October 06th, 2025

Since retiring in 2022, I have continued to serve on two boards, but recently, began another volunteer role as a Support Person in the Emergency Department of the Misericordia Hospital in Edmonton.  The role entails providing basic support to patients and families, for example, offering warm blankets or ice packs,  cleaning waiting room chairs, or offering reassuring words to people waiting.   It takes me back to my roots, when I was as an orderly at St. Boniface General Hospital in Winnipeg during the early 1980s, frequently working in the Emergency Department.   After nearly  nearly twenty years as a healthcare executive during the second half of my career, I cannot tell you how meaningful it is to be volunteering in a clinical setting again, and providing hands on assistance where I can.  I continue to reflect on where my writing may take me next, but I know my experience first as an orderly, then chaplain, and finally ethicist and healthcare executive has left an indelible impression on my soul.  I can only hope that I can be of support to the many patients, families and the caring staff in the Emergency Department.  I am so grateful for this privilege of serving.