Colonel Arthur Richard Cecil Butson, GC, OMM, CD and Bar (24 October 1922 – 24 March 2015) was born of British parents in China, and later emigrated to Canada.
He served in the Home Guard and a Light Rescue Squad in London during the Blitz and as a Medical Officer with the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey in the Antarctic from 1946 to 1948.
During his year in Antarctica, the expedition found a route for dog teams over the 5,000-foot high mountains of the Grahamland Peninsula and surveyed the last thousand miles of the most inaccessible coastline of the world.
The KING has been pleased to award the Albert Medal to Dr. Arthur Richard Cecil Butson, a member of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, in recognition of his gallantry in the following circumstances.
On the evening of 26th July 1947, an American member of the Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition fell into a crevasse some 6 miles from Base[.]
Butson immediately volunteered to be lowered into the crevasse where he found the American tightly wedged 106 feet down and suffering from shock and exhaustion.
For nearly an hour he had to chip the ice away in an extremely confined space in order to free the American, who was brought to the surface and placed inside a tent.
[2]Butson's own description of events: When I got down to Peterson, I found him so tightly wedged in the narrowing crevasse that I could not get down to his level without removing some of my clothes.
[3] Butson did postgraduate surgical studies in London until 1952, when he emigrated to Canada, settling in Hamilton, Ontario in 1953, where he practiced as a surgeon.
With the establishment of McMaster University Medical School in 1970, he joined the part-time faculty, ending with the appointment of Clinical Professor in the Department of Surgery.
For his services to the Canadian Forces, he was appointed Honorary Surgeon to Her Majesty the Queen in 1977 and was made an Officer of the Order of Military Merit (Canada) in 1982.
A mountaineer, Butson climbed extensively in the Canadian Rockies, Baffin Island, the Antarctic, the Alps and the Hindu Kush in the Western Himalaya.
Standing on principle, he stood as the sole candidate of the leaderless Confederation of Regions Party during the 2003 Ontario General Election.