Aklavik-born doctor receives prestigious award

John Hagen, a Toronto-area surgeon who was born in Aklavik, N.W.T., in 1956, has been named a 2014 Mentor of the Year by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

The award, handed out earlier this month, recognizes physicians who have played a key role in the development of medical students, residents and fellows. 

​Hagen hasn't been back to the North since he was 15, after he took a canoe trip down the Mackenzie River. But his parents' two years in Aklavik have had a profound influence on his career choices, he says. 

Hagen's parents were both physicians and moved to Canada from Great Britain in 1956. Shortly thereafter, they took a Government of Canada post serving as the only two doctors in Aklavik, which was then in the early stages of relocating residents to Inuvik due to the ongoing threat of flooding.

With medial resources slim, Hagen's own father — who was shepherded via sled dogs to make house calls — delivered him.

"It was, thank goodness for me, uneventful," he says. "There was no help up there, had there been a problem."

Hagen, who currently serves as the chief of surgery at Humber River Hospital in a suburb of Toronto, says his parents' adventure in Aklavik inspired him to volunteer his services in small, indigenous communities in the mountains of Guatemala. 

"My mother is 88 years old and she still talks about her experience [in Aklavik]: the people she met, the sense of community that you really don't get anywhere else. The North is unique in that regard. People are so dependent upon each other for help and comfort."