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Dr. Otto Schaefer dead at 90
'Dear little doctor' helped change Northern health care

Katie May
Northern News Services
Published Saturday, November 14, 2009

NWT - As one of the first health researchers in Canada's arctic, Dr. Otto Schaefer has received countless honours. His name appears on the Order of Canada, on the list of fellows at the Arctic Institute of North America, on Yellowknife's health research centre. But to his patients, Schaefer was simply luttaakuluk – "dear little doctor."

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The late Dr. Otto Schaefer, a recipient of the Order of Canada for his contributions to Arctic medical research, worked in the North for more than 30 years. He died at home in Jasper, Alberta on Nov. 2, 2009 -- exactly a month after his 90th birthday. - photo courtesy of Monika Schaefer

Schaefer died Nov. 2, exactly a month after his 90th birthday, at home in Jasper, Alta., where he retired after devoting 32 years to improving the health of people across the North. Schaefer published more than 100 medical research papers while working at outposts from Aklavik to Pangnirtung, and eventually became director of the Northern Medical Research Unit. In 2005, after he had retired, the Alberta Medical Association listed him as one of 100 Albertan physicians of the century.

His career inspired doctor-turned-writer Gerald Hankins, who captured Schaefer's life in his 2000 biography Sunrise Over Pangnirtung: The Story of Otto Schaefer, M.D.

"I just heard about his about distinguished career and I said, 'I think I'd like to write your life story,' and he agreed," Hankins recalled from his home in Canmore, Alta.

"He's a very modest fellow and he wasn't very enthused, but as we became friends he was willing to share all manner of information with me."

Hankins and Schaefer developed a lasting friendship over the two years the former spent working on the book, which credits Schaefer with helping to "bring the dawn of a new day for the health care of Northerners."

"He was the sort of man I had the greatest respect for. He loved the Inuit people. He travelled by dogsled with them at times. He learned the Inuktitut language, which is something, I think," Hankins said.

"He was a very quiet, modest sort of fellow but he was a fountain of knowledge and wisdom and experience."

His daughter, Monika Schaefer, the second youngest of five children, remembers it took some convincing for him to agree to have his life story published.

"Dad was really, really reluctant. He just thought, 'why would somebody want to read about my life?'" she laughed. "He was always very, very humble."

Schaefer's fascination with the North began when he was six years old, growing up in his native Germany, when his older brother gave him a book about Inuit culture for Christmas.

"That book just intrigued him so much; it just touched him so deeply that at that time he vowed to himself that one day he would go there, he would go to the Canadian Arctic," said Monika.

He enrolled in medical school in Germany as a step toward realizing that dream, completing his degree while serving as a medic on the front lines of the Second World War. He was captured as a prisoner of war and taken to a camp in central west Germany, where he learned to survive in harsh conditions.

"He didn't talk much about those things," Monika said. "I just remember him saying they would use spoons to dig holes in the ground to keep warm. They would just be digging themselves into the ground to get out of the cold and wind and they didn't have any tools other than spoons."

He emigrated to Canada in 1951, living on a Saskatchewan farm with a distant relative until his fiancée, Editha – known as Didi – joined him. They got married in 1952 and moved to Aklavik for a two-year medical post. From there, Schaefer travelled to the surrounding communities by dogsled and became interested in studying diseases that were affecting Northern people and promoting proper nutrition.

After leaving Aklavik, Schaefer and his family were stationed in Pangnirtung for two years and then lived in Whitehorse before moving to Edmonton.

Monika said her father learned a lot from the Inuit and passionately advocated for aboriginal rights, including his successful fight to end the practice of giving new mothers medication – without their consent – to stop them from breastfeeding in favour of bottle-feeding, which other foreign doctors believed was healthier.

"In recent times, we talked about some of the stress he was under at that time because he didn't always have like-minded bosses in Ottawa," Monika said.

"He always did what he believed was right and in this case it was advocating for the health and well-being of the people of the North at a huge time of change," she added.

Even after he left the North, Schaefer continued to visit frequently on business trips with the Northern Medical Research unit, adding to the family's collection of Inuit carvings upon his return and telling them stories about his time there.

"It was running through our blood streams as kids growing up in a household that was full of the North," said Monika. "I feel lucky to have grown up with that."

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