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Flin Flon chiropractor’s true calling found at end of long, winding road

When Dominic McKenna was a young private investigator, he was hired to prove that a compensation claimant was faking a bad back.
Dr. Dominic McKenna
“I have no intention of retiring, ever,” says Dr. Dominic McKenna, pictured adjusting a patient at his Flin Flon clinic earlier this week.

When Dominic McKenna was a young private investigator, he was hired to prove that a compensation claimant was faking a bad back.

McKenna stealthily followed the man to a bar, where instead of relying on a cane to walk, as was claimed, he jumped around on stage playing his guitar like a rock star.

Some three decades later, McKenna still witnesses people with bad backs get better – only there’s nothing phony about the process and nothing secret about his involvement.

McKenna – Dr. McKenna, that is – is Flin Flon’s lone chiropractor, having followed a long and winding road to a profession that he considers his one true calling.

“I have no intention of retiring, ever,” he says. “Work is when at the end of the day you say, ‘It was really hard.’ And if you go and you say, ‘That was a great day, I really enjoyed that, I’m glad I got to do that today,’ it’s not really work, is it?”

Conversational and good-natured, McKenna, 52, has run his Flin Flon clinic, Chiropractic on Main, since 2008, helping patients from throughout the region.

And before that? Well, that’s an interesting story.

Originally from the Toronto area, McKenna was the 10th of 12 children in an Irish Catholic family. He was named after his father, tongue-in-cheekily remarking that this was because he was the best-looking kid.

An athletic and ambitious youth, he quit high school at age 16. He spent three years working as a cement finisher and steel tier before the value of a good education struck him.

“I decided, ‘Holy crap, working with your back is hard, I better go back to school,’” McKenna says.

By now he knew he wanted to be a doctor. He just didn’t know when he would realize that dream.

Lacking a high school diploma, McKenna got into Alberta’s University of Lethbridge on the strength of an IQ test. He earned a BA in
physical geography and psychology.

During college, McKenna served his country as a military reservist. After graduating from university, he spent another two years as a full-time artillery officer.

“There’s nothing like shooting artillery,” he recalls. “I was young, I was in good shape, so why not?”

When he wasn’t working, McKenna was often at the gym. At one point in his early 20s, he was the second-strongest powerlifter in all of Alberta.

(Years later, in his early 40s, McKenna suffered a painful injury while powerlifting when his left bicep “snapped off” during a deadlift. He compares the pain to licking one’s finger and sticking it a light bulb socket.)

Once out of the military, McKenna sought to launch his own environmental investigations company in Toronto. To earn cash in the meantime, he became a private investigator in Canada’s largest city.

That’s when he tracked down the man who played the guitar so energetically despite supposedly needing a cane to walk.

Unable to snap photos in the bar where the man performed, McKenna concealed a video camera inside his briefcase to gather the evidence he needed.

On another occasion, he took an assignment from a husband who wanted to know whether his wife was having an affair. The woman was indeed unfaithful – with another woman who lived next door.

After a year and a half of sleuthing, McKenna was ready to open his environmental investigations company. The business would last eight years, drawing most of its business from the Ontario government.

Now married, McKenna then relocated to southern Alberta so his wife could be closer to family. His career again took a radical turn when he landed a job as a jail guard.

“You get really good at people being in your face,” he says of that experience. “You become unemotional about it.”

McKenna was anything but dispassionate about his future. He wondered what a man with a university degree was doing working in a jail. There had to be something better out there.

“If you bargain with life for a penny, you’ll get a penny,” says McKenna, who seems to have a stockpile of sayings to fit any situation. “If you bargain with life for a dollar, you’ll get a dollar, right? It’s whatever you reach for.”

McKenna decided to reach for his old dream of becoming a doctor. The field of chiropractic was particularly appealing, so he began investigating how he could take the two years of pre-med required to get into chiropractic college.

In Canada, two years of pre-med would mean two years of study. But in the US he had the option of finishing pre-med in seven months – if he was willing to attend classes from 7 am to 10 pm.

At this point McKenna was 35 years old. He and his wife had four children. Yet somehow, he knew he could pull this one off.

He moved himself (and eventually his family) to Dallas so he could take a seven-month pre-med program at a college. After that, he moved on to the chiropractic program at Parker University, also in Dallas.

At Parker, McKenna endured 80-hour weeks – 60 hours of class and 20 hours of part-time work – to earn his doctorate of chiropractic degree six months ahead of the usual four-year schedule.

“I’d never do anything but go to school and play with the kids,” he recalls.

By 2004, at age 40, McKenna was a doctor. He moved to Calgary and began doing locums, filling in for chiropractors who were away from their practices.

Four years into that, he met a fellow chiropractor named Kyle Kelbert, who had stopped into the office to introduce himself, as chiropractors often do with colleagues.

Kelbert was trying to sell his practice in Flin Flon. McKenna had heard of Flin Flon – it’s a hard name to forget – but knew nothing about the community.

Nonetheless, he agreed to think about purchasing the practice. After a two-week locum in Flin Flon, he was sold.

“I said, ‘Wow, nice people. I really like the people up here,’” McKenna says. “They’re very hard working and they’re really salt of the earth. And they stop and talk to you. People in Calgary, they’re just busy, busy, busy and a lot of them have lost the appreciation of life, I think.”

By this time divorced, McKenna purchased Kelbert’s clinic. He quickly developed a strong rapport with patients.

“I like people,” he says. “I get to talk to them. Most of their problems aren’t life threatening, so I’m able to help them well and I’m able to catch people who should be at a medical clinic.”

The often-busy waiting room at McKenna’s clinic illustrates not only the demand for his services, but also how far his profession has come in terms of public acceptance.

At one time, medical doctors were barred from referring patients to chiropractors. Looking back on that dark period, some blame the arrogance of a medical community resistant to the idea that traditional physicians have limitations.

McKenna’s take is that medical doctors were actually put in a difficult position by the debate.

“[It wasn’t] because chiropractors weren’t doing a good job,” he says. “It’s because doctors are put [under] this unfair umbrella that they do everything really well. You can’t do everything really well.”

From McKenna’s long list of satisfied patients, it is clear that he does what he does well. His goal is to help patients as quickly as possible. If they never again return to his clinic, all the better.

When he opened his practice in 2008, McKenna promised himself he would stay in Flin Flon for at least seven years. With that time frame up, he now knows he’s in for the long haul.

“They’ll take me out of Flin Flon feet first, I’m sure,” he says.

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