NEW LIFE:AT THE END of a winding road in Roscommon, where there are more potholes than people, close to the quietness of Cootehall and the Boyle River, retired obstetrician and gynaecologist Patrick Taylor, after a career mostly in the Canadian medical system, has started a new life closer to home, continuing to write his hugely popular Irish Country Doctornovels, writes PAUL O'DOHERTY
Practically unknown in Ireland, until recently life has been much busier for Taylor, equally at ease as a doctor, researcher, lecturer, professor, administrator and now best-selling author.
Originally from Bangor in Northern Ireland, he attended Queen’s University during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and graduated with no definite career plan.
“I flittered around for a while deciding what I wanted to do, first teaching anatomy, thinking at the time I wanted to be a surgeon or a GP. I was even offered a very good GP’s job in Harrogate,” he says.
“They said I was ‘the man for the job, but . . . ’ Very powerful three letters, those three letters, and the ‘but’ was that I had no experience of midwifery. So, I did the diploma of the Royal College of Gynaecology qualifying me as a GP midwife, falling in love with obstetrics and staying with it.
“I was posted like the army to Scotland and all around Northern Ireland. Then, in 1970 when Derry was bonfire night every night, I was told I was now a qualified junior and being sent to Altnagelvin in Derry. To which I responded that I was ‘going further west, to Canada’ and so I left.”
And, other than two years in England in the late 1980s where he ran the Bourn Hall Clinic (famous as one of the first IVF clinics), Taylor worked for nearly 40 years forging a career in academic medicine, reproductive endocrinology and human infertility at the universities of Calgary, Manitoba and British Columbia, and as chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at St Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver.
During his time in Canada, having worked in an area he describes as being “sexy at one time”, and never having been a great lover of private practice, Taylor also wrote six textbooks before getting bored with scientific writing.
Unearthing an old short story he’d written in 1969 about The Troubles, he showed it to his novelist friend Jack Whyte who told him, “I think you have something here. Why don’t you write a few more and see if you can get them published.”
Taylor took Whyte's advice and started to write and through contacts he'd made while also editing the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada, his first collection of short stories, Only Wounded: Ulster Stories,was published in 1997.
Two novels followed, a thriller Pray for Us Sinners(optioned as a movie) and a sequel Now and in the Hour of Our Death.In 2004, The Apprenticeship of Doctor Lavertywas published and shortlisted for a British Columbia fiction award, but didn't win.
However, it was acquisitioned by Tor-Forge Books, republished as An Irish Country Doctor, achieving New York Times'bestseller status in both hardback in 2007 (selling 20,000 copies) and trade paper in 2008 (selling 145,000). It has also being translated into Dutch, German, and Spanish.
Sequels include An Irish Country Village, which sold 21,000 copies in hardback, and Irish Country Christmaswhich sold 50,000 in hardback.
Not that he has any airs and graces about his novels. “Basically, I’m a hack who learned his trade writing technical textbooks,” he says modestly.
During this time, Taylor also wrote a humorous column for a medical journal.
Taylor has his own view on the hype surrounding the comparisons between Irish and Canadian health systems. Is the Canadian medical system as good as some make out?
“Yes and no,” he replies. “There is nothing perfect, particularly, in modern medicine as it’s so bloody expensive. Nobody is deprived of healthcare in Canada and there is no ‘one law for the rich and one for the poor’. It’s ingrained. So much so that there are three characteristics that define a Canadian – they are not American, they are very good at ice hockey and they have universal healthcare. Taking away universal healthcare is like taking away part of their psyche.”
However, Taylor is also quick to emphasise that despite making great efforts, the Canadian waiting lists are “hellish”.
Humour and anecdotes play a large part in his life, and his rough loud laugh is infectious. “When I lectured on osteoporosis and I told my audience that 1941 [the year I was born] was a very interesting year – Dr Albright described osteoporosis, the Japanese bombed Pearl harbour, and Mrs Taylor had a miserable 24 hours.”
He also gets a great laugh that the Canadian Medical Association Journalonce printed his laundry list. Then, there is the time Calgary Zoo asked him for his opinion when a guerrilla called Caroline and her partner Tuffy – 274kg of claws, teeth and silverback – weren't doing what was expected of them.
“Apparently, they put the young male in with old Caroline and naturally he tried to do what he was meant to do. Unfortunately, she beat the s**t out of him and he wouldn’t go near a female guerrilla for about 10 years after. I wrote two papers on it and went on to write an article called ‘Guerrillas I Have Missed’.”
Other than that he enjoys sailing big yachts, building model boats, has just finished a series of children’s stories, and enthusiastically answers mail from his fans.
Family-wise, Taylor’s two children live in Canada, while he now lives with his partner Dorothy. The couple have known each other since they met in their youth when they used to say goodnight to each other across Bangor Bay by flashing their respective bedroom lights.
Now back in Ireland, he is enjoying his new surrounding for more than one reason. “It’s great getting back in touch with my roots, the water is very attractive to me and so is Ireland because it’s what I write about. I can also rent here for half of what it would cost me in the North. And the tax breaks are terrific. As we say in the church of writers, ‘The father, son and Charlie Haughey’.”
- An Irish Country Villageis published in hardback by Brandon Books €19.99