LITTLE CURRENT—Dr. Akintayo Akindele has just finished his rounds for the day and takes some time to sit down with The Expositor for an introductory interview before heading home to his wife and three children.
Dr. Akindele provides his first impressions of Manitoulin and its residents. “It’s a nice place,” he said. “People are friendly, helpful. Also, everyone asks ‘have you got in a place to live?’ Both colleagues and people you meet outside and even patients, so it’s nice.”
“Originally, my medical school was in Nigeria and when I was done, I went on to postgraduate work, also in Nigeria,” he said. “Then I worked briefly in South Africa and Dubai, then I was in Leeds, UK.”
He said he found Dubai to be “very hot, but nice. It’s a desert, you know, but nice clean streets. Cold inside the buildings, but extremely hot outside.”
Arriving in Canada, he first settled in Mississauga. “I lived in Brampton for a while. I worked in Mississauga for a while, too.”
Manitoulin provides a big change from his previous experiences.
“I see nature, lots of water, the Great Lakes, you read about them, situated between the US and Canada,” he said. “You see how people interact with nature, how people respect nature here.”
Dr. Akindele pointed to the local practice of stopping on the road to assist turtles across the road. “It’s nice and also makes you very careful when you’re driving. Makes it easy to want to live here.”
“I have a wife and four kids. My wife has many hats. She’s studied chemistry, then social service work. She is a registered social worker. Now she’s an immigration consultant.”
As for the children, “First, one is a boy, he’s going to be 15 in November. He’s going to start high school here. Second year of high school. Then a girl who just clocked 13 yesterday and finally a four-year-old boy who’s going to be five in December.” He also has a teenage niece staying with the family. Dr. Akindele said that his family operates as a team. “My wife leads the team. I just give a backup, as much as I can.”
Wait until your father gets home?
Dr. Akindele laughs. “That’s true, but it works every time.”
He is a family physician, “What they call a rural generalist.” So, he handles whatever walks in the door. “I find it interesting. You enjoy the work because different things come and it keeps you on your toes. It’s not just the run of the mill stuff. And as a generalist, you help more people.”
The people he has met in the course of his work in the emergency room have been very happy and appreciative. “It makes it very nice,” he said. “I’m happy to be here. The community has received me very well. It’s very nice to be wanted and appreciated”
Although the population here tends to be aging, Dr. Akindele said that they seem to be well cared for and that care is of a reasonably high standard.
Although he is committed to staying on Manitoulin for the next three years, Dr. Akindele said he is planning to settle for a much longer time than that. “It’s a nice thing that they have here. It’s a quiet place. To many people, it seems it’s been the same thing over the past 100 years. That might look easy, but it is a very difficult thing to maintain, so I give them a thumbs up.”
