I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta. My family had emigrated from Munich, Germany before I started school, so all of my primary and secondary education took place in Canada. I completed an undergraduate bachelor of science degree at the University of Alberta in 1972 and then went to medical school at the University of Calgary.

I had always wanted to be a doctor because it seemed to me that they did important and useful things. So I was fortunate to have a defined goal from an early age. I also unknowingly did all the “pre-med” things such as winning a couple of science fairs, collecting bugs and rocks, and so on.

I didn’t really consciously decide to become a plastic surgeon because, in my early days of medical school, none of us had any idea about where we would end up. I was fortunate to find a gifted mentor who was a plastic surgeon. His name is Dr. Dale Birdsell.

Within weeks of entering medical school, we were expected to participate in a “project” of some kind and I was not sure what to do, as they were usually family practice projects and I was not interested in family practice. So I happened to be in the hospital cafeteria when I overheard a surgeon – at least I thought he was a surgeon because he was wearing scrubs – say that he was looking for a medical student to help with a project. So I immediately volunteered because I figured it must be something surgical. It turned out that he was a plastic surgeon.

Calgary did not have a plastic surgery training program at that time, so Dr. Birdsell recommended the London program. I did a rotating internship there as well as my fellowship in plastic and reconstructive surgery. I finished in 1980, at the age of 29.

I was awarded a 2-year McLaughlin Fellowship to gain expertise in reconstructive microsurgery at the Microsurgery Research Centre in Melbourne, Australia. I also spent some academic time in Tokyo, Japan, on the way to Australia. It was another formative period of my medical career.

While overseas, I came to realize that I was temperamentally much better suited to dealing with patients rather than with university bureaucrats. So I left the academic tenure track. It was a choice I have never regretted.

I started a general plastic and reconstructive surgery practice with privileges in both the Burlington and Oakville hospitals in 1982. After 15 years and a lot of work, I opened Cosmedica because I believed that the cosmetic surgery client wasn’t being appropriately treated in a general hospital setting.

Our hospitals are an important part of the community, but the hospital model is illness-based while the cosmetic-surgical model is wellness-based. At Cosmedica we are able to provide a positive, non-judgmental and specialized setting tailored to the unique needs of the cosmetic surgery client. Cosmetic surgery is all that we do here, so we have to provide a high level of service.

I love fooling around in the garden, and I’m a bit of a current events / political science buff. I’m not old enough to play golf, so that is not something that I do.

I’m proud to say that I married Del, my wife, in 1984. She is a University of Toronto Faculty of Law graduate. We have a daughter who is in her final year of medical school in Ireland.