By Cecilia Nasmith/Northumberland 89.7 FM/Today’s Northumberland
Hubbel & Johnston Chiropractic clinic will be closed down Friday afternoon for a special reason – to invite patients to join them in celebrating Dr. Morgan Hubbel’s 65 years of practice.
In preparation for the big event, the walls of the Cobourg office on Elgin Street are full of photos of significant milestones and reproductions of old newspaper ads and articles – and in a corner are two floating blue mylar balloons in the shape of a six and a five.
His partner Dr. Stephanie Johnston will be there, of course, along with his granddaughter and colleague Dr. Sydney Hubbel Leguard, who also practices at the clinic.
Dr. Hubbel’s entire practice been in Cobourg. He was born in Hastings, but met a friend in chiropractic college, Art McIntosh, who was from Cobourg and seemed to feel that there was room for one more in a town where, at the time, only Dr. Bob Bradford was practicing chiropractic. He took his friend’s advice – McIntosh, meanwhile, setting up practice in Port Hope.
“The biggest challenge was letting the people of Cobourg know I was here,” he recalled of his new practice.
He and his wife leased an office (with upstairs apartment) in a brick King Street building across from CDCI West. It was a time when the Chiropractic Association insisted on understatement, so only a modest sign was mounted on the exterior – but not everybody walked past that address to see the sign.
And there was no social media. There was newspaper and radio advertising, but that was fairly expensive.
“Mostly word of mouth” is how his practice got started.
“Things went smoothly, but they went slowly. It took us a while to be busy enough to make the whole thing work.”
Meanwhile, his wife Joan was able to get a teaching job at Burnham School to bridge that income gap.
In 1960, the chiropractic discipline was in its relative infancy, and there were misconceptions to overcome as well. But time took care of that too.
“Once people realized we weren’t doing anything too weird, we were accepted. And once people realized they could get the results they were looking for, that was a big plus.”
Signs on the clinic wall advertise his rates back then, $4 for an office visit and $5 for a house call. But back then, he pointed out, you could get a quart of milk and a loaf of bread for under $1.
“Probably people thought I was charging too much, even at that.”
They moved both their home and their practice to the big brick house at 197 Third St., which is where Mrs. Hubbel began babysitting their granddaughter Sydney – now, as Dr. Sydney Hubbel Leguard, his partner in practice.
“I remember going in and helping the staff – thinking I was helping the staff – doing some typing, but also going into Grandpa’s office and looking at X-rays with him,” she recalled.
“I thought I wanted to be a teacher, but in Grade 8 I did a Take Your Kid To Work with Grandpa and never looked back. In high school, I worked there in the summertime. I always saw how much chiropractic care can change people’s lives and help people who had not gotten better with other things.”
It’s where she also heard stories of the dedication with which Dr. Hubbel practiced, and her admiration only grew. Now that they work together, she declared, “It’s the best.
“When we started together, we had a couple of growing pains in terms of the transition from grandpa and granddaughter to business partners – we had to make a rule that we couldn’t have staff meetings at family dinners – but it’s been really fun to be able to learn so much from him. When I have a case that isn’t going the way I expect, it’s so nice to have Grandpa as a sounding board.
“As a young doctor, with someone coming in in so much pain, it’s nice to say, ‘I’m going to have my grandpa take a peek and make sure we’re not missing anything.’”
While she’s learned a few lessons from her partner along the way that she thinks have helped her, “I think the biggest thing, especially early in my career, is about people who are so grumpy and rude. He said, ‘You don’t know what they are dealing with. People act differently when they’re in pain.’
“That empathy for people – he always is so kind and giving when people aren’t acting that way back.
That’s what I try to channel when I have a patient like that – ‘how would Grandpa act in this situation?’”
The result is that people truly connect with Dr. Hubbel. Dr. Leguard recently encountered a former patient who moved away in 1971, who has recently moved back because he felt so connected to Dr. Hubbel.
Although some long-time residents still associate that house on Third Street with Dr. Hubbel, he transitioned to join a practice at 9 Elgin St. E. in 2010, thinking it would be a first step to retiring.
Retirement never happened and, when he had the chance for his current location and the chance to bring Dr. Johnston aboard, he grabbed it. The result is a practice with a wealth of knowledge and expertise.
Their commitment to patient care has led them to become proficient in the hand-held Activator Adjusting Instrument, an alternative to manual adjustments that requires extensive training and investments of time and money. The closest other clinic offering this method is in Whitby.
This device makes the cliche of the painful cracking-your-neck procedure a thing of the past, replaced with an effective and completely painless mechanical procedure. So many times, people who have feared the pain and put off getting help find themselves wishing they’d come in long before.
While the tool is important, Dr. Leguard pointed out, the technique and training are equally important.
Not every practice invests the time and effort. In this case, it involved travelling to seminars and even taking the time to help younger doctors learn the technique and practice the method properly. In many cases, Dr. Hubbel said, chiropractors are not willing to go the distance.
When he celebrated his 50th anniversary of practice, Dr. Hubbel was the subject of celebratory articles in the town’s two newspapers. Now the newspapers are gone, it’s his 65th anniversary and he still practices twice a week.
“We keep telling him he’s not allowed to retire yet. We’re not ready for that,” Dr. Leguard said.
The patients love him, for one thing. And if he has a few minutes, he’s likely to pick up a hammer and hang something on the wall, or maybe make a small repair or start a small renovation project. He might even take a moment to wash the windows.
“Hopefully someone else will take over washing the windows before too long,” Dr. Hubbel allowed.
“We have a great time together. We think pretty much along the same lines,” he said.
“We complement each other, and the patients benefit from that because they get the best of both worlds.
“I think the office has thrived with our combined efforts, and I think the patients are better off with that too.”
Asked on his 89th birthday why he hasn’t retired yet, he admits he’s thought of it.
“I get up in the morning and say, ‘I could go golfing or I could go into the office and help a little group of people, who are really my friends, feel better. I can make their lives easier. I can maybe extend their life a little bit.’
“It’s not much of a choice to make. It’s always fun being here, always good to see people feel better because of what I can do for them. And I never was a very good golfer.”
