NOW LUNENBURG COUNTY_MAGAZINE_56PGS_JUNE2018

DR. PETER WEST
nova scotia
CONQUERALL MILLS, LUNENBURG COUNTY
Submitted photo
healthy living
BY Margaret hoegg
HOW ONE SOUTH SHORE DOCTOR
IS GROWING A PREVENTATIVE
HEALTHCARE MODEL
“Live a little more slowly, produce healthy food, and produce
healthy humans.” These are words to live by for Dr. Peter West.
Five years ago, Dr. West was working overtime at the Saint
John Hospital in New Brunswick, dividing his time between the
intensive care and medical teaching units. It was intense, and he
periodically suffered burnout.
Things changed suddenly for his family when their farmer left
the area. Secure access to healthy, fresh food had become even
more important with two young children to consider.
“We had been really interested in food before we came
down,” said Dr. West. “I had worked in the obesity clinic in
Saint John and so I had an interest in food that would make
people healthy.”
Then a friend sent them a link to the perfect house on a fertile
drumlin in Lunenburg County. “It’s close to the ocean, close to
Halifax, and then we discovered ... how amazing this part of
Nova Scotia is,” said Dr. West. “So yeah, we just totally lucked
into it really.”
He easily got a job at the hospital in Bridgewater - just 15 km
from their new home.
“The work environment here is lovely,” he said. “Once you get
out of the city and into communities....all of a sudden if there’s
not that power disparity, there is a more collegial relationship.”
He now works part time as an ER Doctor and homesteads with
his wife and three children. They grow vegetables and fruit, raise
livestock, preserve what they can, and buy the rest from the
many local farms and food producers along the South Shore.
“We had a loose idea of, ‘we want to start growing our own food
and work a little bit less,’ but it sort of progressed,” said Dr. West.
He sees his work as a Doctor and on his homestead as
connected, just at opposite ends of the spectrum. “What I’m
trying to do here is to grow healthy children,” he said. “When
children grow up in this type of environment, eating healthy
food, they will be healthy.”
In his work, he spends much of his time treating preventable
illnesses - obesity, diabetes, and a multitude of other conditions.
He sees preventative health care as the key to a better
healthcare system.
“SO YEAH, WE JUST TOTALLY LUCKED INTO IT REALLY.”
Dr. Peter West
As a health care professional and parent, he leads by example.
He hopes that by demonstrating the benefits of biking or
walking to work, growing your own food, and finding life
work balance, he can make a positive impact. He is encouraged
by the growing community of like-minded people in
Lunenburg County.
“There seems to be this migration of young families here,”
said Dr. West. “And the reason that they’re here is the same
reason we’re here. They’re interested in getting out of cities
and growing food and living healthily and being part of the
communities that humans are really kind of supposed to
grow up in.”
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