This "Doc Is Not In Anymore" After 54 Years

Jeff Green | Jul 31, 2025

When Peter Bell retired at the end of June, he was keenly aware of the historical context of his 54 year stint as a Family Doctor in Sharbot Lake, and his role in the development of the Sharbot Lake Family Health Team, where he served as the lead physician for the last 19 years of his career.
His interest in local history goes all the way back to his time as a medical student in London, Ont, in the 1960's, and played a role in his choosing Sharbot Lake as a place to live. He has had a lifelong interest in antiques, with a focus on Eastern Ontario artifacts from the 18th and 19th Centuries.

He was married to his first wife Margaret when he started to come to this region,

“I was doing a residency in London, and we started to travel to Quebec, antiquing, and then we got more interested in Ontario, and so we explored all kinds of places. We went to all the towns that were named Mills, like Bedford Mills,” he said, in an interview from his office that took place a couple of weeks after this official retirement.

As well as being into antiques, thjey were looking for a property where they could settle, and heard about an antique dealer named Blake Mckendry, who was “a guy who lives in the woods out there.” The property in the woods also had over a kilometre of shoreline on Sharbot Lake. They went to visit Bake and his wife Ruth on the property, and became friends.
Blake wanted to buy a Stone House on Cameron Road, near Perth, and so was interested in selling. After some back and forth, Peter and Margaret bought the property on and moved in to the house, where Peter still lives today, in December of 1970.
It was only then that he began to look to set up a medical practice in the local area. It was not a certainty that he would set up in Sharbot Lake.
"I still finishing up my residency and did my last six months in Kingston, so I could get to know the Kingston hospitals which I thought would be useful if I set up a practice in the area. I was thinking Perth or somewhere else close by, or in Sharbot Lake," he said.
He did call Bill Harvey, who was the Reeve of Oso Township at the time, about setting up in Sharbot Lake, with help from the township, and Havey did not return his call.
“I later found out that he was talking to another physician.”

Peter called Harvey again a few weeks later, and this time the call was returned.
“I asked him if he would consider having the township put up a medical building, and I would commit to serving as a doctor in the community for a long time.”
While Harvey was interested, there was a complication.

Oso township had recently bought a few properties on Sharbot Lake, and torn them down to create the Sharbot Lake beach property. The whole project had cost $18,000, as far as Peter can recollect, and $9,000 had come from the Province in the way of a grant. Still, in a township with a $600 recreation budget, “9,000 was a lot of ratepayer money to spend on a beach.

“I mean, the taxpayers were really pretty mad at him at that time, and council was afraid to promote a new project that wasn't a road or a bridge," said Peter.

As he recalls, he was told to go see Nina Simonett, the wife of John Simonett, who owned a car dealership and was the local MP and a cabinet minister in the Ontario government at the time.
“It turned out that Nina was the real power in the community. A good word from her carried a lot of weight, I must have done ok in the meeting because Bob Harvey called me up and said the township would pay for a building for a clinic.”

That building has since been renovated a few times, most recently in 2005, and is still owned by the local township, which is now Central Frontenac.
With a building on the horizon, but still up to 2 years away, Dr. Peter Bell began looking around for a place to rent in Sharbot Lake for a temporary clinic. There was nothing suitable available, so he rented two ten by ten trailers, which together gave him enough space for two examining rooms, and a washroom for taking samples.

“The living room was the waiting room, and the kitchen was the office,” he recalls.

The trailers were plopped down in the parking lot of what is now the Sharbot Lake Country Inn and Crossing Pub.
“We had a heater that did not work all the time, and we got water from the hotel. It was a pretty basic set up, but it served well enough for 18 months or maybe two years before the clinic was ready.”
The plan was to open the clinic ion July 2nd, of 1971, but fate intervened, giving Peter Bell one of his favourite stories.

“We were setting up the clinic on June 30, getting ready to open after Canada Day, when a man road up in a bicycle, and said, “Is the Doc in?”.
The first patient seen by Doctor Bell in Sharbot Lake was that man, and 54 years later, he saw his last patient in Sharbot Lake.
The last patient that Peter Bell saw on June 30, 2025 at a little after 4pm, was local poet and songwriter Dave Dawson, 92, a long time patient of Dr. Bell. While the appointment started with a short conversation about Dave's medical care, which is now being handled by Dr. Masouleh, it quickly veered to talk about the history of the region and Dave's artistic pursuits.

It was a fitting end for Peter Bell's career, because one of his strengths as a clinician and a leader in family medicine has been his interest in hearing what his patients have to say, and that interest is not confined to their medical condition or history, but their story as well.
And Dave Dawson knows how to tell a story. As does Peter Bell. 

(Part two of this article will look at Dr. Bell's role in the development of medical services in Sharbot Lake over his long career, and his public send off on June 26th).