The Vancouver Clinic

The story of movement is the story of life itself. The smallest movements serve as the markers by which we measure growth, development and change. First steps. First smile. The moment a child’s mouth curls into first words. We record them, chart them, share movements and measures with doctors, family and friends. Life continues to proceed this way. We track a young dancer’s movements at her first recital. We count the miles between us and loved ones when they move away. When an old friend suffers a severe injury, we return once again to logging the smallest of movements—the bend of a finger, the twitch of a toe—as we follow his recovery. When people and minds come together, things move in new directions. In the mid 1930s, two friends, both of whom were doctors, met to share a meal and an idea. Both men were doing well, and they’d traded enough referrals back and forth over time that they joked about going into practice together. “Move things along,” one said to the other, and both men nodded their heads. The casual idea stuck with both of them. What would happen, they wondered, if they really did “move things along”? They decided to follow the idea, and soon began sharing an office downtown. In less than three years, two more doctors joined them, and by 1940 they had the makings of a community medical clinic, one of the area’s first. When it came to naming their group practice, they wanted it to reflect the population they served, many of whom were the children and grandchildren of the area’s timber industry, fishermen, carpenters and millworkers. After a few tries, they settled on something they knew would move well into the future. They called it The Vancouver Clinic.