Health advocate still living his dream.

He came from very humble beginnings, and travelled over rough ground to get to where he wanted to go, but Thomas Dignan made it. His dream of becoming a doctor became a reality, and for his work and perseverance, Dr. Dignan became this year's recipient of the National Aboriginal Achievement Award for medicine.

"I was flabbergasted. It was not something that I had expected because I do what I do because of my love of medicine and I just try to promote better health and wellbeing for First Nations," said Dignan about receiving the award.

Dignan knew he wanted to be a doctor at the age of five when he visited Dr. Tom Jamieson, one of the first Native graduates from the faculty of medicine at the University of Toronto.

"I was so impressed by the way he dealt with me and he was like a great big gentle bear, and I decided then that I wanted to be a doctor. But my dad died when I was 14 and I just sort of lost sight of all of my dreams and aspirations and realized that when I was about 18, having dropped out of high school halfway through Grade 10, that I was going to go nowhere."

Dignan felt his only option was to join the United States Marines where he could finish his high school diploma in night school. At that time, the Canadian Armed Forces offered only correspondence courses. Dignan admitted that as a young adult he didn't have enough discipline for that kind of learning. After serving as a marine and completing the equivalency of one year of university, Dignan moved back to Canada and began working for IBM. He stayed there for a year, and then joined McMaster University's computer centre for six years more.

Unhappy with what he was doing, Dignan decided to go back to school. But life wasn't finished placing obstacles in his path. Universities wouldn't accept him because he didn't have a Canadian high school diploma. Fortunately, St. Joseph's School of Nursing accepted him as a mature student. He graduated third in his class becoming the only Native male nurse in Canada at the time.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

As a nurse, he worked in adolescent psychotherapy, family counselling and human sexuality. He then worked in Northern Manitoba for a time. He finished a bachelor of science degree in nursing at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and then became a clinical nursing instructor at Mohawk College in Hamilton.

He became the first president of the Native Nurses Association of Canada, known then as the Registered Nurses of Canadian Indian Ancestry, a position he held for three years.

When Dignan first applied for medical school at McMaster, the doors failed to open for him. Undaunted, he applied again and this time he got in. In 1981, he graduated from the faculty of medicine at McMaster University as the oldest graduate up to that time and the first of First Nations ancestry.

Dignan became Thunder Bay's first emergency physician, and then went on to practice emergency medicine and anesthesia at the South Muskoka Hospital in Bracebridge, Ont. He also worked in Northwestern Ontario as a fly-in physician and he now works part-time as a primary care physician at the Anishinawbe Muskiki Native Health Access Centre in Thunder Bay.

Dignan was co-founder of the Native Physicians Association, and worked with the Assembly of First Nations on health care issues for about seven years. He now works for Health Canada in the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch for Ontario.

He is also working on his masters in public health at Lakehead University. In 2003, Dr. Dignan received the Queen's Jubilee Medal for his advocacy work in encouraging other Aboriginal people to pursue careers in the healthcare professions.

One of those he successfully reached is Dr. Cornelia Wieman, the first female Native psychiatrist in Canada. She met Dignan as a medical student at one of the first Native Physicians Association meetings in 1991. The association decided to start a mentoring program for medical students, and the two paired up after hitting it off.

Wieman said Dignan was an incredible support, helping her with finances, food, giving her his old textbooks, having her over for the family holidays and identifying with the strain of being an Aboriginal person in a Western scientific field.

"Trying to maintain my identity as an Aboriginal person while doing Western-based medical training was always a real struggle ... I really feel that Tom's support was one of the major reasons why I stuck with it and graduated and made it through because medical training can be quite brutal in and of itself," said Wieman.

"One of the things I think that I got out of that was I had a very early exposure in my training to what some of the needs were in communities ... He really kind of instilled in me, I would say, a sense of responsibility to give back to communities," added Wieman.

Dr. Dignan advocates the use of traditional medicine and refers his First Nations patients to First Nations healers. Dignan said he then works with the patient and healer as part of the team.

"Western medicine has been involved in talking about holistic medicine for approximately 35 or 40 years, which is something new for the dominant culture. First Nations have been doing this for 10,000 years," said Dignan.

Wieman describes Dignan as honest, forthright, but unassuming.

"He definitely speaks his mind [and] when you say his name people know it, but he's ... quite shy in certain ways about what he's managed to do over his career. I think this [award] is a really good thing for him. I think he feels quite proud of it," said Wieman.

"Tom's just an incredible individual and I can't think of anyone really in medicine at this point that's more deserving of the award than he is," said Wieman of her mentor. "He's done a lot and his personality's pretty colorful, but in terms of, I think, being proud of his accomplishments, he tends to fly under the radar."

"I do what makes me happy and that's practicing medicine and advocating for First Nations health and well being, and I guess that's what I'm proudest of," said Dignan. "I mean, life is about doing the things that you enjoy doing and influencing as many people as you possibly can to be healthy."

The Native Physicians Association has made an impact, explained Dignan, by producing videos to stop parents from smoking during pregnancy and exposing children to second-hand smoke.

"There are all kinds of major issues about moldy houses, but smoking causes more problems for First Nations adults and children than mold does. And yet we lose sight of that, 'cause second-hand smoke causes cancer--end of story. It causes an exacerbation of asthma in children. It may, in fact, even cause asthma in children, and yet many First Nations families continue to smoke in the house or smoke in the car when there are children around. We have to look at ourselves and what we're doing to ourselves and try to make changes there as opposed to blaming other extraneous stuff for causing our problems," he said.