Wally puts on a mask in his dental office to get ready for the day. The night before, the community had a power outage so he sits with the lights off. Though Mah can’t help patients without electricity, he prepares for a situation where the power comes back.
Dentist Wally Mah’s commute on Monday mornings begins at 7 am. He takes a taxi from his Exchange District condo to the Winnipeg airport where he boards a small plane to the northern First Nation of Pukatawagan. The community is about 820 km northwest of Winnipeg and is home to approximately 2,000 residents. It is only accessible by train or plane for most of the year but also winter road in the winter. I spent a week in Pukatawagan documenting Mah’s life serving the community for the Winnipeg Free Press.
Pukatawagan is about 820 km northwest of Winnipeg and is home to approximately 2,000 residents. It is only accessible by train or plane for most of the year, but also by winter road in the winter months.
Wally feels Ruby’s face for pain along her jaw after some X-rays. Ruby came in complaining about a toothache.
After locating the source of the pain in Ruby’s mouth, Wally tries a root canal at first but discovers the tooth must be pulled because it is fractured. “I’m sorry, Ruby,” he says.
Ruby holds her face after an intense round of tooth extraction.
The evening Pukatawagan loses power, Wally eats dinner in the dark in his room while replying to emails. The nursing station, which Wally’s room is in has an emergency generator to treat patients by the power doesn’t reach his room. In the summer, wild fires burnt down the power lines to Pukatawagan, so the community has been running off of generators ever since.
The nursing station where Wally works and where he lives.
After he finishes work for the week on Fridays, Wally gets on the 5 pm plane to The Pas, a town 520 km northwest of Winnipeg as there are no direct flights from Pukatawagan to Winnipeg. In The Pas, he takes a car transfer from the smaller airport where he landed to the larger one which has a direct flight back to Winnipeg.
In The Pas, Wally takes a long walk near the airport every week to decompress from work before getting on his flight to Winnipeg.