There are seven hearing clinics in Thunder Bay servicing a large geographic area that includes the city and several northwestern reserves. With an airport nearby, many clients are also flown in for medical appointments.
“The catchment area is quite huge,” says Bailey Whitefield, who recently opened her own clinic in Thunder Bay.
Born and raised in Fort Frances, with Indigenous roots from Treaty 3, Whitefield opened Sound Hearing last October. She provides hearing tests, hearing aids, custom hearing protection and ear cleaning.
“It’s been going really good,” she said about the recent opening, adding that some clients from previous jobs that followed her over as well.
Born with an ear infection, Whitefield spent many hours in the offices of ear, nose, throat specialists and audiologists.
Now working as a Hearing Instrument Specialist, who wears hearing aids herself, Whitefield is able to provide a deeper understanding of what her clients experience and need.
“It’s being able to connect,” she said. “Like a specific little sound that the hearing aid makes, and a client may be wondering why it keeps making that sound.”
“Just being able to sympathize with feeling left out in a social situation where you can’t hear, or feeling silly for asking for a repetition a bunch of times, it’s those kinds of things,” Whitefield said. “I think it’s different for the people that I can actually sympathize with and that have experienced it.”
Most of her clients are 55 years or older, an age when hearing loss is more common. Younger clients that require hearing aids usually come with medical or genetic concerns.
As everyone will experience some type of hearing loss as part of the aging process, hearing tests for those age 55+ are always offered free.
“That’s an industry standard because the stats show that most people over 55 will need hearing aids either now or eventually,” she said.
Whitefield completed her undergraduate degree in Thunder Bay and has always worked in the city. With two sisters living in the city and the desire to stay close by, it was a natural decision to open a clinic in Thunder Bay.
As one of the two locally owned clinics in Thunder Bay, Whitefield said that competing against big chain companies can be a challenge.
“Running a local business is always more difficult than something that’s backed by somebody with a lot of money,” she said.
While every day on the job looks different, Whitefield finds joy in working with the older populations and seeing them regain their hearing.
“I like helping people and seeing their eyes light up when they hear the traffic going by the window once they put their hearing aids in,” she said. “I just enjoy talking to everybody and hearing their stories and why their hearing is the way it is. Elderly people always have a funny story or two to tell you.”
“A long time ago when I first started working in the field, some got hearing aids and she has had high frequency hearing loss for so long, that she didn’t know that microwaves made a beeping sound,” Whitefield shared. “So that was pretty cute, because microwaves are not a new technology, it showed how long she has actually not been hearing properly.”
Looking back, Whitefield said it’s been 15 years since she started her high school co-op at an audiology clinic, an experience that gave clarity into the type of career she wanted to pursue.
“Actually, a Facebook memory just came up yesterday,” Whitefield said at the time of the interview, laughing at the coincidence.
She gave a word of thanks to Jackie McCormick, the clinic owner and audiologist at Frequency Hearing Centre in Fort Frances, for the invaluable training and background she continues to carry today.
