‘Joshi’ leaves behind big shoes to fill
ST. MARY’S OUTGOING CEO to take up a new high-profile job in McGill University faculty of medicine
“He was CEO for 16 years on the Montreal health scene. I can’t think of any other hospital with that stability.” MARC TROTTIER, ST. MARY’S HOSPITAL BOARD MEMBER
When Arvind Joshi moved to Montreal from Ireland in 1974, he had one suitcase and $35 in his pocket.
Joshi had applied for medical internships in Auckland, Melbourne, Chicago, Liverpool, Dublin and Montreal. When all said “yes,” Joshi threw their names in a hat.
Montreal got the luck of the draw.
Joshi eventually became director general and CEO of St. Mary’s Hospital, becoming one of the first South Asian doctors to run a major hospital in Quebec.
Four mandates as CEO spanning 16 years as the head and public face of St. Mary’s is long enough, says Joshi, who this month jumped into another high-profile job as interim chair and chief of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the McGill University faculty of medicine, and the McGill University Health Centre, respectively.
For Joshi, St. Mary’s was stitched into the fabric of his life for 40 years: he met his wife, Doreen, on the eighth floor; became its chief gynecologist and obstetrician, then head of professional services; and finally, its CEO.
But while Joshi, 62, says he “will miss St. Mary’s more than St. Mary’s will miss him,” more than 500 of his “family” from the Côte-desNeiges hospital came to bid him goodbye at a tribute and roast at the Olympia Theatre in May.
Joshi steered a hospital with a $145-million annual budget and staff of 2,000 through rough economic times in health funding — and under his stewardship, St. Mary’s was transformed into a first-class teaching hospital. In 2008, St Mary’s was officially designated a CHU — centre hospitalier universitaire — affiliated with McGill University, with one of the largest family medicine training and research programs in Canada.
“That was a big deal for us,” says Joshi, who was also responsible for overseeing about $60 million in development projects: a state-of-theart academic family medicine unit, a new dialysis unit, a birthing centre and emer- gency room renovations.
“Projects that all came in on time and under budget,” said Marc Trottier, who has been a hospital board member for nearly two decades and is a former chairman of the hospital foundation.
“He was CEO for 16 years on the Montreal health scene. I can’t think of any other hospital with that stability. These are very high-pressure jobs, literally 24 hours and always something is going on,” Trottier said, praising Joshi’s “open and respectful skill for navigating cross-currents” and conflicts that earned him a loyal following from senior staff who refer to him simply as “Joshi.”
It’s a sign of affection, said Trottier, who at his first board meeting initially thought staff were being disrespectful.
“But even his wife calls him Joshi,” he said. “He is going to be missed. His are big shoes to fill. But we knew this day would come.”
The hospital foundation named a nursing research fellowship after Joshi, with a focus on challenges faced by immigrant women.
Joshi first set foot in St. Mary’s as an undergraduate medical student on a summer internship in 1972, recalled Dr. Constant Nucci, the hospital’s former CEO.
“I took a shine to him because he is simply brilliant,” said Nucci, who encouraged him to come back as a medical intern.
Joshi was born in Kenya to South Asian parents, raised in Nairobi, educated in Ire- land and trained as a doctor in Montreal — the first in his family of businessmen to become a physician. He’s also fond of languages — he speaks Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, and still understands Swahili and a few African dialects.
He learned French on the job in Montreal and also in Ottawa, where he did his residency in gynecology. He later went to Vancouver to train further as a specialist in high-risk obstetrics, taking along his entire family, including a younger brother who is intellectually disabled and continues to be part of the household.
Physicians and nurses care for strangers for a living, Joshi explained — and “if we don’t look after the less fortunate in our family, who the hell else will?”
When he returned to Montreal in 1988, after a stint in Regina as head of gynecology for the southern part of the province, it was to head St. Mary’s obstetrics and gynecology department, and highrisk obstetrics at the Jewish General Hospital.
As he packed up his corner office at St. Mary’s last month, Joshi said that he’s been fortunate and credits many people, in particular his management team, for St. Mary’s trajectory as a successful community hospital.
“We always said, ‘We know who we are and we don’t pretend to be what we’re not.’ In this day and age, to try and be everything to everybody is impossible. So we made a conscious decision as an institu- tion, with support from community and people who work here, that we would focus on primary and secondary care” and leave specialized care such as neurosurgery, liver transplants and heart operations to other institutions.
But perhaps the real highlight of Joshi’s life, he says, “is that I met my wife (Doreen) here,” then a nurse. He spotted her one evening in the hallway. They married two years later during the ‘76 Olympics.
Among his treasured mementos are framed photographs from grateful parents cradling quintuplets and quadruplets delivered by Joshi in the 1990s when he was practising high-risk pregnancy medicine.
“It’s so very satisfying. As a CEO you make a difference, but this ...” Joshi held up a picture of quadruplets born to an Orthodox Jewish family on the Sabbath. The husband desperately wanted to be at the birth, but he didn’t know that his wife’s labour had started; he wasn’t answering the phone because of the Sabbath religious restrictions.
“There was only one thing to do,” Joshi recalled. As staff prepped the woman for surgery, Joshi, wearing his “hospital greens,” jumped in his car, drove to the man’s house and banged on the door.
“He answered the door, got in my car and we went to the hospital,” Joshi said. “I think he broke every Orthodox rule, but he was very appreciative of being there for the birth of his kids that day.”
Before Joshi’s appointment at McGill became public knowledge, he joked that he would not be staying at home after retirement and driving his wife crazy.
“I don’t want to be in the public eye 24/7. But I love mentorship and teaching and dealing with young people,” he said. “I have had a wonderful life and career, and it would be privilege to give back to the community.”
It turned out to be a shortlived retirement — Joshi’s appointment as chief and chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the McGill faculty of medicine became official as of July 8.