Doctor Day made A Difference

Jeff Green | Jan 07, 2010

Gordon & Louise Day at the Verona Tree Lighting Ceremony in November.

It's been 10 years since Dr. Harrison Gordon Day retired from the Verona Medical Centre, but people still talk about how Doctor Day brought medical services to the Verona area.

Doctor Day died on December 27, at the age of 81, and his funeral took place on Saturday morning, January 2 at the Verona Lions Hall.

During his remarks at the funeral, Dr. Day's son David recalled that a couple of days before his death at KGH his father told him to let everyone know that when he came to Verona in 1963 to set up his practice, he had done so in order to serve the community and that intention was what kept him going through his entire career. “Dad did not like OHIP very much. He preferred the days when he got paid directly by his patients, either with money or in kind, with produce or whatever people had,” David Day said.

“Sometimes we got apple pies, and sometimes we never got paid,” recalled Louise Day in an interview a few days after the funeral, “but what could people do? They had to eat.”

Louise met Gordon Day early in 1962 in Kingston. She had come to Kingston with three other friends who were also nurses, and they were all planning to go out west.

“That never happened for me,” she recalls. Four months after they met, Gordon and Louise were married, and they moved briefly to Peterborough, where there was a position for a doctor in a large practice. “We saw a notice that a group in Verona had built a clinic and were looking for a doctor, and Gordon thought he would be of more use there, so we took it on,” said Louise.

Took it on they did. For years Dr. and Nurse Day worked in the clinic downstairs while the children played upstairs under the watchful eye of Helen Cronk.

“The sound of Gordon’s shoe on the bottom step was enough to scare the children into being quiet,” Louise remembers.

Mornings were devoted to house calls, and the clinic was open in the afternoons and evenings, as well as Saturday mornings. Dr. Day also served as the coroner for Frontenac County, and set up a dispensary in his office because he knew many of his patients couldn’t or wouldn't make it into town to pick up the medicines he prescribed for them.

“We had a lot to learn about a rural practice at first, because both of us were from cities,” Louise said. “Many of our patients did not have running water at the time. They never went to Kingston; some had never taken their clothes off for a doctor before, so we had to learn what kinds of treatments would be useful for them.”

In going over his dad's papers, David Day found a handwritten note from a patient, which he thought summed up Dr. Day's relationship with his patients. He read it at the funeral. “Got a headache doc. I feel bad and I've got a dry cough. Get me something to fix me up quick, eh. Send some more in case my kids get it. John.”

“He just loved how direct people were in the country,” Louise said, “but he made sure to keep up his training and keep up to date with new diagnostic techniques and treatments. He did not want to be known as a backwards country doctor, and he made sure that never happened.”

In 1968, Dr. Day decided it was his last chance at a career as a specialist, and he left Verona to take on a residency as a radiologist in Kingston. Six weeks later he was back. “He missed it. He missed his role in Verona, he missed his practice,” Louise Day said.

For the next 31 years Dr. Day continued making house calls, providing cordial, accurate and thorough service to his patients. He was ready to retire by the mid-1990s, but waited until a replacement could be found. He worked for a year with Doctor Laurel Dempsey before selling the practice to her in 1999.

“He liked to fish and more so to hunt at the cottage we built near Sharbot Lake,” said Louise “but really being a doctor was what he loved.”

Gordon and Louise Day have three children, David, John and Susan, and four grandchildren as well.

The Days have been mainstays of the Verona community, being active in the Lions Club and the Verona Community Association.

Some people arrive in a community and change it immediately, so that people wonder how they got along before they arrived.

Doctor Harrison Gordon Day was one of those people.