Dr. Allan Torrie, Kenora
By descent to the present Private Collection, Kenora
An excerpt from Dr. Allan Torrie’s obituary in the Winnipeg Free Press (August 23, 2005):
His vocation as a family physician coincided with the beginnings of the self-help movement for alcohol addiction. This was also the period of new alcohol related health and social problems of the Anishinaabe people. Over time, his medical practice became focussed on emotional problems, psychiatric illnesses and alcohol and drug addiction problems as well as the delivery of health services in the community and province.
From the mid 1960s, and contrary to the received institutional approaches of the time, he fought for community-centered approaches to social problems. He directed an innovative pilot project of the Addiction Research Foundation targeting the rampant public drunkenness in Kenora with an approach that focused on self-help. This evolved, through the Anishinaabeg who had became involved, into the first Kenora Pow-Wow Club as a cultural approach to addictions. Later in the mid 1970s, he spearheaded an innovation, which has now become commonplace, to have the province fund an Anishinaabe healer as part of the Hospital services for the Kenora area. Later he worked as Medical Advisor to a program treating chronic solvent abusers with traditional therapies. He had been recognised as an Honorary Elder of Iskatewizaagegan and Wabaseemoon First Nations.
