This year's Bob Ewert Memorial Dinner will feature a keynote by the man who oversaw the evacuation of 88,000 residents of Fort McMurray during the 2016 wildfires.
Darby Allen served as Fort McMurray's fire chief in the midst of the wildfires. He has since become a celebrated speaker on the topic of motivational and crisis leadership and was a featured presenter during the TEDx Kelowna conference in 2017.
The Bob Ewert Memorial Dinner has been held each year since 2004 and is a key gathering of political leaders, health professionals and northern health advocates. Proceeds from this year's event will be divided between the Dr. Bert Kelly Legacy Fund, which will provide bursaries to northern healthcare students, and the Dr. Bob Ewert Lecture Endowment Fund. Both funds are held by the PG Community Foundation.
The event also awards a Northern Medical Program student each year with the Rising Star Award.
This year's event will feature the posthumous induction of Dr. Bert Kelly into the Northern Medical Hall of Fame. Kelly, a founder of the Northern Medical Society and a family physician known to many residents of Prince George, passed away in December.
The event is named after Bob Ewert, a consultant surgeon who was born and raised in Prince George. Ewert left Prince George after high school, and returned after studying medicine at UBC and McGill universities. He is often referred to as "Prince George's first modern consultant specialist," and was an early advocate for a modern hospital in the region. His father, Carl Ewert, was a physician who moved to Prince George in 1913 in response to the shortage of physicians in the region at the time.
Tickets for the dinner are $125, or $1200 for a table of ten, and can be purchased online at ewertlecture.com or by calling (250) 596-0020.
