TRAILBLAZING DOCTOR TO RETIRE

Public Health Took Precedence Over Prudery, Politics, Business

One of Canada's trailblazing public-health figures is retiring.

Vancouver's Dr. John Blatherwick was always quotable, usually right
and sometimes controversial during four decades at the forefront of
the battle to improve the collective health of all Canadians,
regardless of wealth or social standing.

But at age 63, the former scrappy athlete and prolific writer on
airplanes and medals has decided to hang up his scalpel and his
quips. The Vancouver Coastal Health chief medical health officer's
last day at his post will be June 29.

Coincidently, he received the Order of British Columbia yesterday.

"I absolutely love this job," said Blatherwick, also a recipient of
the Order of Canada.

"You couldn't ask for a better job. I work with a lot of great
people, including politicians who I have great admiration for. I know
people run them down, but I see how how much they work.

"I'll miss the people. But I won't miss the budget meetings."

Blatherwick, a one-time junior hockey player who, despite his
feistiness, knew he was in the wrong game when crunched by eventual
Canucks player and coach Pat Quinn.

Blatherwick could be the calm, yet plain-talking voice in crisis, as
during the 1980s AIDS scare. While society still talked in euphemisms
about AIDS, Blatherwick bluntly said unprotected "anal sex" -- not
sitting on a toilet seat -- was how the disease was transmitted.

"I fought AIDS in the front pages of the newspapers . . . trying to
get messages out," he recalled.

B.C., with Canada's lowest smoking rate, can thank Blatherwick for
fighting business interests to establish municipal smoking bylaws.
Those laws were also the first to tackle second-hand smoke, then a
little-known killer of hospitality-industry staff.

Later in his career he helped lobby for drug-use harm reduction
programs such as the needle exchange and North America's first
supervised injection drug site.

"My observation is we've held it, it hasn't advanced beyond control,"
he said of the number of street drug users.

"But you're not going get rid of it, and that's what people seem to
want. They want everybody cured."

Coming from a military family, Blatherwick has written 20 books on
aviation and medals.

But his first job in Vancouver put that background up against a
hippie era of draft dodgers and drug use.

Intending to work in internal medicine, Blatherwick instead quickly
grew to love the then-unglamorous field of public health after
working at legendary Pine Free Clinic on West Fourth Avenue.

Blatherwick said he came to realize drug users and draft dodgers were
real people with real health issues, a open-minded approach which
would help define his career and set a standard in public health.

But now he said "it's time for me to enjoy time with my wife,
children and grandchildren full-time."