When Hela traveled from Woodstock, Ontario, to study at the Ottawa General School of Nursing in 1968, she couldn’t have guessed the move would also introduce her to the love of her life. Hela’s nursing school classmate introduced her to Jean-Jacques Bergevin, a student at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Medicine, on a double date. The two hit it off immediately. The only trouble was that they weren’t each other’s dates.
Hela chuckles at the memory. “But then when they broke up, he called me and asked me if I wanted to go to one of our school's dances. And I said, of course. And ever since then, we were - we've been – together,” she says.
During his time at the Faculty of Medicine, Dr. Bergevin was a devoted student.
“Every single night, five days a week, he would go to the library and study until 11 o'clock. At 11 o'clock, he and his buddies would close their books and go for a beer at the Albion across the way and all they would talk about is what they were studying,” Hela says. “That was one of the things that I noticed, that he was very, very committed. He really enjoyed his studies.”
The couple married in 1970 and nurtured a mutual commitment to the health and wellbeing of their new shared community. Dr. Bergevin graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in 1973 and, in addition to practicing obstetrics at Hawkesbury General, went on to establish a family practice in Alfred, Ontario. Hela joined the clinic in Alfred as a registered nurse in 1981.
A patient-centred practice in the countryside
As soon as she entered the practice, the two worked as a team. “Together we built a very interesting family practice,” Hela reflects. “He would be able to see a patient while I would be doing teen education on birth control pills, counseling patients on nutrition, and educating mothers on childcare.”
The practice gave their largely rural patients access a wide range of services including X-rays, ECGs and blood collection facilities. For Dr. Bergevin, understanding the whole picture was essential for delivering care to his patients.
“It was very important that the family physician would be the hub of patient care in that if he referred a patient to a specialist,” explains Hela. “He would want to have the specialist reporting back on his findings and what he was going to do.”
Dr. Bergevin also offered house calls in the surrounding countryside, which allowed him to paint a more complete picture of his patients, enabling him to better tailor their treatment.
“He would get a whole idea of the care that that patient would need, because sometimes it wasn't always physical. There were a lot of psychological problems, the condition of the house, the condition of the family unit. There were a lot of factors that contributed to the way he did patient care.”
Filling the Francophone niche
As a bilingual doctor, Dr. Bergevin was a boon to the largely Francophone population.
“He found there were not enough physicians who spoke French to help in the French community,” says Hela. “So, if they didn't have a French-speaking doctor then there would be a lack of communication. He was very proud of the fact that he could speak both languages.”
Access to healthcare and education in French is a long-held value for the Bergevin family, one that has linked them to the University of Ottawa for three generations. Dr. Bergevin’s father, siblings, and all his and Hela’s children are alumni in various faculties.
“It's a bilingual university.” Says Hela, “And my father-in-law was a big advocate of the French language in Ontario. My children all went too. One of my daughters actually went off to France for two years to study in French and my son teaches in a French language school here in Ottawa. So French is a very important part of our family unit, and all of my grandchildren are being educated in French.”
A Legacy in Action
When Dr. Bergevin passed away in 2008, his family established the Dr. Jean-Jacques Bergevin Family Physician Scholarship to honour his remarkable legacy.
The fund provides assistance to Francophone students in the MD program at the Faculty of Medicine, enshrining the family’s commitment to French and the importance of giving and receiving care in a shared language.
“I find that the scholarship is a very important part of the education of someone going into family practice. And even giving a little will help someone with whatever it is that they need to help them to get through that very expensive phase of their lives. It’s a wonderful tribute to my husband as a family physician to keep this going because he really did love family practice.”
Today, Hela continues to contribute to the scholarship as a monthly donor.
“I hope that it continues well past when I'm gone. I hope my children continue it too.”