Lessons From Detours

if we’ve learned anything through a

pandemic

it’s that you have to be prepared for

detours

whether it’s your personal life or your

professional path

no matter how well you plan or how clear

your vision of the destination

it’s a rare voyage that doesn’t

encounter some kind of

roadblock a surprise or even

a tragedy i’ve had to take a few detours

myself

but it’s been in times of crisis that

i’ve learned the most about myself

and what i ought to do with my time on

this planet

i’ve also learned that there are a few

clues about how to get

back on a good path and i’ve gathered

some appreciation for the fact that

even the detours in life are not

distributed fairly

i’m going to tell you about two of the

greatest lows

in my life and how i found an avenue

to move forward again the first happened

half a lifetime ago but i remember it

as if it were yesterday the scene

is rural niger west africa

my husband and i had moved there to work

at a mission hospital

about 500 kilometers east of the capital

city

and then after living there for about 18

months

we moved with our two daughters another

200 kilometers further east

to focus on intensive study of the hausa

language

one monday morning our daughter emily

who was two and a half woke up with a

fever

and vomiting i thought

she probably had malaria but a few hours

later

the diagnosis became clear

she developed this horrible purple rash

that is a sign of meningococcemia

a rapidly fatal bacterial infection

caused by nyseria meningitis

i realized she was seriously ill we

had to get to a hospital immediately for

her to be given

intravenous penicillin so we put the

girls in the back of our mitsubishi

lancer

and we put petal to the metal racing

back to the mission hospital

as we drove bethany developed that same

terrifying purple rash my heart sunk

as i realized she too was infected

and then about halfway to the hospital

beautiful emily sitting alone in her car

seat

had a seizure and she stopped breathing

in the silence of our car as our little

family

sped along that highway on the south

edge of the sahara desert

our precious daughter emily died

it was the worst day of my life

we arrived at the hospital we were

greeted by

shocked friends and colleagues they

sprang

into action realizing that bethany was

critically ill

the doctors somehow turned a storage

room into an icu

and they started bethany on penicillin

they inserted a central line to monitor

her fluids

but they told us that she would not

likely survive the night

my first instinct was to get out of that

country and never come back

i had hit a wall of shock and grief

and i could not imagine a way forward

for our life in niger

the following morning emily was buried

in a small rough wooden box

that had been built for her by the

hospital carpenter

we watched as the box was lowered into a

freshly dug grave

in the rocky soil on the edge of the

village

meanwhile bethany was back in the

hospital fighting for her life

she would go on to survive but i always

remember

as we stood by that grave i

prayed that we would not have to return

the next day to bury our second daughter

it was our nigerian friends who helped

show us

the way forward to find a path around

our pain

i’ll never forget the line of mourners

who came to greet us

quietly and reverently but their words

surprised me geiswa

they greeted my husband a guy sheiki

they said to me ee hankuri

say hankuri which translated means

be patient there is nothing but patience

be patient my cherished

daughter had died and i was supposed to

be patient

i didn’t understand the message then

and perhaps i still don’t fully

understand it

but as i started to learn from our

stoical friends

i understood more about coping with

grief

you see at that time in niger 27

of babies would not live to see their

fifth birthday

in later years as i conducted village

health surveys

it seemed that there was not a family to

be found who hadn’t lost

a young child in fact it was not unusual

for

parents to bury two or more of their

children

and they died of preventable treatable

conditions

like diarrhea respiratory infections

measles malaria malnutrition

our loss was devastating

but we were not special we were simply

getting a small

taste of the profound inequities

that exist on this planet where some

endure conditions of deep-rooted poverty

hunger and lack of access to health care

and others like me are born to a

protective

privilege and some kind of assumption

that we will be shielded from grief

it was perspective that enabled me to

get on with my life

a firm fierce perspective

that the world is a very unfair place

i had known that in my head but now i

felt it in my heart

my response would be to commit the rest

of my life

to trying to make the world a little bit

fairer

i wanted to work toward a world where

toddlers

don’t die from preventable treatable

infections

in such outrageous numbers

it was perspective that helped me

navigate this unexpected detour

in how we thought our life would unfold

now let me fast forward to a different

story

not a personal tragedy but a

professional crisis

one that is fresher and from which i

have not yet

so fulsomely analyzed the lessons i

learned

my professional crisis happened in 2019

and it’s a very long story so i’ll just

provide some abbreviated details here

after working for about 30 years as a

family doctor

i had decided to run for a seat in the

house of commons

i believed it would be a potent

mechanism to advance

systemic changes to improve health at

the population level

i was happy to be elected and grateful

to be granted a seat at the cabinet

table

now you have to make a lot of

compromises in politics

in the name of cabinet solidarity you

have to give in on some policy decisions

that don’t entirely align with your

preferred

option but early in 2019

an issue emerged on which i could not

line up with the government

i had to voice my objections first

privately and then when that didn’t work

my views had to be public

i could not remain silent obligating me

to resign from cabinet

it had to do with attempted political

interference

in the largest corporate criminal trial

in canadian history

now legal matters were not in my

portfolio but our entire democracy is

founded on the principle

that there must never be political

interference in matters of the law

including criminal prosecutions i could

not remain silent while that principle

was being violated

my resignation from cabinet my inability

to maintain solidarity with the

government approach was based

on the principle of upholding the

independence of the judicial branch

of government an underlying

but related rationale for my resignation

was that i could not stand by while

canada’s first

indigenous attorney general was the

victim of an assault on her character

while she was simply conducting her duty

with intelligence and integrity

long story short after resigning from

cabinet

i was expelled from my political party

and

forced to sit as an independent member

of parliament

my political path was suddenly on a

serious

detour how would i find my way back

did i even want to continue should i run

again

this was to become my second lesson in

managing detours

perseverance in part i wanted

to give up politics is a highly toxic

work environment every day on social

media i was receiving partisan attacks

some simply telling me to go away and be

quiet some going as far as people

wishing i were dead

but it was a simple encounter in a

grocery store

that helped me to figure out what to do

it was the spring of 2019 and i was at

the stouffville longo’s with my daughter

our youngest child lydia like many other

days that spring

as we went about town strangers or

friends would stop and

thank me for speaking up that day

in the frozen food section of the store

a woman

stopped her card and told me her story

she told me she had a 15 year old

daughter and that they had put

my picture up on their fridge and then

she

thanked me for showing her daughter how

to speak up with courage

to not be a silent bystander even if you

don’t know how things will turn out

even if people make false accusations

against you

even if you lose your job or you lose

friends who were probably not really

friends

her take home message for me was that

mock

latin cliche illegitimate

non-carborundum usually translated as

don’t let the bastards grind you down

that was what i needed to hear i would

run again

i would run as an independent candidate

i would

run for all the teenage girls who

watched my story and somehow found

strength

i would show them that you don’t give up

i would persevere

so i did run we ran a positive campaign

with over 400 volunteers

we knocked on every door in the riding

we talked about

coloring outside the party lines

in the end over thirteen thousand

people did something they’d probably

never done before

they voted for an independent candidate

but it was not nearly enough votes to

win

and i was devastated

i cried for three days

finally releasing the sadness that had

been pent up for months

the sadness of a political journey ended

nevertheless to the extent that matters

were in my control

i had not given up now

some will say that that detour in my

journey was completely self-inflicted

i could have kept my head down not

spoken up when i believed something was

wrong

i could have stayed on that political

path but for me

in that case compromise was not an

option

the day i had resigned from cabinet i

wrote

there can be a cost to acting on one’s

principles

but there is a bigger cost to abandoning

them

now the last lesson about surviving

detours is probably the most important

of all

every journey can have detours and i

found i could stay

on a track toward my destination with

perspective and perseverance but i have

to admit that sometimes

effectively managing a detour is a form

of privilege

that was the case for me in finding my

current route forward

early in 2020 i landed the best job

i could have dreamed for i was appointed

dean of the faculty of health sciences

at queen’s university

and now i get to do interesting

meaningful work in a positive

environment

with kind and thoughtful people who want

to make the world healthier and fairer

but i would not have this job were it

not for a lengthy

series of other opportunities earlier in

life

receiving an md having senior academic

rank

having name recognition each of those

merits achieved largely because of a

long list of unearned advantages

now don’t get me wrong i am thrilled to

have this position

and i also know that with enormous

privilege comes enormous responsibility

to use the advantages that we have to

take on the entrenched

systems of injustice and the inequities

all around us

but i bring up the topic of privilege

because it’s not

right to talk about surviving detours

without acknowledging that there’s not a

level playing field

in who can persevere

in our personal tragedy in niger we had

the benefit of being surrounded by

people who

loved and cared for us we had the good

fortune of being able to get access to

intensive treatment

for our daughter bethany and we had the

insurance coverage to fly home on a

medical evacuation so she would survive

in the case of my career in 2019

when i spoke up causing my political

trajectory to meet an abrupt halt

i knew that i would not be without a job

i always had medicine as a backup

i would never have to choose between

hunger and silence

so every voyage can encounter detours

and you may be able to navigate them

with perspective and perseverance but

getting around detours is

often derived from privilege or unearned

advantage

like the color of one’s skin or the

country of one’s birth

and that has to be acknowledged lest we

fall into the trap of boasting

lest we fail to see that our obligation

to take down the barriers that block the

path to equity for others

so if you hit a wall i hope you’ll be

able to use perspective and perseverance

and follow the detours until you’re

on that forward track again but also

look around take note of who is

struggling to negotiate the detours that

stand in the way of

achieving their ambitions or pursuing a

vocation

perhaps you’ll be able to use your

privilege or power

to take down roadblocks for others to

help someone else

get back on a good path it does not

fall to me to judge the journey of

others nor to take pride that i

somehow managed to get back on my feet

the few times that i’ve been knocked

down

it does fall to me to acknowledge my

unearned advantages

and to take responsibility to change

society’s patterns of injustice

so each person on this planet can bear

the setbacks that impede their journey

so everyone can use their unique talents

to pursue their aspirations and get

closer to the destinations of their

dreams