Black Alberta doc testifies noose tied by white colleague made him feel threatened, was part of pattern

A Black doctor from Grande Prairie Alta. says the noose a surgeon taped to a hospital room door in 2016 was clearly an intimidating threat and part of an escalating pattern of disturbing actions. "It is a warning sign, a sign that says, 'You need to be cautious; I am after you,'" Dr. Oduche Onwuanyi said Monday, the first day of a sanction hearing for white South-African born Dr. Wynand Wessels, CBC News reported, "It's a threat, a threat that, 'We could get you off this job.' A threat that, 'We control things around here,'" Dr. Onwuanyi told a tribunal of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta. Dr. Tosin Akinbiyi, another Black doctor told the hearing he provided the college investigator with contact information for other hospital staff who’d witnessed racist actions by Dr. Wessels, but says the college’s proceedings don’t reference any of it. Dr. Akinbiyi told the hearing that he’d informed the investigator of multiple stories he’d heard from other staff members including one where Dr. Wessels told a non-white employee not to worry about getting iodine on her skin. "Dr. Wessels made comments about it like, 'Don't stress about it, the colour is the same as your skin, and the same colour as shit.'" A veteran nurse also told Dr. Akinbiyi that when she asked Dr. Wessels about his experience with apartheid "and the comment he made to her was, 'Those people are vermin.'" Dr. Wessels denied the noose was meant to be racist or intimidate any person or group specifically during a hearing in October 2020. He claimed it was otherwise symbolic and that a noose doesn’t carry the same violently racist connotation in South Africa as it does in North America. While the college’s hearing panel found there was not enough evidence to conclude the incident was motivated by racism, it did find Dr. Wessels guilty of unprofessional conduct. A government-ordered external report concluded the incident was inappropriate but not racist. However, Dr. Onwuanyi alleged a deeper pattern of problematic behaviour on Dr. Wessel’s part. Dr. Onwuanyi testified that Dr. Wessels, in his capacity as chief surgeon, didn’t hire him when he first applied to work at the hospital in 2010, and when he came to the hospital as a surgical assistant in 2014, Dr. Wessels asked him why he came back. Dr. Onwuanyi also alleged Dr. Wessels elbowed him during a surgery And in reply to a story he told about a Black pilot, Dr. Wessels replied, "All those Black pilots, they are drug dealers." And while Dr. Wessels wrote letters of apology over the incident to two other doctors, Dr. Onwuanyi never got one.

Black Alberta doc testifies noose tied by white colleague made him feel threatened, was part of pattern

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