What a difference a decade makes seemed to be the theme running through the minds of people gathered to mark the tenth year since a headline-making community health rally branded northern B.C. as an area in crisis.
Overworked doctors and nurses were exiting professional positions in numbers when the community desperately turned to a six-year-old university and its president, Dr. Charles Jago for help to keep some semblance of a health care system alive.
During that June 22, 2000 rally in the Multiplex Jago said, and repeated at Tuesday's celebration, that the time of importing doctors and health professionals from other lands was no longer an option.
We must train our own by advancing northern health issues and providing professional opportunities, he said.
"In short, we need to replicate into the North, the same advantages as in the south" through training, teaching hospitals and health care centres.
Through a strong northern will, the Northern Medical Program was born a short four years later.
But it wasn't as inevitable as many took for granted, he said. Read more in The Citizen.
