It turned out to be perfect timing in 1952 for Dr. LaVerne Kindree when he opened the first hospital in Squamish.
Maybe too perfect.
The opening of the hospital coincided with a community-wide polio outbreak in Squamish and Kindree jumped right into the thick of things to help battle the devastating disease.
"One of the first jobs I did here was to get a hospital," he recalled in an interview after he received the Order of Canada in 2009. "There was no hospital when I came, but we opened one in 1952. It had 24 beds and I was the only doctor to look after it. It opened just in time for the polio epidemic."
The epidemic gave Kindree the unique opportunity to observe and record how an isolated community was affected by an infectious disease.
"During the epidemic, I'd say 90 per cent of the community were infected with the virus, but only a few developed the disease and we had several pulmonary cases that had to be flown to Vancouver for iron lung treatment," he said. "It was fortunate that most patients had a non-paralytic infection of the polio virus."
It's in the spirit of the late Kindree that the Squamish Rotary Club is getting behind the annual Purple Day to End Polio next Thursday (Oct. 24). Kindree was a founding member of the club and over the years it has raised more than $24,000 for PolioPlus to help fight the disease worldwide.
The disease is still active in Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan but fewer than 250 total cases were reported in 2012. The numbers are a huge decrease from even as recently as the 1980s.
The Squamish Rotary Club is asking all Squamish residents to wear purple on Oct. 24 to support the day and are raising money to support the cause. The link to donate online can be found at www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?charityID=s49330.
For more information on the event, visit www.squamishrotary.com or visit the group's Facebook page Rotary Club of Squamish.
