a regular lecturer at the annual McGill Family Medicine Review Course. He holds a position of affiliated professor at McGill University that allows him to receive medical students at the BACA clinic for eating disorders where he now works as Medical Director.

He has recently published a chapter on 'L'alcoolisme et la pharmacodépendance' in the newest edition of the popular textbook 'Précis de Gériatrie' by Dr M. Arcand & R. Hébert, Eds, Edisem Inc. Montréal.

Over the past few years, John has been working on two special projects: the first involves building psychometric tools to help identify smokers with psychiatric co-morbidity in order to increase the quitting success rate and the second involves a new way of understanding the different faces of anxiety and using this new paradigm to develop appropriate cognitive-behavioural tools for treatment.

He has also established Egothera Inc, a company whose mission includes creating free personalized web tools to better assist smokers in leaving the smoking relationship. Dr Saders` Prepar-Action program is presently in the patent process and hopefully will be available to the general public within the next couple of years.

Also in the works is a book that combines much of the experience that comes with working in a field as vast and compelling as medicine and psychiatry and working with people who are, complex, inspiring and generally extraordinary. It is tentatively titled 'Metaphysical Exercises for Modern Man in Search of Understanding' and combines Dr. Sader's appreciation for Biology, Psychiatry, Physics, Mathematics, Philosophy and Spirituality in a format that aims to assist the reader to learn to see the world with different eyes.

Send an Email to John