If not now, when? (The past and the future of rural health services in Canada)

John CS Wootton - Canada
M.D., C.M.

Dr Wootton has had a long and distinguished career in rural practice. He was recently elected President of the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada, an organisation he joined as a founding member in 1992.

His earlier practices were in British Columbia (Ocean Falls), Ontario (Sioux Lookout), and Quebec (Wakefield). For the past 25 years he has worked in the Pontiac region of West Quebec where his practice includes primary care, emergency room coverage, in-patient care, and obstetrics, as well as a hospital administrative position as Director of Professional Services at the CSSS du Pontiac (hospital and health services).

He contributed to the launch of RuralMed and started the Canadian Journal of Rural Medicine. He remained the journal’s founding scientific editor until 2008 when he joined the SRPC executive. He lives on an island in the Ottawa River where he shares a century old brick farmhouse with his partner, her teenage children, and her miniature horses.

Dr. Wootton spent much of his childhood in rural Brazil. He returned to Canada with his family when he was 12. He completed an undergraduate degree in English and Philosophy at the University of Toronto before enrolling in entered medicine at McGill University in Montreal, graduating in 1978, followed by a rotating internship in Toronto.

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