I grew up in Mayo, Yukon, a First Nations community. I have native heritage on both sides: Metis on my mom’s and Northern Tutchone on my dad’s. I was taught to value the planet we live on and this is where my passion for environmental medicine, plant medicine and gardening was initially birthed. As a teenager I learned about traditional (botanical) medicine while hiking the Keno Hill area. I then had the opportunity to learn the medicinal uses of native plants from Elders of the Nacho Nyak Dun First Nation. Nowadays, you will find me wildcrafting plants in Edmonton and using them to make medicine: botanical/herbal formulas, essential oils and hydrosols. My passion for plants and health has bloomed into a love of gardening. And not just gardening, but making sauerkraut, kefir, canning, sprouting as well as making chemical free homemade soap.
Prior to becoming a Naturopathic Doctor, I was a regular blue-collar guy in the mining industry. I started my mining career as a placer (gold) miner on Duncan Creek, Yukon. In fact, the gold in my wife and I’s wedding rings are from gold that I mined at Duncan Creek. After getting a geology diploma from NAIT, I worked for a few companies exploring the wilds of the Yukon and Alaska, even working for a short time in the south pacific country of Vanuatu. I then got into diamond drilling and worked in British Columbia, Yukon and the Northwest Territories. I know what it is like to work in bush camps, day in day out, for weeks on end. My love for botanical medicine lead me to get a degree in Biological Science from Simon Fraser University, not knowing that naturopathic medicine was a real thing. My passion for helping people with pain, stems from my own struggles with pain. I have scoliosis and kyphosis of the spine (which means a side and convex curvature) and after sleeping on cots in bush camps my back would be killing me. It was while getting a massage for my back pain that I learned about Naturopathic Medicine from a massage therapist – at the time she too was a student at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine (CCNM). The system of medicine fit with my philosophy and I decided to apply to CCNM for my doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine. Now, I specialize in managing joint pain – knee, hip, shoulder, ankle….well, any joint can be treated—using prolotherapy and PRP.
Since becoming a father, I have become even more passionate about the environment. I want to ensure that there is a planet for my grandchildren to thrive in which is why I completed advanced specialty training in Environmental Medicine and Autism. One of the missing links in Western medicine is connecting the rising rates of infertility to the increase in chemicals we are exposed too. I have developed an environmental medicine program to help patients be proactive about their health. In fact, my wife did a yearlong detoxification program before she conceived our son. The “terrain” of the body is important and this combined with the word “natural” is where our business name came from. I like to use the garden analogy since I am a gardener. If you want to be healthy, you have to take care of the body (ie soil) and give it the right nutrients as well as environment (sun, water) in order to grow an amazing crop. I truly believe that we need to be proactive about our health using functional medicine to prevent many different diseases.
I have many interests – and I won the “Red Green Award” at CCNM because I am creative and can fix or make just about anything. And I can fix you too. At our clinic, we collaborate and work together as clinicians, so you are getting the benefit of three brains, not one. I know there is a solution to your current health problem, and I can help you figure that out – whether you are having difficulty sleeping, not able to conceive, notice behavioural issues in your children or suffer from low energy. Let Naturopathic Medicine do for you what it has done for my patients and free yourself from pain and suffering today!
