Roving dental practice on Hornby, Denman islands seeks new owner after 3 decades

Dr. Peter Walford has been on the road, so to speak, for more than 30 years doing dentistry on B.C.'sHornby and Denmanislands from an unusual clinic.

After owning several practiceson Vancouver Island through the 1980s, he explored converting a Blue Bird school bus into a mobile dental clinic to bring dentistry to the two islands locatedin the Salish Sea southeast of Courtenay-Comox.

"It was pretty unique that there was this one opening two islands thatweren't serviced," he said.

Walfordisnow on his second bus, which he spent four years perfectingwith custom-made wood finishing, in the mid-1990s.

"An uneconomic amount of time," he said about not rushing to finish the clinic, but doing it because he loved the idea and the work.

Since then he's spent three days a week in the spring, summer and fall working with about 800 active patients on both islands, parking the bus in several spots where he can hook up water, electricity and telephone lines.

The B.C. Dental Association estimates that there's onlya handful of mobile dental operations like Walford's in the province.

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The bus has a waiting area, a library, two dental chairs and is adorned with thousands of buttons on the ceiling.

He began placing them there with magnets after a patientcomplained that a poster of a wilderness scene on the ceilingwasn't engaging enough to keep patients' mindsoff a buzzingdrill.

Patients like Bill Englesonsay thebuttons, most of which have been given to Walford, are worth a visit to the bus.

"It's a kitschy kind of thing in that almost the entire ceiling is covered in buttons, protest buttons, historical buttons, going back 50 years," said the Denman Island resident. "No matter where you are you can be entertained quite easily."

Amanda Hale has been a patient of Walford's since 1989 and says he's creative in his approach to dentistry. Getting her teeth fixed in abus doesn'tfazeher.

"It's very cozy," she said. "Going into the bus I didn't feel like I would going into that rather more clinical atmosphere of a traditional dentist."

In the early days, Walford would even trade for service. Once Hale traded some knitting wool for dental work. Later Walford wore a sweater made of the wool, knitted by another patient.

The path to the islands

Walford lives on HornbyIsland but grewup in Hudson, Quebec. He became a dentist at 28 and moved West.

For a time he lived in Vancouver on a boat in False Creek whiledoing dentistry and teaching at the University of British Columbia.

A chance bike trip to Duncan resulted in him buying a practice there. Eventually he movedto a practice in Cumberland where patients from Hornby and Denman islands came for dentistry. That's where the idea of a mobile clinictook hold.

Walford says he's proud of the bus as a clinic and enjoys all the relationships he's made with patients over the years.

"They're very, very friendly for me and keep my stress level very low and my energy up," he said.

Now the 71-year-old islooking to sell the clinic to anotherdentist.Headmits it's not an especially lucrative practice, but it's unique and affords a tremendous quality of life, although a quieter one.

"You have a lot of free time ... if you wanted to pursue other things," he said. "And let me tell you the chair-side work is really rewarding."