The currency of trust

Over the course of three weeks last month, I saw three very different sides of Dr. Ernest Cholakis — philanthropist, distinguished alumnus and dental surgeon.

The last of these was the most personal. And painful.

A week after watching Ernest receive the University of Manitoba’s distinguished alumni award for lifetime achievement — an honour for which I was one of his nominators — I arrived at his clinic with a tooth that had cracked in half. The pain had become considerable and, although his schedule was full, he found a way to fit me in.

Ernest has been my dentist for more than a decade, although our relationship has extended well beyond dentistry into friendship and a shared involvement in the cultural and community life of Winnipeg. I thought I knew him reasonably well. But helping to prepare his nomination introduced me to aspects of his professional life I had never fully appreciated.

Over more than four decades, Ernest has developed particular expertise in implant and restorative dentistry while pursuing advanced clinical education and teaching. He became a fellow of the International College of Oral Implantologists in 1996, is one of the founders of the Canadian Dental Institute and has combined clinical practice with teaching and leadership at the University of Manitoba.

Experiencing that knowledge and skill as a patient made it less abstract.

Only a week before the alumni dinner, the University of Manitoba had announced the naming of the Cholakis School of Dental Hygiene, following a major gift from Ernest and his family. Then came the lifetime achievement award. Seven days later, he was back at work, preparing to surgically remove my broken tooth.

There was one detail I couldn’t help noticing. Under his dental scrubs, Ernest was wearing a suit and tie. As soon as we were finished, he was heading to a board meeting at CancerCare Manitoba Foundation, where he chairs the grants committee. He also serves as chair of the board of directors of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and has devoted decades to volunteer leadership, philanthropy and the arts.

The juxtaposition said something about a life in which professional practice, institutional leadership and public service have become closely connected.

But listing accomplishments tells us only so much. Lifetime achievement, after all, is not simply the accumulation of titles.

At the alumni dinner, Ernest had said something that stayed with me: “The real currency of health care is trust.”

We use the word easily, but health care makes its meaning immediate. Patients surrender a certain amount of control. We depend upon another person’s knowledge, judgment and skill, often when we are anxious, uncomfortable or frightened.

Ernest spoke that evening about how trust is earned quietly over time — through preparation, consistency, compassion, integrity and showing up every day committed to doing your best for another human being. “One patient at a time. One relationship at a time.”

That seems to me to extend well beyond health care.

Much of my own work in cultural organizations and community projects has taught me that institutions operate on the same currency. Buildings, collections, programs, professional expertise, governance and financial resources matter. But none can substitute for the human connections that earn the confidence of the people an institution serves.

Cholakis Dental is a sophisticated clinic equipped with state-of-the-art technology, but considerable thought has also gone into the experience of the people who enter it.

The clinic is filled with art, including works by Ningiukulu Teevee, the celebrated Kinngait artist whose images draw upon Inuit stories, memory and imagination. Ernest is a serious collector who understands collecting as stewardship rather than simply ownership. Art, for him, is something to be lived with, learned from and shared.

That helps explain how the different parts of his life fit together.

Dentistry, education, business, philanthropy and culture can look like separate worlds. But each depends upon knowledge, relationships and a willingness to invest in something beyond oneself.

That idea was at the heart of Ernest’s award remarks at the University of Manitoba. He described institutions as places where human potential connects — universities link students with teachers and mentors; health care brings expertise to people when they need it; cultural organizations connect artists, ideas and audiences. Strong institutions, he argued, help strong communities flourish.

His relationship with the University of Manitoba stretches back more than four decades. A 1982 dentistry graduate, he later returned as a teacher, mentor, advisor and volunteer, receiving a university award for teaching excellence in 2010.

The newly named Cholakis School of Dental Hygiene may be the clearest expression of that relationship. A university once invested in a young dental student. Decades later, that graduate and his family are investing in students they may never meet.

At the alumni dinner, Ernest put it another way. As we grow older, he suggested, the question eventually changes.

It is no longer, “What can I build for myself?”

It becomes, “What can I help build that will outlast me?”

Perhaps that is one reason Ernest and I often end up talking about gardening, a passion we share. He loves planting trees — including his prized red maples at Lake of the Woods — knowing that his children and future generations will one day enjoy their shade. It is a modest but powerful expression of the same idea: investing in something whose full benefit you may never see yourself.

That is a useful way of thinking about lifetime achievement — and community leadership. Awards look backward, gathering up the accomplishments of a career. But the more consequential measure may be what those accomplishments make possible for others: stronger institutions, new opportunities, shared knowledge and legacies that continue beyond any one individual.

A week after the ceremony, there was no podium or applause. There was simply a dentist doing his work and a patient who needed his expertise.

The tooth, I am happy to report, came out successfully.

I left the clinic seeing more clearly what I had only partly understood when I entered it. Professional distinctions, philanthropy and decades of experience matter. But their real value becomes visible in how they are put to use — in a classroom, a boardroom, a cultural institution, a community or, occasionally, a dental clinic.

Perhaps that is the real currency of trust. It accumulates slowly, through competence, honesty, generosity and service, and then circulates outward: from one person to another, from individuals to institutions, and from institutions back into the communities they exist to serve.

Stephen Borys is president and CEO of Civic Muse, an arts and cultural consulting practice based in Winnipeg.