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