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Michael Power

Michael Power has felt the tug between academia and health and fitness all his life.



His father brought his family to Thunder Bay, Ont., when he was appointed dean of education at Lakehead University, and Mr. Power excelled at hockey, playing goalie for a team that won two national junior A championships. He was drafted by the Edmonton Oilers in 1990.



"It was an exciting time to be drafted. Most of the Oiler dynasty was still intact. At my first training camp I was in the dressing room with Mark Messier, Kevin Lowe, and the usual suspects. So it was a lot of fun."



But his focus changed almost overnight, at the age of 20, when his father was diagnosed with lymphoma. With younger siblings, he felt he wanted to come home to help his mother, a high-school teacher.



"It was a difficult time. The family was celebrating the next chapter in my hockey life … but [I needed]to go home and check on things and contribute. Dad was going through very complex chemotherapy."



His father died in the spring of 1991, aged 52, and Mr. Power says being there in his father's remaining months was important and life changing.



"It was totally the right decision, but then I was facing whether I wanted to put my hat back into the hockey ring or get into the health field and cancer care. I made a deliberate decision at that time to walk away from hockey."



By 2007, he founded the Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute (TBRRI), a public-private partnership, securing more than $100-million in government and industry seed funding.



The TBRRI seeks to improve cancer diagnostics, using real-time imaging processes with radioactive isotopes, and looking at what happens to a tumour through chemotherapy on a cellular level. Other health-care agencies, schools, and companies are moving to the region to take advantage of what Mr. Power calls "this new revolutionary technology."



"It contributes to [Canada's]competitive advantage in functional imagining," he says. "And we need to service a million people in northern Ontario and it's a big deal."



Mr. Power continues to play hockey recreationally and he coaches. His seven-year old-daughter, Grace, and five-year-old son, Carson, play Timbits hockey. His wife Joanna works for pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca. They wouldn't live anywhere else.



"I love Thunder Bay, the standard of living is second to none. We're here because of our family and friends, but also because of our ability to make a difference in a community this size. You can make real change."



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