LONG SAULT, Ontario – A dedicated and community minded gastroenterologist has decided to call it quits after serving the Cornwall area community for nearly 40 years.
“It was a difficult decision to make,” admitted Dr. Baldev Singh Soodan. “I enjoyed serving community, stretching from Cornwall to Alexandria.”
Born in 1944, Dr. Soodan received his medical degree from Jammu and Kashmir Medical College in India in 1969.
He worked in India for a couple of years and left for United Kingdom in 1972 to do his residency.
His next stop was in London, Ontario before moving to the Seaway city.
Dr. Soodan initially trained in internal medicine and then specialized in gastroenterology.
He also spent three years training as a gastroenterologist at the University of Ottawa.
While in Ottawa, he contacted several medical doctors in Cornwall who assured him the city needed and could do with a full time gastroenterologist.
Dr. Soodan and his wife Dilbagh moved to Cornwall where their two children, Harveen, now a hospitalist in Boston, Illinois, and son Baldeep, who is in hotel management in Ottawa, were born.
“I have gone through many changes in Cornwall over the years,” he said” The biggest was the amalgamation of the existing Hotel Dieu Hospital and Cornwall General Hospital into what is now the Cornwall community Hospital.”
Dr. Soodan started serving the Glengarry Memorial Hospital in Alexandria in 1992.
“I enjoyed excellent working relations at all hospitals with the medical staff and nurses.”
Dr. Soodan thoroughly enjoys boating and numerous water sports and the couple also plan to travel to exotic destinations.
