“When you meet Dr Pisz for the first time, he was this big, tough, bearded man with this harsh accent.”
But as you got to know him, Sienna Hart Kellar said, “you realize that he was actually just a giant softie under there.”
Tom Pisz grew up surrounded by animals in communist Poland, reaching the North as a refugee via Toronto and Newfoundland.
In Yellowknife, he became near-universally known among pet owners simply as Dr Pisz, a man who seemed to have infinite time for animals – if slightly less time for their owners.
Dr Pisz passed away last week at the age of 68. Great Slave Animal Hospital, which he founded, said a celebration of life will be held by family later in the summer. The clinic described him as “instrumental in bringing and maintaining veterinary care to the North.”
Dr Tomasz Wojciech Pisz was born on March 23, 1956 in Przemyśl, Poland. An only child, he was raised by his grandmother, Emilia Blezel; his mother, a dentist, Dr Teresz Pisz (née Blezel); and his father, a veterinarian, Dr Jan Pisz.
He was exposed to animals from an early age due to his father’s veterinary work, and loved horses in particular, developing his riding skills at a local stable and later competing in high-level dressage and show jumping.
Dr Pisz attended university in Lublin at the Academia Rolnicza, where he studied veterinary medicine. While there, he met fellow veterinary medicine student Maryla Stiles (née Piwko). They married in 1977 and had two daughters, Emilia (Mila) and Jolanta (Jola).
Poland was still under communist party rule at the time. While at university, Mila said, her father was involved in the Solidarność (Solidarity) movement “fighting against the commies.”
“If [the communists] were going to catch him, then they probably would have killed him,” Mila said. “He and my mom got pretty scared, and they fled Poland.”
The family went to Paris, France, where they lived for a couple of years, with Dr Pisz working as a veterinarian at a racetrack. They were accepted as refugees to Canada in 1983.
Landing in Toronto, they “struggled quite a bit at first,” Mila said. Though both of her parents were veterinarians, they didn’t have their licences in Canada and had to work odd jobs. “I think he was a trucker for a while, and a pizza delivery guy and all sorts of things, wherever he could get work.”
They moved to St John’s, Newfoundland and then to Hamilton, Ontario. The family came north to Yellowknife when Dr Pisz was offered an opportunity to work as a full-time veterinarian in the city. (At the time, the territory didn’t have the same licensing requirements as the rest of Canada.)
A few years later, in 1991, Dr Pisz was able to start his own veterinary clinic, Great Slave Animal Hospital, to service the communities of the North. While he and Maryla later divorced, and she left to work in Saskatoon, he decided to stay in the NWT despite having achieved the certification to practise anywhere in Canada.
“He just fell in love with the people and how remote it was,” Mila said.
As a veterinarian, he developed a reputation for having a bit of a gruff exterior and caring deeply about animals. Clients remember Dr Pisz tearing up when he had to put down an animal.
“He wasn’t so much about being a people person,” said Blair Chapman, who took his dogs to see Dr Pisz for more than 20 years, “but what we obviously saw was somebody who cared about the animal.”
He would go the extra mile to find out what he could do to help an animal in pain, said Chapman. “You could tell that here’s a guy who really was there for the animal. He was there for our dog, our pup, and really cared about that.”
His passion for horses remained throughout his life and, over time, he was able to slowly realize his dream of bringing horses to Yellowknife. He established North Country Stables, starting with just a couple of horses and eventually building it up to a larger stable with an indoor riding arena, grassy pastures, and the capacity to house 20 horses.
Mila remembers frequent late-night rides at the nearby sandpits. “He loved the endless summers,” Mila said. “We’d go ride horses in the middle of the night, because it was a never-ending sunset… it was gorgeous.”
For decades, North Country Stables welcomed hundreds of people for riding lessons, trail rides, wagon rides and summer camps. He loved sharing horses with the people of Yellowknife and showcasing them in the annual Canada Day parade.
Dr Pisz coached many young riders, including Caterina Walsh, who rode with him for 24 years and later worked as a riding instructor at the stables. “He was the definition of tough love,” Walsh said. “There was nothing superficial or coddling in his way of critiquing his students.”
But that made it even more sweet when you got it right.
“He would look at you and smile and say ‘not bad’ … it was as if you had just won gold in the Olympics,” Walsh said.
“He truly had a heart of gold and cared deeply for the people and animals in his life … it really is hard to put into words how much he meant and how grateful I am to have known him.”
Hart Kellar, another former student, said when Dr Pisz found out her parents couldn’t afford riding lessons, he let her ride anyway, doing chores around the barn in exchange.
“Life was really hard when I was little,” Hart Kellar said. Dr Pisz made the barn a safe place to be.
“Tom would let us rip around on ponies,” she said, recalling time spent at the stables with Caterina and another student, Katie. “It made our childhood something incredible that I don’t think a lot of people get to ever experience in their life. He made our lives very happy.”
He also watched out for them. After a riding lesson one day, Hart Kellar and Katie rode to the sandpits. A paintballer came out of the bush and attacked them, hitting both horses with paintballs and sending them galloping across the highway.
Luckily, nobody was hurt. Dr Pisz, however – who was in the yard when they got back – immediately drove out to the sandpits, screamed at the paintballers, snapped a paintball gun in half and threw it in the water.
“He was very protective over us,” Hart Kellar said
When she went to college, Dr Pisz gifted Hart Kellar her first horse. Today, she works as a professional horse trainer.
“Had it not been for Tom, I don’t know what I would be doing today,” Hart Kellar said. “Because there would have been no horses to ride, no way to learn, no one to guide me into the career and life I have now.”
In 2002, Dr Pisz met his partner, Patricia Dartnell, who shared his passion for horses and other animals. They lived together at North Country Stables with their menagerie of dogs, cats, budgies, goats, donkeys and horses.
Toward the end of his days, his daughter Jola said, Dr Pisz insisted on remaining at the stables with his animals beside him. He passed away peacefully at his home on June 11.
