FEATURE PROFILE
RETIRE AT 72? WHY? BC’S HEALTH OFFICER PRESCRIBES HIMSELF MORE WORK, MORE BALANCE TEXT BY BRIAN KIERAN PHOTOS BY ARNOLD LIM
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ET’S CALL IT A NEW YEAR’S EPIPHANY; or, at the very least a moment of clarity. Dr. Perry Kendall says it started at a New Year’s Eve dinner party when guests asked him what he planned to do with himself in retirement. Last fall, the 71-year old BC Provincial Health Officer announced his pending departure April 1. For more than 15 years, Victoria medical doctor Kendall has been a tour de force in BC’s health care community … stretching the mandate of his office, dipping into his “hippie” roots to redefine the public health paradigm and preaching, “what makes us healthy is not the health care system.” When I first interviewed the good doctor late last year, he said it was time for “new blood.” He will be 72 this spring. But it turns out the old blood still has some new blood in it. “On New Year’s Eve people were asking me: ‘Why are you leaving when you like what you do?’ It was a good question. Then I remembered your question to me in December when you asked: ‘What does turning 72 have to do with it?’ I started thinking what does that have to do with it?” When he was planning his premature retirement, Victoria-based Kendall said he wanted to spend more time with his wife, Rena Kendall-Craden, the director of communications at Vancouver City Hall. He wanted to “up” his potential as an amateur chef with the help of his daughter Sahara Tamarin and her partner Brad Holmes who own Ulla Restaurant in Victoria’s Chinatown. He also 40