The mother sat across from Vic Juba and wept.
Her daughter was 15 years old and struggling with a serious mental health crisis. There was no psychiatrist in Lloydminster. The best appointment available was in North Battleford – five months away.
“She said, I got a problem now, not five months from now,” Juba recalled.
It was 1995. Juba was chairing a health needs committee struck by the hospital to identify gaps in local care. What the committee found shook him.
“Talk about an eye-opener,” he said. “I had a huge sympathy for teachers and what they had to undergo. They were a lot more than just educators – they had to deal with health-related issues.”
The committee’s report documented what many residents already knew in silence: Lloydminster had a night culture most people never saw. Young women on the street. Families in crisis. No one to call.
Juba did not file the report and move on. He formed another committee. Then he started making trips.
‘We gave them everything we could’
The pitch was simple. The work behind it was not.
Juba and his team travelled to Edmonton and Saskatoon to speak directly to medical students nearing graduation. They assembled a package – not just about the hospital or the salary, but about the community. Amenities. Schools. A place to raise a family.
“The biggest thing that the doctors cared about in the Lloyd case was amenities for their family,” Juba said. “We found that out pretty quickly, so we made sure that was one of the things we emphasized.”
For specialists, the pitch had to go further. An orthopedic surgeon required roughly a million dollars in equipment and peers to work alongside. The isolation factor was real. Some doctors bound for Lloydminster had quietly accepted offers elsewhere before the committee ever reached them.
One couple nearly chose Montana.
“He was going to Montana, because he wouldn’t have much luck in Canada,” Juba said. “But we wont take no for an answer – here’s what we’ll do for you.”
They got him.
Snow and a snow hill
The psychiatrist who did come arrived from South Africa, along with his wife. They came in winter.
Juba and his wife drove the couple around the city. In a cul-de-sac somewhere, someone had pushed up a mound of snow. Children had tunnelled into it.
The visitors asked the Jubas to stop the car.
“They said, stop, stop. We’ve got to get pictures of this,” Juba said. “They had two boys back home. They took their pictures and said, you know what our boys want us to bring back? Some snow.”
The psychiatrist stayed until he retired and he then moved back to South Africa.
Buy-in, again
Juba attributes the recruitment success to the same principle he applied to every major project he touched over seven decades: give people something real to say yes to.
“Try and be as complete and thorough as you can in your presentation, whatever it may be,” he said. “If they buy in to what you’re promoting, you’ve got no problem.”
Dr. Saeed, who helped Juba, has never forgotten how it worked. He recently asked Juba what exactly he told those doctors in far-off cities to convince them to come.
Juba’s answer: he did his homework. He arranged meetings with the mayor. Dr. Cavanagh, chief of staff, walked them through the hospital. They helped with finding office space. He made sure no one had to figure out the details alone.
“We gave the whole complete packages we could,” he said.
Lloydminster eventually secured both the orthopedic surgeon and the psychiatrist the committee had identified as priorities. The city that had once sent a desperate mother away with a five-month wait had, piece by piece, built something different.
“That looked after the health,” Juba said simply.
He is 94 years old. He still thinks about that mother.
