The Mike Petryk School of Dentistry at the U of A honours 1960 grad

Dentistry students get a lot of good advice throughout their training: You have to love people to do the job well. Stay focused on patients and the business will take care of itself. The smiles of happy patients are the best word-of-mouth advertising you can get.

Mike Petryk paid close attention to it all back when he was a dental student at the University of Alberta in the 1950s. Another pearl he gleaned: As independent business owners, new dentists should pay off their student debts ASAP and start saving for retirement.

Now, following a career of more than 40 years in dentistry with a sideline in Calgary real estate investment, Petryk hopes to inspire future students to follow in his footsteps. He and his wife Pat made a $10-million donation to the newly named Mike Petryk School of Dentistry at a ceremony on campus today. 

“It’s overwhelming and I’m very proud to give something back,” says Petryk. “In dentistry, you get to help people and you can see the results of your work.”

“If you like your work, you will go far.”

Philanthropic donations like the Petryks’ allow the university to provide exceptional student experiences, research and patient care, according to Paul Major, professor and chair of the Department of Dentistry.

“We’re really proud to have the Petryk name attached to our school,” Major says. “Mike Petryk’s focus was on providing high-quality care for his patients, it wasn’t about trying to make money. The patients come first, and serving the patients was his No.1 priority.”

“Education is the way to improve your life”

Mike Petryk was born in 1934 to Ukrainian immigrants, Mary and Anton, who homesteaded 180 km northeast of Edmonton, near Grassland, Alta. On the two quarter-sections of land that the Petryk family was granted, Mike’s first home was a log house with no insulation, plumbing or electricity. 

“The running water was the creek nearby,” Petryk remembers with a laugh. “Dad always got up first in the morning to stoke up the stove. My brother and I slept together in the same bed to stay warm and we studied by a coal oil lamp. I never used a telephone until I got to Edmonton.”

Mike was the fourth of seven children, the first born in Canada. He was the first in the family to go to university, but he would not be the last. Dozens more family members have subsequently attended the University of Alberta, including Mike’s younger siblings Harry, Sylvester and Nancy Petryk. Mike was also instrumental in inspiring and encouraging his sister-in-law Carol Winnick and nephew Steve Petryk to become dentists. 

“Even though my parents weren’t educated themselves, they knew that education is the way to go to improve your life,” Mike recalls, noting how tough times were for farmers in the 1930s and ’40s.

Mike remembers that studying after school was an acceptable excuse to get out of farm chores, so he took his studies very seriously. The one-room schoolhouse was nearly five kilometres away. Worried that Mike was too young to walk to school on his own, his mother kept him at home until his younger brother Harry could accompany him, either walking or riding a horse. 

“During a blizzard we would just cover our faces and the horse knew how to get home on his own. He was as anxious to get there as we were.”

Mike’s brother, Syl, was a math whiz but for Mike, science became his passion. He knew he would need biology as a prerequisite to get into university but since it wasn’t offered at Grassland school, he had to take biology by correspondence. 

“When we were in high school, the principal said, ‘They can take everything away from you, but they can’t take away your knowledge’,” Mike recalls.

Mike was named valedictorian of his graduating class, but humbly notes, “it was not hard because there were only eight of us.” A summer trip to the dentist inspired him to pursue dentistry as a profession, so he enrolled in science at the University of Alberta. 

“Like a yearly reunion with my patients”

Moving to the city from a farm led to some culture shock for Petryk. The bustling city and the large classes of university students were all new to him, but he persevered. 

“Sometimes I was a little worried that I just wouldn’t make the grade, but as long as I was in the top half of the class it wasn’t too much of a worry,” he says. “Of course, there was no such thing as privacy then. They posted your marks right on the wall, so everybody knew exactly what percentage you got.”

Once they started learning the practical aspects of dentistry though, Mike knew he had made the right choice. “I didn’t find it frightening because we were all together in the clinic.”

Petryk was grateful that his father was able to pay for his first year of tuition and rent, until he could make money by getting a summer job in forestry. In second year, Mike signed up with the Canadian military who then paid for his university education in exchange for serving as a military dentist for a few years after graduation. He was posted as a captain to CFB Cold Lake to provide dental services to everyone on the base. 

It was there he met Pat Winnick, who was working as a teacher on the base. They noticed each other in the dining hall and Mike asked if she would like to be his square dance partner. She agreed right away. 

“A lot of the guys, you’d grab their hand and it would be kind of clammy. Mike’s was so nice and clean and soft and I just wanted to dance with him!”

They would keep dancing throughout their lives together, even taking part in the opening ceremony for the Calgary ’88 Olympics as one of nearly 500 square dancing couples in McMahon Stadium.

Mike worked during the day on the base and in a private clinic in town during the evenings and weekends so that he could pay his debt and buy back his service time a year early. The young couple moved to Calgary in 1961. 

Mike opened a brand new clinic on Elbow Drive, which was “out in the middle of a cow field” at that time. But the expanding city of Calgary soon grew around them and the patients kept coming back. Mike’s most famous patient was country and western singer Wilf Carter. Many early patients brought along their children, even their grandchildren, for dental care.

“Some work days it was almost like a yearly reunion with my patients,” Mike remembers. “In fact, sometimes my assistant would say to me, ‘Dr. Petryk, I think you have to do a little less visiting here or we’re not gonna be on time.’”

Mike says he went to work with a smile on his face for more than 40 years, finally retiring at the age of 69.

Pat taught elementary school and home economics for a few years, until their children Susan and Robert (Bob) were born. The Petryks lived on Pat’s salary while investing Mike’s income into several real estate investments. Petwin Properties, named by combining Mike and Pat’s surnames — Petryk and Winnick — started in 1968 with the purchase of a small apartment building. It has grown into a Calgary-based diversified private equity organization with properties in Canada and the United States, with their son Bob Petryk serving as president. 

“Petwin was a local Alberta startup that continues to expand with significant business interests across four provinces and several US states,” says Bob. “Yet over 57 years of rapid growth, the original source of Petwin’s equity capital was Mike’s dental practice.”

“Something new every day”

The four Petryks came up with the idea of donating to the University of Alberta together, as a way to honour Mike’s long career, work ethic and values.

“If there's any way that we can help students to have a better life and be happy, that’s what we want, because we’ve just had a fabulous life,” says Pat. 

Major notes that the Petryk endowment will help the school meet its priority goals of providing pediatric dental care for underserved populations.

“The school has traditionally done a lot of pro bono work for city children who are underserved and we partner with various organizations to identify people in need. And so, donated funds help cover the cost of delivering care to those patients. It also meets an educational need for our students because they gain experience treating patients with a high burden of disease.”

Other priorities for the school include funding graduate student stipends, supporting undergraduate students in need and funding faculty research projects. 

“Donations like this are good validation that we are making an impact in the community and that people can invest through us to make that happen,” Major says. “The mouth is an integral part of the body. Unless the mouth is healthy, you’re not going to have a healthy body.”

Susan Petryk is a pediatrician in Regina, Sask., and says she’s pleased with the School of Dentistry’s priority goals of serving pediatric and underserved populations as well as funding research. 

“In my practice, I’m proud to pay homage to my father daily by including oral health in my physical exams, encouraging patients to pay close attention to their dental hygiene, and teaching medical students and residents to do the same,” she says. 

Bob Petryk suggests students who are going into dentistry think of themselves as an artist, a caregiver and a compassionate person. He wants students to know his father’s inspiring story.

“My dad overcame adversity to do it, and you can do it too. He knew that success is about being reliable and good at that chair. It’s about putting in fillings that work and having people say how it wasn’t painful and they really enjoyed the conversation.”

“He found something new in dentistry every day.”

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