Honourable senators, I rise today to recognize the late Dr. John McKee Olds; a husband, father, surgeon, and unlikely folk hero to my beloved Twillingate.

Although born a true Connecticut Yankee, in his third year at Johns Hopkins Medical School John Olds was placed at Twillingate’s remote hospital through a summer study program. He had an experience to which I can very much relate: Twillingate stole his heart.

Upon his graduation in 1932, Dr. Olds left the New England world that had raised him, instead returning to Twillingate with his wife, Betty. At the ripe age of 28, he soon found himself as the chief physician of Twillingate’s 90-bed hospital in the depths of the Great Depression. He had to find a way to pay for salaries, purchase equipment and provide medical services to this remote community. Colleagues, in this traditional fishing down, patients still often paid for medical services with quintals of fish or bushels of berries. Unfortunately, berries didn’t pay salaries and medical supplies weren’t lining up to trade stethoscopes for cod.

In response, John Olds came up with a revolutionary plan where each subscribing man, woman and child paid 44 cents annually in exchange for full medical services at the hospital. The plan worked spectacularly, and predated Tommy Douglas’s Medicare plan in Saskatchewan. To reach rural residents, he developed a floating clinic using a 55-foot boat which included an examining table, a dentist’s chair and an X-ray machine. Each summer the Bonnie Nell would make a complete circuit of Notre Dame Bay, and in the winter he would travel to patients’ homes on skis pulled by dogs.

John Olds represented a Canada where communities looked after each other — where everyone, regardless of barriers, could access essential services, whether that involved pulling homemade surgical tools over the winter pack ice or finding a way to turn berries and cod into salaries and X-ray machines.

I had the privilege of meeting with this legend in the summer of 1984. I continue to feel a profound sense of gratitude for Dr. Olds’ skill, devotion and resilience. His passing left a huge void in my community.

Thank you, Dr. John Olds, for your 40 years of service, dedication and inspiration to the people of Notre Dame Bay. Thank you. Meegwetch.