CDA Essentials 2019 • Volume 6 • Issue 3

11 Issue 3 | 2019 | CDA at W ork Problem solving Born and raised in Winnipeg, he spent his childhood summers camping and road tripping with his parents and three siblings. He talks fondly about the family cottage in Kenora, Ontario, which he helped his father build, as “my little piece of heaven on earth.” Isolated on an island at the cottage, he learned self-reliance at an early age. “If something broke, it wasn’t easy to get someone to come out and fix it, so we had to figure things out. I was never afraid to take anything apart and I could usually put it back together,” he laughs. “That’s one of the things I like about dentistry; it’s a lot like doing puzzles, the way you think about a problem and work with your hands.” Although a mind for problem solving and a “MacGyver-like” ability to fix things are useful skills in dentistry, the idea of becoming a dentist didn’t occur to Dr. Mutchmor until late in his first year of university. He remembers the moment it came to him. He was playing pinball in the university science lounge with friends when an acquaintance mentioned that he was writing the DAT (Dental Aptitude Test) that weekend. “I hadn’t heard of the DAT, but when he told me it was a test to get into dentistry, a light bulb went on. I had never even considered dentistry, but from that moment I knew that’s what I wanted to do.” Gaining experience Dr. Mutchmor graduated from the University of Manitoba College of Dentistry in 1983 and found his first job as an associate at a practice in Fort Frances, a border town in Northwestern Ontario. He describes it as a very busy practice, “where you kept your head down and worked as fast as you could because people were lined up outside. It was very much jump in and sink or swim.” He practised three years there, and met his wife Nancy, but always felt the tug back to Winnipeg. He moved back to practise in an office in the south end of Winnipeg in 1986. The owners lived in Calgary and were looking for dentists to work in their practice. Dr. Mutchmor signed up, along with two other dentists who were just starting out. “It was just the three of us, figuring things out, thrown together to run an office,” he recalls. But he remembers it as an unhappy experience. To him, the practice seemed more focused on the business rather than patients; plus, he didn’t like that he had to work on evenings and weekends. He lasted just over a year there, until he joined the Winnipeg practice of Dr. Allen Macklin, who had taught Dr. Mutchmor when he was a dental student. “Dr. Macklin gave me some space, his receptionist booked appointments for me, and he let me have any new patients to start building a practice,” he explains. It was a slow start; some days, he’d have no patients. To keep busy, he traveled to a satellite practice in Lac du Bonnet, Manitoba, two days a week. Defying convention Dr. Mutchmor was an associate for 24 years before he bought the practice, never pressing to change the arrangement. “People always asked me, ‘When are you going to become a partner with Dr. Macklin?’ But I was always quite happy to be an associate,” he says. “I really enjoyed going in and not having to worry about 1981–82: CDA Council on Student Affairs, Manitoba Representative 1983: DMD, University of Manitoba 1997–2003: BoardMember, Winnipeg Dental Society 2002: President, Winnipeg Dental Society 2004–11: BoardMember, Manitoba Dental Association (MDA) 2009–10: President, MDA 2011: Elected to CDA Board of Directors 2012: Fellow, International College of Dentists 2012–13: Chair, USC&LS Committee, CDA 2013–16: Chair, Strategic Priority Action Team–AHealthy Public, CDA 2015: Fellow, Pierre Fauchard Academy 2015–17: Chair, Dental Benefits Committee, CDA Professional Milestones