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46
|
2017
|
Issue 2
I
ssues and
P
eople
Husband. Father. Holocaust survivor. Dentist.
Dr. Charles G. Baer of Montreal passed away on
November 26, 2016, at the age of 94.
One of Dr. Baer’s patients remarked that she was
reluctant to call him about a toothache: “He felt so
badly for me,” she said. Long before the concept of
holistic care was popular, Dr. Baer practised that way.
It was just as important to understand the context
of patients’ lives as to provide skilled dental care.
Healthcare was a family tradition when Charles was
born to Arthur (an ophthalmologist) and Emily, in Essen,
Germany.
In 1938, he and his father were deported to the Dachau
concentration camp, but freedom was available to
those with the resources. Charles’s grandmother put
up the funds so he could escape Germany through the
Kindertransport project. Charles was one
of 10,000 unaccompanied children sent to
Britain in an effort supported by the Central
British Fund for German Jewry. But it was
to be a short stay. Faced with a threatened
German invasion, Britain sent “enemy aliens”
to the colonies. Arriving safely in Canada
in 1940, Charles was sent to an internment
camp in New Brunswick, and then to Île
aux Noix (Quebec). Henry Oelberg, who
befriended him there, recalled that “Charles
was constantly studying. He was already
planning to become a dentist.”
Upon graduation in 1949, he accepted a
position in the small town of Baie-Comeau
(Quebec). This was an opportunity, he was
told, to “learn a lot because you’ll have to
do everything.” The words were prophetic.
Called to see a lumberjack whose horse
had kicked him in the face, Charles single-
handedly wired the broken jaw. Decades
later, he said, “In the ER [in Montreal], there were four
dentists to do a procedure like that.” Three months after
arriving, he married Eva Marcuse, whom he had met in
1948. They worked side by side, often putting in 13-hour
days.
Preventive and restorative dentistry was new to a
population for whom extractions were the norm.
Charles was all for saving teeth. Dentures, not available
locally, had to be ordered from Quebec City. One
order went through the ice on the river, along with the
snowmobile! Undeterred, Charles remade the dentures
himself, setting them to cure in the couple’s room
in the Manoir Baie-Comeau. In 1952, Charles and Eva
moved to Montreal, where he practised for almost six
decades. He served as president of the Mount Royal
Dental Society and as an examiner for the Order of
Dentists of Quebec. He was honoured with a fellowship
and emeritus status in the Académie dentaire du
Québec.
What mattered most, however, were the patients. They,
in turn, revered him. One recalls Charles remaining at
the hospital with her overnight following an accident.
“He would have done that for anyone,” she said.
Charles was most proud of his children, Philip, Carolyn
and Daniel. He doted on his six grandchildren as well,
comforted in the knowledge that his family, nearly
wiped out in the Holocaust, had been preserved and
was flourishing with each new generation.
Charles, survived by Eva, died peacefully in Montreal.
a
Submitted by Janet Chandler Allingham, a patient of Dr. Baer for over 50 years. Originally
published in the
Globe & Mail
“Lives Lived” section, February 1, 2017.
Dr. Charles Baer
and his wife, Eva.
One Story at a Time
Honouring Our Profession
Dr. Charles G. Baer:
Kindness and Resiliency
Highlighting our dental leaders, milestones and history — one story
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