The Aftermath of Polio

Deep compassion is not the normal reaction to Garth Drabinsky, but I found his comments about prison isolation genuinely moving. “It was devastating,” he said of his experience in Beaver Creek Institution. “I hadn’t experienced anything like that since I was three years old when I was moved to isolation and quarantine when I first had polio … Every time that door slammed shut … I was overwhelmed.” It is not the anguish of his current isolation that Drabinsky laments, but the return of the terror and despair of a three-year-old torn from the security of home and love. Much more is known today about the lifelong psychological impact of this kind of rupture at an early age than was understood in 1953 when Drabinksy succumbed to the epidemic. Survivors of childhood polio often carry a bottomless emotional insecurity through their lives that can hit them hard when they least expect it.

In her evocative novel The Western Light, Susan Swan portrays the complexities...