 Would
you trust a doctor who can't tell a boy from a girl? To
his eternal dismay Dr Ed Doherty faced exactly that mortifying
challenge as a young physician. A practising Catholic,
he was asked by a devout attending nurse to perform a
hasty baptism on a seriously ill newborn.
"In my haste," he recounted recently
during a stint as a seannachie (pronounced shaughnessy),
or storyteller, at the annual Irish Canadian Cultural
Association gala dinner, "I looked at the small card
on the incubator and saw the name John." He pauses,
chagrined. "I immediately baptized the baby John, in
the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
After the job was completed, I realized the baby was
in fact a little girl and not a little boy. John was
the name of the child's father."
When a local priest heard the story
he recommended wryly that the greenhorn MD not quit
his day job. "I decided to take his advice," Dr Doherty
laughs. "Sometimes Father does know best." The Saint
John, NB, physician has since switched to a more gender-neutral
specialty: ophthalmology.
THIS
SPORTING LIFE
Freed up from performing impromptu Catholic rites, the
young doc was able to focus his extracurricular energies
on sports. Sitting in his cosy but cluttered office
in an uptown shopping centre in Saint John, the physician
reflects that not being athletic wasn't really
likely given his family. "Outdoor life was very
important " he recalls, "you had to learn to swim, to
fish, to bike. The whole family went everywhere together
by bicycle. No excuses were accepted."
The doctor took that tough 'no
excuses' philosophy to heart. As a nine-year-old, he
was in a car accident and sustained a spinal cord injury.
The accident left him walking with the aid of crutches
so he simply chose sports that rely on upper body strength
— "Skiing, swimming, sailing, hand-cycling, kayaking,
scuba-diving, golfing — salmon fishing — I
think that's all," he laughs.
Sport isn't mere recreation, it's
in his blood. "I like the talk around locker rooms —
around the golf course. I like the camaraderie of sports,"
he says enthusiastically, and then gets reflective.
"I guess all of it has to do with the interaction of
people, and listening to people, hearing their stories."
MARATHON
MAN
For the past five summers, Dr Doherty and his hand-cycle
have entered the Saint John Marathon-by-the-Sea, and
in the fall of 2000 he travelled back to the motherland
to compete in the Dublin Marathon to raise money for
the arthritis charity Joints in Motion. Despite not
being on his home turf, Dr Doherty did the Saint John
Irish community proud by winning the hand-cycle division.
His longtime friend Dr Norm Garey
wasn't surprised by the victory. "Ed does a lot of things,
and does them all well," says the pediatrician. Dr Garey
and Dr Doherty's 20-year friendship is built on a mutual
love of sports — as well as a good joke. "Ed loves
to laugh," he says. "When things get too serious, he
can always see the funny side." The two have sailed
down the Caribbean together, but these days see each
other mostly on the golf course.
Dr Doherty's medical and sporting
lives even converged for a while. Between 1994 and 2003
he acted as the consulting eye physician for the Saint
John Flames, the farm team for the Calgary Flames. But
since the team got transferred to Omaha he's been contenting
himself with peering into non-sporting eyes.
DOMINICAN
EYES ARE SMILING
Among them are the eyes of some physician-starved ophthalmology
patients from the Caribbean island of Dominica. Every
year, Dr Doherty and Dr John McNicholas, a fellow ophthalmologist
from Newfoundland, head to the island as part of the
Dominica Eye Project. The two of them spend 10 days
detecting and treating glaucoma, performing operations,
and drumming up funding and medical supplies under the
auspices of Rotary International.
The list of good causes he's been
involved with include the St Joseph's Hospital Foundation,
the Board of the New Brunswick Museum, the Board of
Governors of the University of New Brunswick, Amnesty
International, Doctors Without Borders and L'Arche.
He's especially pleased about a daycare centre for teenage
mothers he helped launch with the Saint John Business
Community Anti-Poverty Initiative, a coalition of local
business leaders and professionals, at a local school.
Dr Doherty's good works haven't
gone unnoticed. He received the Queen's Golden Jubilee
Medal in 2003 for contributions to the community, and
the Red Triangle Award from the YMCA for the same reason.
He says he's grateful for these awards, but seems a
bit uncomfortable about them, maintaining that so many
"unsung heroes" never get any awards, because they're
given to people like him who have a higher profile in
the community.
When I ask him what drives him
to participate in so much, Dr Doherty says it has to
do with being mentally and physically balanced. "I love
challenges, I love physical activity," he says fervently.
"When I'm in very good physical shape, then intellectually
I'm much sharper." It also has to do with something
much more basic, perhaps a result of surviving that
bad car crash as a child. "I love life," he declares,
"and I'm very grateful for the opportunities it's presented
to me."
The "radiant optimist," as Dr Garey
calls him, is constantly finding more ways to capitalize
on that vitality. In the last federal election he narrowly
missed getting the Liberal nomination for Saint John,
but says his "true Irish" passion for politics may send
him back for another try next time round.
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