Last week, Bowen Islanders took the rare opportunity to visit a local physician on a Saturday, when Dr. Keith Symon offered his services at the office of Dr. Susanne Schloegl. Dr. Symon is new to Bowen Island and plans to work at Dr. Schloegl’s clinic two Saturday’s per month.
Trained in South Africa, Symon has been practicing as a physician in Canada for 20 years now. He says he is familiar practicing medicine in a small town, having worked in Port Alice on Vancouver Island for twelve years.
Symon is part of a medical practice in Burnaby where he works four to five days per week. He says that he moved to Bowen so that his daughter could attend IPS, and he considers his time here a “trial period.”
“If things work out and my daughter is happy here, I could wind things down in Burnaby and start spending more time on Bowen,” he says, adding that as a physician, having more services to offer (such as emergency services and a clinic) is helpful. However, Symon says it is too early for him to say what would make Bowen an attractive place for him to work on a more full-time basis.
