Dr. Alan Rich, who practised medicine in Thompson for 43 years and received both the key to the city as well as Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal after going into semi-retirement in Swan River, died Jan. 21, leaving behind generations of patients with memories of him making house calls or maybe even stitching up the family dog.
Rich’s connection to Thompson began before he was a doctor, when he’d come to the city in the summer to work at Inco and save up money to pay for his next year or school.
“He would take every shift or double shift that he could possibly get all during that summer in order to finance his education,” recalls Wayne Hall, who knew Rich for about half-a century, as both a friend and as the Hall family’s doctor.
That work ethic continued when he returned to Thompson to practise after completing medical school.
“It was not uncommon at all for somebody to say in a coffee shop conversation, ‘Do you know that he showed up at my door at 10 o’clock last night to see how those pills were working for me?’ or ‘He set my broken bone or whatever and he showed up at my door to make sure the cast was OK,’” said Hall. “There’s different times that he’d been at our house and he was here often socially and he would leave here and have to go and make a couple of house calls and then go back to his office and do his bookwork until 1 a.m. or so on the morning. The man would not stop.”
That dedication was what earned Rich the key to the city from outgoing mayor Tim Johnston near the end of his second term in 2014, which Johnston says was one of only four such keys he awarded.
“It meant something to me personally as the mayor and certainly with Al, he had gone through some challenging times near the end of his full-time career in Thompson,” Johnston said.
The recognition was significant to Rich as well.
“I visited Al many times since he left and that was one of the pictures he had so I know that it meant a lot to him,” said Johnston, whose relationship to Rich also included being the owner of the Professional Building on Selkirk Avenue where Rich's office was located. “The Town of Swan River, the mayor at the time, presented him with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and that picture was also prominently displayed. Those things meant something and, for me, he meant something.”
Rich’s medical career in Thompson ended on a sour note a few years before Rich received the key to the city, when two other doctors employed at what was then the Burntwood Regional Health Authority – Dr. Hussam Azzam and Dr. Hisham Tassi – filed complaints against Rich in 2011. Rich apologized to Azzam in a letter but then-BRHA CEO Gloria King requested that the apology be made in person. Rich refused and retained a lawyer, who was informed Feb. 4, 2011 that the BRHA was willing to resolve the complaints against Rich provided he permanently retired from the practice of medicine May 31, 2011, assumed associate status under an assigned supervisor until the retirement date, and that he"cease and desist any and all disparaging comments concerning any employee/manager of BRHA, colleagues within BRHA, patients of BRHA and the BRHA.”
The health authority’s treatment of Rich prompted protests outside the hospital.
"When they attacked Dr. Rich, it became personal," said Ann Kaciulis, who spearheaded a public protest on June 1, 2011. "They need to let him retire on his own with his own dignity."
In his personal life, Rich was a unique character, sometimes difficult to understand when speaking and passionate about motorcycles and old cars.
“Everybody always said that he mumbled and that was simply because he was a very shy person,” said Hall, who remembers how Rich would get excited when he received a part for an old, obscure car that he was working to restore.
“He had to come and tell me about it and lots of times show it to me ,” Hall said. “At different times, I crated up motors for him so that he could send them off to the States or Alberta or Ontario or someplace where he found some guy that could rebuild this thing or fix it or do whatever was necessary. He loved his old vehicles and he was very knowledgeable about them, too. He could rattle off about a 1914 whatever and know how it was driven and everything else. He was really knowledgeable about his old vehicles or some old motorcycle that he found. That was his passion, his hobby. He loved that.”
That hobby was more about the process than the end result, long-time Thompson veterinarian Dr. Ken Bingham said in an interview prior to his retirement in the spring of 2017, recalling when he lent the use of a greenhouse that used to be on the grounds of the Thompson Veterinary Clinic to Rich.
“He came to me one year and he said, ‘You got that greenhouse. I’ve got this Model A. I want to get it fixed up for spring,” said Bingham. “I forgot to ask which year. He moved it here and it stayed here for about five or six years.”
Nor was Rich much for fashion.
“At his wedding he was dressed up really nice but I think that’s the one and only time that I saw him dressed like that,” said Hall. “A clean shirt and a clean pair of blue jeans and he figured he was really dressed to the nines. He was not a clotheshorse.”
To Johnston, Rich more than lived up to his motto of hoping to do more good than harm, and proof of that was in the number of people he met over the years who knew Rich and of those who have been in touch with him to share condolences since his death.
“A lot of people know that name,” Johnston said. “I’ve been on the phone steady. Everyone has a story to share and that’s good. He truly was a very unique individual. It extended well beyond Thompson, his impact on people in the north.”
