A St. Albert dentist is hanging up his drill this month as he retires after almost 60 years in the business.
Hillside Dental Clinic co-founder Dr. Leonard Nobert is retiring at the end of this month after 57 years as a dentist, all of which he spent in St. Albert.
“I’m 80 years old,” he said, and he figured it was time to call it a day.
Nobert said he grew up on a farm near Mearns in Sturgeon County as the second of six children. Back then, Mearns had a store, a church, a train station and two grain elevators, with area youths attending the St. Charles School. The teachers were members of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, and many of its students rode to class on horseback. (He personally took the bus, which was a converted two-tonne truck with a cab made of plywood.)
Nobert said he never went to a dentist while growing up, but still had good teeth, likely a result of a diet light on sugar and the natural fluoride in his well water. He decided to become a dentist after high school when he read a story in the Western Producer on how they were in high demand out west.
“My first year’s tuition was $825,” he recalled — a bill that swallowed up all but $1 of his father’s bank balance. He worked on farms and in the oil patch to pay for the rest of his education.
Dentistry was a bit different back then, Nobert said. There were maybe two women at the University of Alberta’s dental school (which was the only such school in western Canada), and little in the way of protecting clothing — not even rubber gloves. Specialties such as dental hygienists and denturists also did not exist.
Nobert said he set up shop in the Grandin Mall in the late 1960s. The mall had a Safeway back then, and the Bank of Montreal was still in operation across the street from the Bruin Inn. When the mall’s owners cranked up their rent in 1973, Nobert said he and fellow dentists Marcel Venne and Peter Hapchyn moved out and built the Hillside Dental building at the end of St. Michael Street.
Nobert guessed that he installed some 60,000 fillings during his career (assuming five per weekday and two weeks of holiday a year) and pulled about as many teeth. Besides better drills and computer imaging, the biggest technological change he’s seen in his career was the arrival of fluoridated drinking water, which came to St. Albert in 1962.
“Fluoridated water has made a huge difference,” he said, estimating that it cut the number of cavities in youth in half.
In addition to scraping plaque and pulling teeth, Nobert said he also once had to give CPR to a man in the waiting room who was having a heart attack.
“He was in his 60s, but he lived another 30 years,” he recalled.
Nobert said he had received a number of cards from long-time patients congratulating him on his retirement. He was unsure of what he would do next, besides cleaning up his office and keeping up the family farm with his wife Ewa. His sons André and Rocque (both experienced dentists themselves) will keep Hillside Dental running.
Nobert said the secret to a long, happy career was to show up for work every day and do your best while treating others how you wished to be treated.
As for dental care, his advice was simple: “Keep brushing!”
