SHIJIAZHUANG, April 21(Xinhuanet)-- Visiting Canadian writer Roderick Stewart said Wednesday that in the upcoming days he would follow the footprints of Dr. Norman Bethune, a volunteer Canadian doctor in China during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression(1937-1945), to collect material for a new book about him.

Stewart, 71, who has published three books about Dr. Bethune, arrived Monday with his wife in Shijiazhuang, capital of north China's Hebei Province. He is scheduled to travel to places such as Songyankou Village in Wutai County, north China's Shanxi Province, and Tangxian County of Heibei Province, also in north China, where Bethune had lived and worked.

"Nowadays Canadians have looked upon Dr. Bethune as a great man.However they did not know him well once before," Stewart said.

Stewart said he wanted to introduce Dr. Bethune to more Canadians by writing books about him. After the cold war ended, more and more Canadians have begun to know Dr. Bethune, who joined the Communist Party of Canada in 1935.

Dr. Bethune has been widely known and respected by generations of Chinese. He came to China in 1938 and helped the Chinese peoplein their struggle against the Japanese aggression, rescuing the lives of thousands. In late 1939, he died of blood poisoning in Tangxian's Huangshikou Village as his finger was pricked by a needle in surgery.

On December, 1939, late Chinese leader Chairman Mao Zedong wrote an article"In Memory of Norman Bethune," calling on the Chinese people to learn from him. Dr. Bethune's spirit of selflessness and devotion to his work has been cherished by Chinese doctors and nurses all along.

"I want to see some of the rough and wretched geographic conditions in which Dr. Bethune worked and lived," said Stewart who used to be a history teacher in a middle school and now acts as a consultant of a memorial hall to Bethune in Canada. Enditem