I guess I'm going to frame my answer around medical education. When Brad and I went through medical school, there weren't a lot of options to go into the community and actually have an educational experience. In surgery, I had no option at all to go into any community, outside of Toronto or London or Ottawa, and train with a community surgeon like me.
The rural Ontario medical program that I'm affiliated with, and I also work with the Northern Ontario School of Medicine through my affiliation in Kirkland Lake, have opened up those kinds of opportunities. In the last month, I've had an ear, nose, and throat resident come to work with me in Barrie. I've worked with two family medicine residents in Kirkland Lake.
We have found that in rural educational training and medicine, if you have your formative training, if you have some of those first experiences treating a heart attack or a massive bleed from a laceration in the neck in a small town hospital with very few resources but very experienced and dedicated doctors, those are the experiences that stick with you, and those experiences will often draw you back to that kind of practice.
I was told when I finished my training that I had potential and they wanted me back in the university centre. I'd known nothing else. I was told that if I practised in Barrie, I would be wasting my academic talent. In fact, I would tell you that the opposite is true. I'm able to take the experience I have and hopefully infect some of the doctors who come to work with me with an enthusiasm to work in places like Barrie and Collingwood and Orillia, and even as far north as Kirkland Lake.