BONNYVILLE - Bonnyville’s Dr. Cecile Lavoie has been awarded the 2025 Rhapsody Physician Award from the Rural Health Professions Action Plan (RHPAP) for not only her decades of service as a physician, but for her instrumental roles in preventing the closure of Bonnyville’s Hospital and advocating for rural healthcare.
Lavoie was a locum in Bonnyville serving in a variety of roles in rural medicine including clinical practice, obstetrics, emergency medicine, anesthesia, and medical examiner. Having retired from her role at the hospital, Lavoie continues to work at the Well Woman Clinic in Bonnyville.
“It’s very rewarding working rurally. You’re living with these people, and you see the different generations – you see these children growing up. It’s very rewarding medicine over the years,” said Lavoie.
Lavoie was raised rurally outside of Edmonton and attended university in Edmonton before moving to Bonnyville with her husband who hails from St. Paul. They enjoy the rural lifestyle, and Lavoie spoke about feeling very welcomed by the community.
Lavoie said having a high functioning hospital and operating room (OR) “makes a world of difference” for the community as seniors do not have to travel for care, babies can be born locally, and people do not have to get on lengthier waiting lists elsewhere.
Lavoie spoke about the budget cuts to healthcare that happened when Ralph Klein was premier of Alberta, and how it threatened to close Bonnyville’s hospital.
“We discovered that we could stay open if we brought in visiting specialists. We were only five physicians at the time, and we used all our connections to bring in the visiting specialists, and from there our whole surgical program grew.”
Lavoie said her next goal was keeping the surgical program going, which they managed to do.
"We now have our own orthopedic surgeon and gynecologist, and we share a general surgeon with Cold Lake. We have a urogynecology, which is quite unique in a rural area, and another visiting orthopedic surgeon, so that the OR is functioning five days a week.”
Maintaining the OR also meant they are able to do cesarean sections and maintain an obstetrical program so babies could be born in Bonnyville.
“Hopefully we can continue to maintain our surgical program because there’s always threats to cut it.”
Lavoie is passionate about rural health care and wants to encourage new physicians to consider practicing in a rural area, as she said it allows you to use a broad scope of your training and allows you to work with multiple generations of families over the years.
“There is a perception that physicians that choose to work rural are not as smart as the ones that stay in the big city, and it’s actually the opposite - If you look at the young doctors we have coming in, you have to be more intelligent and well versed in multiple fields to be able to do proper rural healthcare.. It offers the opportunity to do a variety of things, so you're not doing the same thing over and over again. Every day brings something different to be done.”
Lavoie spoke about the connections you make with your patients when you work in a small town.
“You get to work with multiple generations. It’s quite rewarding to see the babies that you’ve delivered that are now working with you as healthcare professionals.
Lavoie explained that rural populations do not have the same access to healthcare that urban populations do, and she spent much of her career advocating for underserved rural healthcare.
Lavoie said the Integrated Clinical Clerkship (ICC) program in Bonnyville brings medical students in to experience rural medicine.
“It’s been about 15 years now that we’ve had medical students come and spend their third year with us. It gives them a taste of rural medicine, and the majority get hooked. And if they don’t, they go back and do their specialty program, and they’re way more aware of what is going on rurally – so it’s a very good program.
One of the medical students under Lavoie’s mentorship was the one who nominated Lavoie for the Rhapsody Physician Award.
When asked how she would like to see health care improved in Bonnyville, Lavoie spoke about the importance of palliative care, so they can not only offer dignified end-of-life care but also assist the family and loved ones in the process.
“We actually had some palliative rooms that some fundraising was done for, but unfortunately they got lost in the recent shuffle of bed closures...Palliative care is so important for all ages and we’ve have issues being able to palliate the patient and their family during their final days – we've had to section off a curtain in ER because there’s no beds available.”
Lavoie said there is a palliative care nurse in the community, but they need more to properly accommodate patients and hopes funding will be given so palliative care can be done appropriately.
“You always have to think about if it was your family member, how would you want them cared for? That's how we should be looking at it, that we want to care for them in the best way possible with the best resources possible. There is hospice and palliative care in Edmonton, so why can’t our rural patients die comfortably in a nice room [in their community].”
When asked what advice she had for new rural healthcare workers, Lavoie warned of the difficulties you can face "fighting politics and fighting funding,” but she spoke about how interesting and fulfilling the work is, making it worth it.
Lavoie reflected on her journey into Bonnyville, and how much she enjoys the community.
“When we moved here, the community helped us a lot. Laughing, I told the hospital administrator ‘Well, find my husband a job, find us a place to live, find us this, find us that,’ not thinking any of that would happen. Less than a week later, everything was all set us for us. That’s the kind of community it was back then, and it still is to some degree.”
Lavoie said Bonnyville gets wonderful feedback from the ICC medical students, and she commented on the great work RHPAP is doing for rural healthcare.
“All I can say is over the years the staff at the hospital is always excellent and they tend to go that extra mile for patients. It's quite unique that way. We have patients that travel from other communities to come for care here because they think they get better care at the Bonville Health Centre. It’s been a very nice place to work at for more than half of my life.”
