Sayonara St. Anthony, Bienvenue à Brockville

I'm going to need a new title for this blog or maybe even consider shutting it down. I'm back from my trip to Brockville and Toronto and I'm still amazed at what has transpired: I've got a job at Brockville General Hospital starting September 19th!

I'll admit I tend to be pessimistic in order to avoid disappointment but I'm still pinching myself over recent events. First, I was expecting it to take at least 5 if not 10 years for me to get a license from Ontario -- I managed that in 2.5 yrs. thanks to the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT). But, thanks to restrictions placed on my license and the horrible job market at the moment I thought it would take me at least one year, if not more, before I could find a job in Ontario. I scored the job after 6 months of searching. Lastly, given all my circumstances, I thought for sure I was going to be working in Northern Ontario. Now, I find myself heading for the St. Lawrence river within 1 hr.'s drive of Ottawa. As the old saying goes: it's better to be lucky than good! (Although it's best to be BOTH).

So, I did a 4 day locum in Brockville and it was what I expected -- a small community hospital with most, but not all, surgical services represented. Although I thought I was ready for the quicker pace, I was caught off guard by the lack of lunch relief. For 2 days I skipped lunch and plowed through the list. The weekend was relatively quiet except for Sunday when I came in to work for 6 hours. The rest of the time I checked out Brockville and tried to get a head start on finding a new place to stay.

Brockville is a city of 24,000 and its hospital serves a catchment area of just under 100,000 people. It is within one hour's drive of 2 academic centres (Kingston and Ottawa) so most high risk and specialized cases get transferred out. Compared to my Newfoundland experience, it is probably most comparable to Corner Brook (pop ~20,000) which is the second largest city in Newfoundland. It has pretty much all the mod-cons of a S. Ontario city -- even a Future Shop and a movie theater! It's also within easy driving distance of Toronto and my parents were ecstatic with the news. The only thing it doesn't have is high quality Chinese food -- although I should withhold judgment until I've tried out the other restaurants. (I ate at one downtown restaurant and it wasn't bad...just a little salty).

Brockville is also in the scenic 1000 islands area of Ontario and if boating is your thing then this is a great place for it -- there's a new condo development on the shore where you can have you own dock! It's also on a cross-Ontario trail and I can see my self going on some long bike rides on the weekend when it's warm. Hopefully there's cross country skiing as well so I can continue using my skis.

I'm fairly certain that I won't be able to do much better than Brockville -- I may be able to find a similar community a little closer to Toronto but I doubt it will be very soon. In addition, I am starting to get tired of moving around every few years. Assuming I like the job, I'm quite motivated to set down roots. In fact, I've got my eye on a condo unit that's a 5 minute walk from the hospital...

So, although I'm excited that my long-range plans have suddenly come to pass and I'm looking forward to returning home to Ontario, I've got mixed feelings about leaving St. Anthony. I've got some good friends here and, were it not for the remoteness and isolation, I can easily see myself spending the twilight years of my career here. As I've said to numerous people, St. Anthony is a great place to work but not for a young grad like me. Early September is coming up quickly and I'm not looking forward to the goodbyes and farewells.

I'll be back to visit Brockville for a day in August to hopefully secure a place to stay and run errands. Afterwards, I'll be back in Toronto to do an ACLS course at Sunnybrook hospital.