While winter winds whipped wildly outside Saturday afternoon, attendees at the Innisfil Historical Society at the Churchill hall were captivated with warm tales of starting a career as a small town family physician who kept fulfilling his desire to do more, retiring two years ago as the long time chief of the emergency department at the Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH).
Dr. Tom Armstrong really started his medical career as a child, assisting in the birth of calves on the family farm south of Hamilton. “Birthing calves and giving our own inoculations and anything we could do, money was tight so we would have the vet come, watch him do it, then do it ourselves.”
Telling tales of his start, the stories were punctuated by additions to the memories to the assembled audience by his wife Deborah Wall-Armstrong. Recently graduated as a barrister and solicitor, she came to Stroud with her husband as they both carved out the start of their careers. Deborah told InnisfilToday she was one of three female lawyers in the area and faced challenges trying to establish herself in the local legal community. She attained her Bachelor Laws at the Osgoode Hall Law School (York University)
“We did what we could to support each other and our family,” she said, noting their first child arrived in 1979, as she began her other career as a mother. She is a founding partner in Wall-Armstrong & Green and serves on the Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre research ethics board.
In May 1977, Dr. Armstrong took over the general practice of a doctor leaving to specialize, acquiring his established patient base.
He quickly fell into a vigorous work routine that also saw him take in shifts at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie, where he joined the anesthesiologist department so they could have someone in every day of the week. Besides working that shift one day from seven in the morning till two in the afternoon, he would return to his personal practice seeing patients till seven at night.
The Historical Society heard that one of the biggest local health scares he managed was in 1980 when a group of five and six year olds played with a group of kittens at Killarney Beach Public School and one feline turned out to be rabid. There were close to 70 children affected, with almost 50 being his own patients. The whole group of kindergarten and Grade 1 students had to be treated.
A new vaccine was just coming out to treat rabies that required only one shot a day for two weeks. Unfortunately public health had only acquired three doses, so with the co-operation of the school principal, Dr. Armstrong said he set up a clinic at the school and along with a nurse gave all the affected students their much more involved course of injections in the abdomen for the duration and the follow-up they had to endure. He said the kids were real troopers and he couldn’t remember even one of them crying at the regimen.
Deborah finished the story by telling the audience he had big chocolate gifts for each child on their last appointment to commemorate what they went through.
She also said his schedule of a 120 hour work week saw him falling asleep at family gatherings just to slip in some shut-eye to be ready for more doctor work.
Armstrong commented that a strong weather day like Saturday caused him worry when his elderly patients from Sandy Cove Acres braved bad roads, he got in the habit of calling the local radio station to broadcast his practice would be closed so they wouldn’t venture forth and risk an accident.
His dedication to patients and dissatisfaction with the system saw him volunteer to be the head of emergency, as at the time RVH emergency had no attending physician 24/7, causing delays while doctors were called in for assessments. He had already been asked to look at other emergency departments across the province and assess their operations.
Deborah noted that his dedication to the emergency department, colleagues, staff, mentoring and patient care moved the unit to create an award of excellence in his name, given out only when an outstanding individual is deserving. After giving up his private practice and working for two decades at RVH, he was also practicing at the Huronia Urgent Care Clinic until 2022.
In June of 2023 he was honoured for 45 years of service at RVH, with the hospital noting at his ceremony, “Dr. Armstrong was instrumental in bringing emergency care to Barrie.”
His early exposure to animal medicine continued through his daughter who he told the audience as a child also witnessed cattle births, and she said with surprise at her first one, “that thing came out of that?”
With the same drive and determination, his daughter Dr. Kathryn Armstrong has followed directly in his path, and she is now the Medical Director of the Emergency Department at RVH.