Short Stories

The Essence of EducationSo I take teaching very seriously. I always say that my school, the CAO, is a family and I mean that in every sense of the word. I have my students’ backs not only in the program but after the program. I'm watching for their safety and security. Many of my students come in here oftentimes angry and disappointed that things haven't gone their way. They've done the very best they could in college or university, they've achieved all of the marks necessary to move on and yet they find themselves having a difficult time being successful...

FatherhoodGrowing up with very few resources the one resource I did have was my father who, although he was somewhat challenged, he instilled a tremendous sense of discipline and integrity in me. Having very little resources as a child was a great blessing, it created a different character in me and allowed me to see things very differently so I don't have any regrets. I'm only thankful for the fact that I didn't have much. What I did have was a father and my father was and still remains a voice in my head that never ever stops. He's always...

Growing up with Business SenseI had to learn to become resourceful and independent very early in life and to that end, as a young boy I was picking worms and collecting scrap metal and doing what I needed to do to make ends meet. I learned the art of the hustle very young, not because I wanted to be wealthy, but because I wanted clothes on my back and food to eat . My father, although employed, was incapacitated with post-traumatic stress from the Korean war. My mother had left and it was just he and I. If I wanted...

Journey of an AuthorGeneral Osteopathic Treatment was a book that I wanted to write because I felt there was no book like that in the osteopathic landscape. It was certainly inspired by the Body Adjustment (BA) that I learned in the UK. But instead of showing a singular way of doing things, I wanted to demonstrate a full body general treatment as something that could be altered and customized in the way that I understood the work. In writing the book I was able to review the mechanisms and the concepts of general treatment from an anatomical perspective. This book...

Coaching in the ClassroomAs an osteopath you recognize that there is theoretical osteopathy and there is osteopathy in practice. These are not the same things at all and I think when I started teaching at the CAO I recognized that teaching alone wasn't going to be sufficient. A teacher can’t simply flip through a PowerPoint slides and expect people to understand what they are speaking about. Teachers also need to coach students through a process and show them what they have done right and wrong. I had many mentors in the hockey world. I had been exposed to Russian professional...

Accidental Pro Hockey PlayerMy life was a twisting turning road of many different events. I grew up with very little. My father was a former Canadian military man working in the large and failing steel city of Hamilton, Ontario. I had very few resources as a child. As time went on the only comfort I had was playing hockey and I was a reasonably good hockey player. In fact many would say I was a good hockey player in my youth. But after my time trying out in the OHL and then later in the American League I found myself...

An Unconventional path from Teaching Assistant to PrincipalSo my own school, the CAO, started developing while I was finishing my initial studies in osteopathy. When I finally graduated as a newly minted osteopathic manual practitioner, the school was in its infancy. There were a handful of students around a single treatment table in a rented hotel room being taught by an American Osteopath who was doing all the teaching. I was the teaching assistant, and thus my teacher training had begun. The American osteopath was teaching the procedural processes of manipulation using techniques, a very different approach than where we...

Learning from AmericansSo I have to thank Jason Haxton, the director of the museum in Kirksville, for welcoming me on my first trip to Andrew Taylor Still University (ATSU) in Kirksville, Missouri. I spent hours and hours reading the early literature and looking at documents from the founding campus of osteopathy and then contrasting that to all things that I had heard osteopathically while studying internationally. When I was in the UK I was working with European trained osteopaths but it was only during my time in the USA that I really started to think deeply about what it means...

The Waterdown OsteopathIt was in the late 1990s about 1998 after coming back from playing hockey in Sweden. I was playing in a men's hockey league in Hamilton and I had injured my neck. I had a manual therapy practice at the time, having trained in Shiatsu therapy in Toronto and I had gone everywhere and seen everyone for it. I tried Chiropractic, physiotherapy, massage therapy, acupuncture and nothing was touching it and it was getting very troublesome. One day a patient in my office suggested I see Dr Reid Johnston D.O. who was an American trained osteopathic physician. He...

Learning from AmericansOnce I was desperate to learn osteopathy, the big question was “where am I going to learn this?” and because it was an American science I started by registering for a muscle energy course that I had found in the Philadelphia area run by Osteopathic Physicians. I wanted to learn more and they were happy to teach me but after some time, going to the United States all the time for these courses became troublesome. Soon I was approached to help begin a school in Canada for an American Osteopath. In exchange for my education, my role was...

Wernham & LittlejohnI cherish those days I spent with John Werham. Flying back and from from Canada to the UK over several years, because what he did for me personally was a gift. He instilled a fire in me. A fire for osteopathy. He was a very committed man. John Wernham brought me back to a different time of osteopathy. John and his students were using a Body Adjustment (BA) which is a form of a general osteopathic treatment. Perhaps some might disagree, but the BA was a full body routine, a repetitive method of treating and it was helpful...