From the large window of her dental office in northern Manitoba, Judy Zetaruk [B.Sc./86, DMD/90] can watch eagles soaring over a tree-lined lake.
“Every morning when I get to work, I look out the window and the view is beautiful,” she says.
On Fridays, Zetaruk also anxiously watches the skies above Oxford House – located on the Bunibonibee Cree Nation – because poor weather can delay her weekly flight home to Winnipeg.
Zetaruk has been seeing patients year-round in the remote Cree community – about 950 km northeast of Winnipeg – for the past 31 years. As a dentist on contract with Indigenous Services Canada, she typically flies north on Monday mornings and south on Friday afternoons, for three weeks per month.
“I originally chose to work in northern Manitoba because it was so underserviced,” says Zetaruk, who was born and raised in Winnipeg. “What kept me coming back are the relationships I formed with the residents. There’s one family where four sisters have all worked in the dental office.”
When Zetaruk’s two daughters were small, she would bring them along to Oxford House and a local caregiver would look after them while she was working. When her daughters were school-aged and stayed in Winnipeg, it was sometimes tough to be away from them, she says. But she and her husband made it work.
Thinking back to her student days, Zetaruk says she found her calling by chance. One day on the Fort Garry campus as an undergrad, she wandered into a talk by Dr. George Bowden, professor emeritus of dentistry, about dentistry as a career.
“I loved doing crafts and working with my hands. I thought, ‘Dentistry is what I want to do.’”
Graduating from the UM dental school in 1990, she says, she felt prepared to work in a remote location where a dentist has to do it all – from surgeries to dentures and fillings to emergencies.
“I received a well-rounded education. I wasn’t afraid to work in the north because I felt that as a student, I had exposure to everything I needed.”
Today, Zetaruk says the greatest challenge of her job is that she’s the only regular dentist for a community of roughly 2,500 people.
“Because it’s so remote, I have sometimes pushed the limits of what I feel capable of treating. One of my patients needed several very difficult tooth extractions, but he doesn’t like to travel and would not let me refer him to a specialist in the city.
“I told him that I wasn’t sure I would be able to complete his treatment. Fully informed, he told me to give it a try. In the end, it was successful, but I would not have pushed myself beyond my comfort zone if it weren’t for the situation.”
When Zetaruk mentors dentistry students who fly up to Oxford House for northern remote rotations, she encourages them to follow the northern path that she has found so fulfilling.
After three decades, what does she consider her greatest accomplishment?
“Making people more aware of oral health, so that they want to seek treatment and feel comfortable coming to the clinic.”
BY MATTHEW KRUCHAK