“Perceptions” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

I was walking south on 17th Ave. the other day near the Rec Plex when I looked up and realized it was the end of an era. The former sign over the Dr. F.W. Green Clinic sign was gone and in its place was a new sign on a building familiar to literally thousands of Cranbrookians over the years.

I’m sure the new owners of the building will do it well and so they should as the structure appears to be in good shape and has many years of productive life left in it. But oh, the memories!

According to an article in the Cranbrook Courier, the Key City was nothing more than a mere village when Dr. Frank William Green set up shop in 1899. He and Dr. James H. King were the first physicians to practice in town and the first to use an x-ray machine for their patients and utilize an automobile in their medical work.

Prior to this, they conducted some of their medical tasks on horseback. The pair were so diligent providing medical care in the heart of the Rockies that they were often referred to as “a cornerstone in local medicine.”

Cranbrook was an isolated location in those fin-de-siecle times and the medical challenges were many, including dealing with the fallout of the First World War, the Spanish Flu pandemic and the trauma of practicing medicine in an isolated mining and logging wilderness far from any specialist backup. And while doing all this, Dr Green found time to be elected twice as a Conservative MLA in the BC Legislature.

After an outstanding career in rural medicine, Dr. Green died of a heart condition in the St. Eugene Hospital Christmas Eve 1953 and it was said in his obituary he was “beloved by everyone” in Cranbrook.

A few years later in 1959, the  Dr. F.W. Green Memorial Home opened, which was Cranbrook’s first public facility for senior care and Dr. Green’s life-long dream. The “Green Home,” as it came to be called, eventually grew to 60 beds and the government recently announced it will be replaced in stages over the next several years by a new $156 million, 148-bed facility for long term senior care.

Were he alive today, one can easily imagine how pleased Dr. Green would be by an announcement like this. Yet at the same time, it’s also easy to imagine how unhappy he would be to hear about the hundreds of people in Cranbrook who don’t have a family physician as well as the emergency room closures occurring all over the province.

Health care world-wide appears to be in crisis and it certainly doesn’t help that we now have two full-fledged wars in progress massacring people around the world including women, children and civilians.

Will we ever learn? Apparently not. And there’s the growing homeless tragedy. Nobody appears to have a handle on that either as civilization creeps slowly – and often not so slowly – to the abyss.

It was said at Dr. Green’s funeral that he loved people regardless of their race or origin and that he was the “exemplification of Christian service and devotion.” As I watch the ghastly TV news and listen to the painful radio broadcasts these horrifying days, I can’t help but think we may be living in end times and no individual or country seems to have the answer. Terrorism and hatred certainly aren’t the answer. Neither is extremist religion, which leads to political polarization and the wars we’re seeing now.

Perhaps the act of loving people regardless of their race or colour as Dr. Green did would work. It seemed to work for Dr. Green and I have no doubt it would work for the rest of us too including incorrigible regions like the Middle East and Russia.

It’s worth a try.

Gerry Warner is a retired journalist and a pacifist in times of war.

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