James Maskalyk

Life on the Ground Floor by James Maskalyk is a 2019 Canada Reads Nominee. It is memoir of an emergency doctor who practices both at a large hospital in Toronto , as well as in a hospital in Addis Ababa. It was interesting to get an emergency doctors perspective of working in the ER, and comparing a Toronto Hospital to a very basic hospital in Ethiopia. The memoir seemed very impersonal . I felt it really lacked in detail about Dr Maskalyk, as well as the patients he treated. It was a dry, distant read, and I certainly was not moved by it, which is the theme of Canada Reads for 2019. Perhaps an emergency doctor has to remain quite detached from his patients and that is the cause of the problem I found with this memoir. I can't see it progressing to the Canada Reads short list. I did watch Dr Maskalyk on you tube to get an idea of what he is like in person and he seemed more personable when speaking to a group of people.

3 stars.… (more)

This is the story of the author’s work as an ER doctor in Toronto and as part of the Medecins sans frontieres in Somalia and Ethiopia. It is very much a tale of delivering medicine in the first world and in the developing world. He describes in stark contrasts the equipment and staff available to assist him with trauma cases in the two vastly different environments. He writes proudly of educating the next generation of native born doctors who will hopefully stay to care for their fellow citizens.
Each chapter is a letter of the alphabet starting with A for Airway and ending with Z for zen end.
There is not a lot of personal detail here except for the visits with his elderly Ukrainian grandfather who lives by himself in a rural community.… (more)