Photo: OVC faculty and students joined the Grey Bruce Aboriginal Qimmiq Team of veterinarians and veterinary technicians to provide a mobile veterinary clinic for the Naotkamegwanning First Nation.

The Remote Northern Indigenous Community Outreach Rotation

At the University of Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College (OVC), we are often asked what we can do for those for whom animals are at the centre of their lives, but veterinary services are out of reach. In 2019, PetSmart Charities of Canada provided a grant of $34,450 to determine the feasibility of offering a permanent elective rotation, one of several two-to-three-week sessions of hands-on clinical training for final-year Doctor of Veterinary Medicine students, in remote communities in Northern Ontario.

This research began with rich conversations with several outreach groups already engaged in such work.

The Grey Bruce Aboriginal Qimmiq Team of veterinarians and veterinary technicians invited OVC to join in setting up and offering their pro bono clinic, already scheduled for June 2019. Two OVC faculty and two student veterinarians travelled with the Grey Bruce team to the Naotkamegwanning First Nation, an Ojibwa community in the Kenora district. There, the First Nation provided the space and had other resources waiting for them.

It was a career-defining experience for student veterinarian Amanda Gordon. She met a team of volunteer veterinarians who had given up vacation time to work long hours in a hockey arena, with anesthesia set up in the hallway and surgery in the locker rooms.

“It was inspiring,” says Gordon. “You don’t know whether you’re going to love practicing veterinary medicine or not, not until you work in a clinic like this. I felt supported, part of a veterinary community. And I fell in love. For the first time, I felt real passion and excitement to be in veterinary medicine.”

Beyond providing wellness care experience for student veterinarians, the college sought to develop best practices in engagement and the provision of services that were in keeping with the tenets of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.

“During subsequent visits to three First Nations, OVC members approached those communities conscious of their cultural and historical contexts and with a mission to provide veterinary health care as equal partners.

The student veterinarians had earlier worked with First Nations, including Gordon, who previously served in Indigenous services with the federal government. “If Canada wants to see true reconciliation, there has to be a true partnership,” she says.

With the success of the feasibility study, in 2020, PetSmart Charities gave OVC $95,000 to support the Remote Northern Indigenous Community Outreach Rotation for two years. The college will use the funds to offer community and client education and to provide mobile veterinary clinics for wellness care, simple illness treatment, and spay and neuter services for an estimated 300 underserved individuals in remote Ontario communities.

Funding will also support research to develop intercultural competencies and to develop a plan for sharing insights and evidence-based best practices through publications and academic conferences. Two First Nations youths will be invited to the University of Guelph to experience the university environment and learn about opportunities in science and veterinary medicine.

Delivering services that are sensitive and mutually informed; developing culturally competent and community service-minded veterinarians; and benefiting Indigenous communities: these will forge the legacy of the inspired and generous giving by PetSmart Charities.