Haunted by Al Pacino: The Ottawa Healthcare Wilderness
Life seems to me a random series of disconnected events, experienced as a sort of punctuated equilibrium.
Al Pacino has frequently insinuated himself into my mental landscape like a hirsute wraith, erupting suddenly into my consciousness or ken of vision as if out of an AL-in-a-Box.
We used to travel extensively in Mexico on a fleet of ADO buses. These vehicles, which in spite of their name had no apparent links to adolescence, showed vintage American movies on small screens perched over one’s seat. The sound controls were cranked up to full pitch and the language was Spanish, but the films invariably starred Al Pacino, in the various incarnations that he has assumed over the years on the silver screen.
Al has always had a tendency to bellow, whether in his own voice or when dubbed in Spanish.
And now, here in Ottawa, we have a “family physician” who looks just like the young Al Pacino.
He doesn’t bellow. But he does make us an offer we can’t refuse: medical care in a health services wasteland.
We call him Trespassers W, for reasons you can read here:
I can’t get no…family doctor – Robert McBryde
And here:
Strip Mall Medicine in Ottawa, Ontario, Part Two: The Plot Thickens – Robert McBryde
He receives us at a far-flung strip mall, the habitat of most of our city’s healthcare professionals.
A bizarre medical nether world where the voice of Al Pacino reverberates through the clinic tucked in the corner of a dingy pharmacy:
“Don’t ask me about my business”.
Your friend,
Robert
Robert McBryde – robertmcbrydeauthor.com
