By Barry Conway

Ottawa — There’s an old story told in Eganville of an illiterate peasant who left the tired, ancient sod of Ireland. After gathering what remained of his sad life during the Great Hunger of the 1840s, he waved goodbye to County Limerick once and for all time and headed out to Canada.

            His name was Paddy Maloney and before long he was tilling fresh virgin soil in Wilberforce Township near Eganville, where he had settled on his own 200-acre farm — something he could never have dreamed of back in Ireland. He also married the love of his life, 16-year-old Mary O’Shaughnessy, who had come out separately from Kilrush, just across the River Shannon from County Clare.

            The young couple soon had a gaggle of literate children, one of whom was so precocious he somehow managed to bamboozle his way into McGill medical school in Montreal. Early in the 20th Century, if not before, he returned to Eganville, and set up his home and medical practice at 85 Queen Street.

            His name was Dr. Martin James (or M.J.) Maloney and he too married the love of his life, a local girl, Margaret Bonfield, a daughter of James Bonfield and Catherine Tracey, who always answered best to her preferred nickname, ‘Mug’. Together, Dr. M. J. and Mug Maloney also raised a gaggle of children, including three rather precocious sons, Jimmy, Arthur and Patrick. By 1925, their father found himself so well-liked as both a country doctor and shrewd political observer, that Dr. M. J. Maloney became the local Conservative Member of Parliament, a position he held for 10 years.

            It was enough for some Eganville old-timers to think that not only had Paddy Maloney and Mary O’Shaughnessy done well for themselves, coming out from Ireland as they had both done, but now their son was making quite the name for himself. And if that weren’t enough, those three sons of Dr. M.J. Maloney’s seemed talented enough to add to the growing Maloney legend of the Upper Ottawa Valley: Son Jimmy would become a rambunctious Ontario Cabinet Minister of Mines; Arthur would become an exceptionally-talented criminal lawyer and Ontario’s first Ombudsman, and Patrick, well, he uniquely carried on the family business.

            He graduated from Queen’s Medical School in Kingston and after going overseas during the Second World War, he earned significant distinction operating what was then known as a Casualty Clearing Station but what most of us who watched too much TV in the 1970s called a MASH field hospital. In fact, Dr. Patrick J. Maloney endured some of the fiercest fighting of the Italian campaign, working his way up from Sicily along the Adriatic Coast with the advancing Canadian army. After that, he returned to England and worked in the famous burn units of Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead. Finally, after the war, he landed back in Canada and became one of eastern Ontario’s finest pediatricians, saving the lives of more than a few local people who were then only children but who, now as grandparents, still sing Dr. Patrick’s praises.

            Dr. Patrick J. Maloney never forgot his roots. Though he lived the rest of his life in Ottawa, having married the love of his life — Eleonore Cossette — their four children — Michael, Justin, Julie and Mark — all knew about their father’s namesake, Paddy Maloney and their dad’s hometown of Eganville. They especially knew that old Queen St. house, often returning there in the summer to be greeted by Dr. M.J. Maloney himself, whom the children simply called ‘Poppa,’ and who passed away in 1953 or by ‘Mug,’ who eventually died in 1956.

            “There was a long history of going to Eganville every summer because of the vacation our family always took at Chippawa Lodge,” said Julie Maloney. “We’d always stop in Eganville at that house on Queen St. It wasn’t much to look at from the outside, but it had a great staircase, and we could run in the hall and go down the back kitchen stairs.” 

            The Maloney children also had great fun yelling at the top of their lungs, given that their Aunt Mary, who also lived in the house, was quite deaf. So, whenever the kids arrived, they’d throw open the front door and yell, “Hi Aunt Mary!”  But after she died, said Julie, “we’d still run in and yell, “Hi Aunt Nell!” who also lived there but who always responded, “I’m not deaf, you know!”

            In their own way, Dr. Patrick and Eleonore’s four children all added to the Maloney legend. For instance, late in 1969, at the tender age of 18, Julie Maloney herself became Miss Canada and was often seen on the arm of Canada’s most-eligible bachelor at the time, Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau. But like all Maloney children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, she was often told, ‘don’t just be an ornament; be useful. Be better.’  Julie would certainly turn out to be far more than a mere ornament, to say nothing of arm candy.

            It was Justin, however, who carried on the family business. Graduating from the University of Ottawa’s medical school, he added significantly to the Maloney legend. For anyone in Ottawa or, for that matter, the Ottawa Valley, who has ever availed themselves of eastern Ontario’s medical emergency response system by calling 911 and that operates to save lives in and around rural villages all through the Ottawa Valley, they have Dr. Justin Maloney to thank.

            Essentially, Justin’s medical career started the day his father, Dr. Patrick J., took him into the Grace Hospital to look in on a baby, one of his patients. There was just something about that day, said his sister, Julie. Justin saw his future — not just as a possible career — which might seem obvious to anyone who knew his father and grandfather, but he began to see what else might be possible, if only he worked hard enough to chase after it.

            His father had often told him as he did all his children, “I don’t care if you want to become a doctor, lawyer or anything else, as long as you do it to the very best of your ability.”

At other times, Julie remembers the family expectation was not so much centred on a particular career choice, as it was based on “a very strong social justice component because of ‘Poppa’ — Dr. M.J. Maloney — because of his political work and his work with the community.”     During family vacations at Golden Lake in the 1920s and 30s, Dr. M.J. Maloney would often set up a clinic for local Indigenous people and he became quite friendly with the local chief.

“I think he really instilled in his boys that it was very important for them to do what they could for everybody. And certainly, for those who had less than they had. And he re-enforced in them just how privileged they were,” she said.

            Justin also inherited something else from his grandfather; they were both severely asthmatic and, to boot, Justin had so many severe allergies — everything from cats and dogs to bread and birthday cake — that the Maloney children were never allowed to have a furry family pet on his account. Still, by high school, Justin had somehow managed to become a star athlete, award-winning student and lead actor in school dramas. He also seemed a young man forever in a hurry; quiet, observant, always ready to help, yet curiously humble, and always with an eye to a future that he alone seemed to see.

            It was as if that trip into the Grace with his father allowed him to see something no one else could see. Nor would it be the last time he would see a future that he would help create but curiously not a future about his personal ambition; rather, a future for the rest of us.

            For instance, when he was still in medical school, he saw a lot of high school students only slightly younger than himself, but who weren’t taking seriously a new government anti-smoking campaign. So, he decided to join a new effort to go into Ottawa high schools, and turning more than a few administrative heads, he approached the problem quite differently yet effectively. Or when he began working emergency room shifts at the Ottawa General, he realized some things desperately needed to be changed. To him at least, too many people were coming in by ambulance dead on arrival. So, Justin asked questions and came up with innovative answers that involved a new way of dealing with how to better respond to such medical emergencies. 

            He saw a future that was far less chaotic and far more rational, a future that involved at least four, new moving parts; and it would require a Herculean shift in how especially municipal governments and the province were responding to medical emergencies.

            Justin — or as his friends sometimes called him, ‘Moose’, knew he couldn’t do it alone. And that’s where his unique Maloney family came into play. Whatever Justin saw as the future of emergency medicine in eastern Ontario, it would definitely have to involve the rest of his siblings, among others, to help pull it off.

            So, at a family get-together — an Easter lunch around their mother’s table in 1984 — Dr. Justin Maloney talked about how people were dying needlessly because Ottawa-Carleton had 27 different emergency phone numbers. How ambulance drivers could and should be trained in basic live-saving measures instead of being just drivers of ambulances. How local hospitals were not staffed by ER specialists, a speciality he himself had not yet qualified for. How things could be made a helluva lot better in the future, if only his family would help create that future.

            His young brother, Mark, who was then thinking about entering municipal politics, and his sister, Julie, who knew a thing or two about organizing meetings, immediately threw in with him.

“It was Mark,” said Julie, “who said, ‘Why don’t we work on this together; you do the medical side and I’ll do the political side.’ And so that’s how it started.”

            So, the siblings formed a committee — Action 911 — and quickly won the support of Dalton McGinty Sr. and his son, Dalton McGinty Jr. — ironically Liberals, but before long, Action 911 ran into wall after wall, as all good people with good ideas often do.

            Municipal government leaders heard them out, but most didn’t want to change. Provincial politicians followed suit. Right idea, wrong planet. Yet, slowly but surely, year after year of persistent pushing against the political pushback from both local and provincial government, things started to change. After four long, hard years, by 1988, some jurisdictions began to adopt the 911 system. And by the end of the 1990s, all of Ottawa-Carleton ultimately traded in its 27 different phone numbers for a single 9-1-1 service, the second last regional municipality of its size to do so in all of North America. Part of the delay had to do with the fact that the system had to be functionally bilingual, with 911 operators able to speak both French and English. But most of the delay dealt with a fundamental resistance to change.

            During this same time, Justin also convinced Algonquin College to establish a paramedic program where he would teach ambulance drivers to be more than just drivers of ambulances; he taught them how to intubate accident victims, operate defibrillators and administer primary life-saving medical procedures in hopes of keeping patients alive long enough to reach a nearby hospital ER. Before long, Algonquin was graduating a dedicated cadre of paramedics with two and three-year certificates that made them into far more than just ambulance drivers.

            Justin also expected more from doctors such as himself; he qualified as one of the first Emergency Room specialists in Ottawa and late in 1984, he was certified by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons as such.

            He went further. He threw in with Sandra Clarke and her Advanced Coronary Treatment Foundation who were pushing to have Ontario high school students trained in Grade Nine Phys-Ed class to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation — CPR. In what seemed like no time at all, but which took years to accomplish, four million Ontario students were ultimately certified in CPR, many of whom still remember that training today. In fact, over the years, Dr. Justin Maloney was often heard to say: “If you don’t feel well, find a teenager!” Many high school students can perform CPR and some have even been trained to use a defibrillator that are now increasingly available in many public places.

            It took Dr. Justin Maloney well over 20 years to accomplish the future as he first saw it for Ottawa and the Ottawa Valley, and after he first discussed it at that Easter lunch at his mom’s dinner table in 1984. In the ensuing years, he would win a Governor General’s Award for building the emergency response system that we now use. In fact, he is considered nationally as the ‘father of paramedicine’ as we now know it today and that we all depend upon.

            But awards and accolades, like the recognition he won in high school for his athletic and academic prowess, never really counted for much, at least not to Dr. Justin Maloney. Rather, he was forever responding to his father’s and grandfather’s gentle voice, telling him the same thing they told all of their children and grandchildren: “Don’t just be an ornament. Be useful. Be better!”

            Back in the early 1970s, Dr. Justin Maloney was even useful in particular to Eganville. Just out of medical school, he was asked to cover for two friends who happened to be Eganville doctors at the time, and who desperately needed a two-week vacation. He didn’t want to see the village go without medical service so, in the end, he recruited his wife and mother, both nurses, to throw in with him to help keep the Eganville medical clinic open. And they all did, happily.

            Justin Maloney died this year on May 2nd at aged 74. Whatever he was, he was no ornament. A credit to his Maloney roots in both Wilberforce and Eganville, he now joins those stellar Maloney legends who continue to shine down, especially on precocious students who want to go about trying to make a difference. Such a person might do worse than begin by listening very closely to that essential and eternal Maloney mantra, ‘Be useful. Be better!‘