Pioneer of Ste Anne health care dies
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This article was published 04/12/2015 (3776 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The man credited with pioneering health care in Ste Anne has died.
Dr. Patrick Doyle passed away on Wednesday night. He was 93.
He moved to Ste Anne in 1948 to begin his medical practice and never left, spending the duration of his 45-year career in the community.
Doyle was instrumental in the creation of Ste Anne’s health care industry, contributing to the establishment of the Ste Anne Hospital in 1954, the Villa Youville seniors housing complex in 1964 and the Seine Medical Centre in 1971.
He was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1996 and was recognized in 2013 with the province’s most distinguished honour.
“I don’t know who suggested I get this, but you accept pleasures like that easily,” he chuckled to The Carillon after receiving the Order of Manitoba.
Doyle launched his practice the year he earned a medical degree from Laval University in Montreal. His first waiting room was the stairwell of the home he shared with his wife, where he continued to run his practice until 1971 when the present clinic was built.
When he retired in 1993, an audience of 500 people attended a banquet to laud his achievements.
The general practitioner’s accomplishments expand beyond his clinic. He devoted many hours in an organizational or representative capacity within the provincial and national health care system. He was formerly chairman at St Boniface General Hospital and president of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba. His efforts in furthering the province’s medical system paired with his passion for education. He spent six years as chairman of the Seine River School Division.
Doyle focused on writing following his retirement from the medical profession. After penning his memoirs, he published an investigation into the foundations of his Christian faith. Doyle wrote several titles since on religion, and one book recounting he and his wife’s love story. She passed away in 2001.
Doyle was a vocal opponent as a doctor against euthanasia and abortion, regularly speaking at religious conferences on the issues.
He moved to St Boniface in 2007, but continued to keep tabs on Ste Anne’s health care offerings in succeeding years.
He was on hand at the grand opening of the Ste Anne Hospital expansion in 2013 that increased the facility’s size by 60 percent.
A bronze bust of Doyle’s face, sculpted in his honour in 2010, occupies the solarium.