Duane Hicks
Having practised in Fort Frances since 1971, local obstetrics and gynecology physician Dr. Angus Mackintosh will be retiring at the end of the month.
“I felt I had been doing the job long enough. I didn’t think I could give it the skill and expertise that I used to be able to,” said Dr. Mackintosh, who turned 80 this year.
“I am not as good as getting up at three o’clock in the morning as I used to be,” he chuckled.
When asked if he felt it will be difficult to find another obstetrics and gynecology physician to practise in Fort Frances, Dr. Mackintosh noted: “I don’t think my shoes are in any way impossible to fill, but there is just nobody out there to fill them, you understand.
“Like President De Gaulle said, ‘The cemeteries are full of indispensable people.’”
In his absence, Dr. Mackintosh said two other local physicians will continue to deliver babies, and the two surgeons here are perfectly capable of doing Caesarean sections.
“It’s not the end of the world,” he said, adding that for more complicated cases, a few more patients will have to go either to Thunder Bay or Winnipeg. (There’s no obstetrics and gynecology physician in Kenora.)
Dr. Mackintosh has practised medicine for 51 years, first in the United Kingdom, and then Canada. In the last 39 years here, Dr. Mackintosh has estimated he’s delivered over 10,000 babies, and in some families, has delivered several generations.
