Dr. Richard Stanwick retires after 26 years in public health on Vancouver Island

Dr. Richard Stanwick had been planning to retire around the beginning of 2020, but a new coronavirus was making headlines so he decided to stick around.

Now, nearly two years into the pandemic, Island Health's chief medical health officer is retiring on Jan. 28 from the role he has held since 2001.

Stanwick started his career as a pediatrician. He moved to public health while working in Winnipeg, after seeing children get injured — or even die — from preventable hazards like flammable clothing and scalding hot water.

He made a name for himself as the medical health officer of the Capital Regional District in the late 1990s, when he worked with restaurants to ban indoor smoking.

Dr. Stanwick spoke on CBC Victoria's On the Island about that ban, among many highlights in his career.     Take us back to the 1990s.

Dr. Shaun Peck, my predecessor, had been able to work with the restaurant association. One thing we wanted to do is take smoking inside out of [restaurants] as a competitive factor.

The head of the restaurant association said if you create a level playing field, I'll support you. Believe it or not, he actually went on a trip with myself and my tobacco lead to San Francisco and Oakland, to see where they had implemented [a similar policy] because he didn't believe you could actually make a go. And when he came back, he was a bigger booster than some of my staff for the particular bylaw.

The challenge was the bars. It took two years and a lot of legal action. There were death threats. I had police escorts out of the [Capital Regional District] building on at least two occasions. But you know, it's been a huge accomplishment.

This is one of those things in terms of satisfaction. People come up and say, "You know, my daughters and I went travelling and they couldn't believe that people still smoked on trains, that they smoked in all of these places, and I just turned to them and said, 'Well, you can thank Dr. Stanwick for that.'" That's probably the nicest thing I could have heard.

You were planning to retire two years ago and then COVID got in the way, then in December but Omicron got in the way. How comfortable are you leaving now? 

I don't think, in terms of public health, one ever feels comfortable leaving. But you know, there's a time for everything and I do know the team is a strong team. My anxiety in leaving is they're probably as tired as I am.

I'm confident they're going to be able to find another leader. But [that leader] is going to be taking on a team that has been working really, really hard with a virus that has been absolutely amazing in the way it's been able to pivot and twist. And so this person needs to be somebody who can foster healing and bring public health into a new era, because it cannot be, in practice, the same way, just as the rest of medicine likely won't be [the same way] post-COVID. 

So this person is going have to make a real commitment not only to public health, but to supporting the team that's gotten us this far in COVID and take on the opioid crisis. 

What's next?