Dentist turned to law after going blind
Two decades into his hardwon career as a dentist, Dr. Kwesi Baffoe lost his eyesight and was shorn of his profession.
It was 1993, and Baffoe, an immigrant from Ghana who had settled in The Pas, Man., struggled to come to terms with his suddenly uncertain future.
“He was devastated at the time,” remembers his friend, Ottawa's Dr. Sam Kwofie, a fellow dentist. “For a year or two, he was totally lost, but then he had an epiphany.”
Baffoe moved to Winnipeg to take mobility training and to learn to live with his blindness, the result of a rare disorder. He resolved to return to school and to pursue a second career as a lawyer.
Legally blind, Baffoe went on to earn a law degree from the University of Manitoba and two graduate degrees from the University of Ottawa, where he specialized in Indigenous and constitutional law. Awarded his PhD in June 2010, he worked as a lawyer for the federal government.
“He was a joyful individual who liked a challenge,” Kwofie said. “He was a trailblazer.”
Baffoe died of heart failure on March 24. He was 79.
“He was very determined: He was a get-and-up-and-go kind of person,” said his son, Dominic Baffoe, of Thompson, Man.
Kwesi Baffoe grew up in a family of eight in Cape Coast, Ghana, where his father worked as an accountant. A gifted student, Kwesi earned a Commonwealth scholarship from the Canadian government in the mid-1960s and studied dentistry at the University of British Columbia. After graduation, Baffoe moved to Jamaica with his fiancée, Wendy, before taking a job with Canada's Department of Health and Welfare to provide dental care to Indigenous communities in northern Manitoba.
He obtained his pilot's licence and bought a single-engine Cessna with which he few into remote communities.
It was the start of a lifelong interest in Indigenous culture, law and history.
But northern travel was perilous, and Baffoe was once forced into an emergency landing in a farmer's field after his Cessna's engine failed. He walked away with only scrapes and bruises.
He would not pilot his own plane again.
Baffoe's life took another dramatic turn in 1993, when he began to lose his eyesight due to a rare disorder that affected his optic nerves. He had to stop practising dentistry.
Baffoe struggled with his loss. He told friend Ngina Matondo, “I had to grow bitter or grow better.”