In the annals of northern Manitoba medicine, there has never been anyone like Dr. Peter Kucparic.
Brainy, colourful, opinionated, analytical, with an elephant-like memory and encyclopedic knowledge of the human body, he is a giant of regional medicine.
“I don’t know if there will ever be another Peter Kucparic,” says Shonnah Hanson, one of his many loyal patients.
Such accolades are pouring in now that Dr. Kucparic, 71, has been forced to end his practice as he goes through a long-term terminal illness.
Though Dr. Kucparic did not wish to be interviewed, he gave The Reminder permission to explore his long and eventful life and career.
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On the fertile plains of northern Serbia, a small, landlocked country in the poor part of Europe, you’ll find Zrenjanin.
With a population of 76,500, Zrenjanin is one of Serbia’s largest cities. It’s a place that punches above its weight in terms of producing creative and intellectual talent.
It was in Zrenjanin, then known as Petrovgrad, that Peter Kucparic was born not quite halfway through the Second World War on May 12, 1942.
Years later, Kucparic would recall how the Americans spent the last two years of the war conducting air raids on oil fields in nearby Romania, then held by the Germans.
With U.S. planes often unable to hit their targets due to strong German defenses, pilots were forced to return to their base in Italy.
Short on fuel, they had to drop their unused bombs along the way. By the misfortune of geography, Petrovgrad bore the brunt of many of those explosive weapons.
During the war, young Peter’s father was the executive director of a large tobacco factory. Before raids, the little boy would be taken to a hangar, stacked to the ceiling with bales of fermenting tobacco, for safe keeping.
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As Kucparic matured into a young man, his thirst for knowledge and fascination with that ultimate machine, the human body, guided his career aspirations.
He charted a course toward medicine, enrolling in the University of Belgrade School of Medicine in the Serbian capital.
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After graduating in 1969, Kucparic landed in Winnipeg in 1970 to complete his post-graduate education at Grace Hospital and the Health Sciences Centre.
He headed north to Norway House in 1972, practising at a 35-bed hospital. Every second day he would fly out to any one of 10 other northern reserves, such as Berens River, Wasagamack and Cross Lake.
Dr. Kucparic’s Norway House stint lasted five months, but he wasn’t ready to leave northern Manitoba just yet. An opportunity in a place called Flin Flon had captured his imagination.
Flin Flon was a lot bigger back then, in 1973, but newcomers still received plenty of notice. Such was the case for the handsome, if not mysterious, 30-something physician with the hard-to-pronounce last name.
Affectionately known as “Koochie,” Dr. Kucparic thrived on long hours as he amassed a patient load as large as it was faithful.
If a new patient visited, skeptical of what the relatively young physician with the strange accent could do for them, he would quite often win them over.
In 1980, Dr. Kucparic opened his own practice, becoming the first physician in Flin Flon to operate independently of the establishment.
By now he was married and starting a family. As his increasingly grateful patients observed, he appeared to be in Flin Flon for the long haul.
As a Kucparic patient of two decades, Dennis Ballard, the former Flin Flon mayor, is certainly thankful the physician stuck around.
“He’s so brilliant, he’s so intelligent,” says Ballard. “I once told him that I found him to be the best diagnostician I had ever seen.
“He has a sense of the human body and a way of taking in all aspects of where you are at – your body language, your breathing, how you stood and the things you said – and not just the other physical symptoms. His brain seems to be like a computer, able to put that together and come up with the right diagnosis.”
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If you ever wanted to see Flin Flon’s diversity on full display, all you had to do was walk into Dr. Kucparic’s waiting room.
It seemed like no matter when you went, you’d see those brown-cushioned chairs full of toddlers, seniors, white people, aboriginal people, friends, strangers, the rich, the poor, the prominent, the forgotten, the dying, and the seemingly healthy.
You would take your seat and thumb through a year-old Maclean’s, hoping that by some miracle your name was actually higher on the waiting list than all of these other people.
Just as the article about Stephen Harper’s political shrewdness lost your attention, you’d hear Dr. Kucparic’s soundproof door swing open.
Out would walk a patient, almost always in better spirits than when he had entered, Koochie’s hand on his shoulder.
Dr. Kucparic would then conclude whatever anecdote he had begun in the office, producing a shared chuckle as GP and patient parted ways.
A spring in his step, Koochie would then saunter over to his assistant’s desk and pluck the top file off a pile of medical records.
“Jimmy, let’s go, buddy,” he’d say, summoning his next patient through his thick but unobstructive Serbian intonation.
Then Koochie would again disappear into his office with the sick person whose lucky number had just been called. The opening niceties of their conversation were briefly audible until that big door gently closed.
Shonnah Hanson, a patient of 30-plus years, never knew what to expect when she was behind that door.
“When you went into Peter’s office, you were always in for an adventure,” says Hanson, recalling her many interesting, sometimes personal, conversations with him.
“It was more a friendship, in many ways.
“I don’t know if you’ll ever find another scenario like that in a doctor-patient relationship.”
Hanson doesn’t know Dr. Kucparic’s thoughts on the “one issue per patient visit” policy being gradually implemented by time-strapped physicians.
But it was certainly never a reality at his practice.
“You could spend 45 minutes in the office with him and p-ss everybody else (who was waiting) off,” says Hanson. “There’s no way it was ever one issue.”
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No one doctor commands the respect of every patient. As large as he looms in Flin Flon and area, Dr. Kucparic is no exception.
“He’s a little weird,” a friend once told me, careful to frame her words as an observation, not an insult.
As a Kucparic patient for (I believe) my entire life, I wasn’t the least bit offended. Koochie is unorthodox, for sure, and I can see how everyone might not “get” him.
“If you say, what about him as a person, what strikes me? He is different,” says Ballard. “He actually, to me, seems to take great pride in being different from the normal doctor. He is far more down-to-earth. He’d tell you a dirty joke or whatever, and make you laugh. He never held himself above (anybody else) like a lot of doctors or people in those kinds of professions often do.”
Hanson believes there is much more to Dr. Kucparic than most people, including herself, will ever know.
“He seems very tough on the outside, but I think there is another side to Peter,” Hanson says. “I don’t know if a lot of people knew that side. I think there’s a soft side to Peter. You saw it coming out in his last letter in the paper. It’s enough to make you bawl.”
That letter, published in The Reminder on Nov. 15, was Dr. Kucparic’s way of going public with his terminal diagnosis.
“Farewell, my friends,” he signed the letter, which challenged readers to locate a linden tree whose fragrance will pass by his future final resting place.
By the time of his letter, Dr. Kucparic had been absent from his practice for months. Patients who had hoped for his return were distraught. And yes, many wept as they read his words.
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Over the last 40 years, Dr. Peter Kucparic has served many thousands of patients, delivered more than 3,000 babies, and saved or extended untold lives.
He has been chief of staff of the Flin Flon General Hospital, president of the local medical staff, and a member of the council of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba.
Since he worked under the radar, many are surprised to learn that Dr. Kucparic is the longest-serving physician Flin Flon has ever had.
As I said earlier, Dr. Kucparic has been my physician for as long as I can remember. In more recent times, he has also become a dear friend.
Throughout multiple visits to his home, he has imparted to me the wisdom that comes from living on this earth for 71 years.
The specifics shall remain between the two of us, but suffice it to say that I am a better person for having known him.
As I drove to work Monday morning, past Dr. Kucparic’s now-former Main Street office, it hit me just how big of a blow his untimely retirement is to our community.
I felt concern for all of those patients and sadness over the end of an era.
But most of all, I just wished that Koochie could still be in his office, smiling and waving over patients to join him behind that soundproof door.
Dr. Peter Kucparic in his office in 2007.
FILE PHOTO
