by Barbara Simpson for the Sarnia Observer

(2014) When Dr. Helene Shingle poked and prodded at the teeth of Sarnia-Lambton seniors, she wasn’t only volunteering her time and talent. She was also celebrating a life she never thought she would have.

At the start of World War II, Shingles – then a 22-year-old working in a Warsaw hospital – was arrested and thrown into a concentration camp by the Nazi regime. Her father was executed, while her husband and brother died fighting in the war.

After six long years, Shingles was eventually liberated from a forced labour camp by the Allied Forces. She would need to be spoon-fed liquids and receive nourishment through IV’s during her two-year recovery in a North Africa hospital. Once she recovered, she remarkably joined a team of United Nations doctors who travelled across Europe to help people displaced by the war.

In 1950, Shingles was given the chance to emigrate to a UN country and she chose Canada from the list. She settled in Sarnia, working odd jobs to put herself through dental school. “When I came here after the war, I really didn’t believe I could have a normal life,” she told The Observer in 2000. “But I was accepted here with open arms. People were good to me and I was able to become a professional again.”

For 20 years, Shingles ran a private dental practice before her ‘retirement’ – a term she loosely embraced. In her golden years, she instead threw herself into volunteering with Meals on Wheels, where she quickly discovered the need for dental care for seniors.

“These people had no money to go to the dentist,” she recalled. “So I came up with the idea to volunteer my services.”

She set up shop at area nursing homes and even made house calls to senior in need of dental care. Her tireless work earned her the Order of Canada in 1997.

“I couldn’t believe that a poor immigrant that had 25 cents in her pocket – not even enough money to buy some Polish sausage, working on a sugar beet farm, then at Sydenham Trading – could work and get the Order of Canada,” the then 83-year-old said back in 2000.

Shingles continued volunteering her services well into her 80s. She died at the age of 91, in March, 2009.

“She was one of a kind,” city councillor Dave Boushy (said). “They don’t make them like her any more. She was a beautiful person, inside and out. She just did what she could to help others.”