After three decades, Sarnia surgeon sets to tackle retirement

Slipping into a chair at a Sarnia coffee shop, Dr. Duncan MacKinlay says, “My last interview was when I resigned from the Argonauts to go to medical school. That was a couple of years ago.”

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More than 40, actually.

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This time, his upcoming retirement is the reason for the interview.

MacKinlay has been an orthopedic surgeon for more than three decades in Sarnia, the place where he and his wife, Ann, grew up and where his father, uncle and grandfather were doctors.

It’s also where he began playing football for the Northern Collegiate Vikings before heading to the University of Western Ontario in London where, as a linebacker, he was part of three Vanier Cup-winning teams in the 1970s.

Drafted into the CFL, he played five years in Winnipeg, Montreal and Toronto before answering the call of the family business.

His football career had a discouraging start. “I got cut in Grade 9,” MacKinlay said. “I wasn’t very big. . . I was only about five-foot-two and 98 pounds.”

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But he tried out again and played each season for the rest of his years at Northern.

He and Ann met while he was in university. She went to Queen’s University while he was at Western and they married after he’d played a year in the CFL.

That followed his years at Western, 1974-78, when the Mustangs won three Vanier Cups, including a year MacKinlay was team captain.

“We were really close together as a team,” he said. “I still see guys that I played with.”

He entered medical school in Winnipeg when the first of the couple’s three children was on the way.

Originally planning to be a family doctor, he became interested in orthopedic surgery near the end of medical school when he spent a few months in a placement in Scotland.

He interned back in London and then spent seven months on a shoulder sports medicine fellowship in Vail, Colo., before coming home to Sarnia to take a job with Dr. Pran Mehta.

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MacKinlay has been a surgeon in Sarnia for 32 years, but has a 35-year service pin from Bluewater Health because he worked emergency room shifts in Sarnia for a few years while completing his residency in London.

“I had three little kids and no money, so I would come on my weekends off and work there,” he said.

MacKinlay said his feelings about retirement are mixed.

“I really like what I’m doing, but I’m 67. . . 68 in January and it’s time to spend more time with my grandkids,” he said.

Ann, who manages the medical practice, is retiring with him. There are plans for travel and more time for golf, MacKinlay said.

He’s a member of an Argos alumni group, but hasn’t been able to attend its annual golf tournament because it’s typically held on a Monday, which was his operating room day. “Next year I’ll make it.”

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MacKinlay said he treated an estimated 60,000 patients in three decades as a surgeon.

He performed his final surgery before retirement in November and his last day of ambulatory care will, be Dec. 19.

Any patients he’s seen within the last year can contact his office to be connected to another local surgeon for followups, MacKinlay said.

“We’ve got a good group of guys here who will do a good job of looking after people,” he said.

MacKinlay was chief of surgery in Sarnia for a total of 10 years, president of the Ontario Orthopedic Association for two years, was named a lifetime member of the Ontario Medical Association and has been Sarnia Sting’s orthopedic surgeon since the team came to town.

When his daughter, Lauren, a Toronto producer, was working on the TV medical drama Transplant, MacKinlay was medical consultant for several episodes and traveled to the Montreal set once to help out with an episode involving a surgery.

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“He ended up doing the first cut on the prosthetic that was on Mary Walsh,” Lauren said. “She was the guest actor.”

Lauren recalls her father making a joke that cracked Walsh up. “He was a rock star that day.”

Andrew, MacKinlay’s son, lives in Sarnia, and his other daughter, Alison, is a family doctor in Ohio.

“He truly loves helping people,” Alison said of her father.

Sarnia is a small town at heart, where a surgeon can bump into patients at the mall, the YMCA, or a hockey game.

Alison said former patients and their relatives often come up to her father to thank him and let him know how they’re doing.

“My dad is always so happy to see them,” she said. “His passion for medicine and his true enjoyment for helping people and building those connections with his patients motivated me to go into medicine.”

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“I think I was extremely lucky,” Duncan MacKinlay said of his career in Sarnia, and the staff he worked with at Bluewater Health.

“Orthopedics is like a team program,” he said. “You get the right team, you know it’s going to be a good day.”

And the fact most patients get better is one of the things he likes about orthopedic surgery, MacKinlay said.

One example he gave is patients with shoulder problems, who often tell him they’re able to sleep again after surgery.

“If you can allow people to sleep at night, you’re a hero,” MacKinlay said.

As a final thought, he said, “It has been a pleasure and an honor for me to help look after the people of Sarnia-Lambton and my patients from elsewhere,”

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