Meet Dr Bob Usher, the world's most overqualified peddler of goat cheese

The pre-eminent neonatologist goes door-to-door
at Montreal's fanciest eateries. It's good for you

BY ROBB BEATTIE

It's a snowy Saturday close to Christmas. In the crowds on a Montreal street, one man stands out. Dapper and distinguished-looking, he's noticeable for a couple of reasons. First there are the strangers who shake his hand and introduce their offspring. Then there's the large sack he carries, filled with packages and jars. Most of all, though, there's the sense of mission he conveys. He has the aura of a person with a calling; someone you'd count on to deliver the goods. And that (no slight to Santa intended) is about as good a description of Dr Bob Usher as you'll get. Just ask the grateful parents he meets gift-hunting, although they'd be startled that a preeminent neonatologist with an international reputation has a new agenda as he heads into a gourmet food shop -- meeting his quota as a salesman of Quebec's finest goat cheese.

It all started when Dr Usher's farming daughter Heather and son-in-law Louis needed a market for their goat's milk. They had switched from cows in the late 1990s when demand was expanding alongside Quebec's growing goat cheese industry. But small milk producers began being pushed out of business. To stay afloat, Heather and Louis pooled forces with a cheese maker who used methods from the Swiss Alps to produce wonderful Camembert, Muenster and cream cheeses. The finished products were delicious, but the partnership involved distributing a lot of the product themselves. That's when Dr Robert H Usher, professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Pediatrics at McGill University and attending pediatrician at Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital, picked up his sack of cheese.

Dr Usher has a global reputation as a dogged clinician and inspired researcher. Director of the Royal Victoria's neonatal intensive care unit from 1969 to 2000, he was "the man to watchË in international perinatal pediatrics for much of his career. But the pioneer whose innovations revolutionized his field in the 1960s is also a father happy to reel off the ingredients in his daughter's fabled herbed cheese balls. In fact, you could say Dr Usher's new role as a salesperson for a fledgling goat-cheese

business is the latest installment of a life spent battling convention -- and the odds. He certainly makes saving the family farm look easy as he empties his sack in a succession of fancy eateries. "My last experience selling anything was when I was a 19-year-old pre-med student working at a haberdashers," he explains. "But I tried the cheese out on my hospital's NICU staff and soon doctors and nurses were lining up to place orders. That's when I knew we had a success."

For 25 years he and his wife have spent their weekends and holidays at an 80-hectare hobby farm near the Quebec-Ontario border. Today, a daughter and granddaughter are frequent guests and another daughter's family rent a farmhouse nearby. It was at the Usher's farm that his eldest daughter, Heather, met the young dairy farmer who became her husband. Now all six of the Ushers' grandchildren play with the goats in their barn. Dr Usher wonders at the habitual struggle of farmers to stay on the land. "My son-in-law Louis' farm has been in his family for three generations. I have enormous respect for how hard farmers work and the insecurity they live with. You have to do very practical things to earn their respect in return. A neighbour once came to me for help delivering a foal who was stuck in the birth canal, and I really felt my mettle was being tested." He got the foal out unharmed and days later could point to it gambolling in the fields off his porch.

Back in Montreal, Dr Usher's refrigerator is so full of goat cheese there's little room for anything else. As he explains somewhat ruefully, "I haven't made the leap to getting a dedicated cheese fridge for the basement, but if business expands further, I may need to." In the meantime, the household's usual visitors have been supplemented by a host of friends and fans stopping by to pick up their weekly supply of cheese. And

Dr Usher has developed a whole new relationship with Montreal's shopkeepers, talking knowledgeably about product, process and local demand whenever he isn't racing off to the hospital or delighting in the progress of a former charge he's met in the street. As for his future in Quebec's goat cheese industry? "This isn't something I expected to be doing, or would do for anyone else," he points out. "But daughters have a way of inevitably expanding your horizons."