Dr. Paul Bickert’s  Story

At times you’re drawn deep within yourself by yearnings of the soul and that’s what chiropractors learn about when they study that part of man that is the healer. It’s the subtle substance of the soul that quickens life in harmony with mankind’s environment – for one to feel at ease with self.  

Something within me was undone and that seemed to leave a crevasse in my heart. I couldn’t let myself go away from the edge of that depth that called me to let go and fall to its deep and be wounded as it would have me be.  And then Africa called prompting me to respond. That occurred in 1999 after I had retired from running a publically traded company that had swept me out of chiropractic practice back in 1993. During those years I felt comfortable with my role as healer operating within the confines of my practice, never questioning that I belonged where I was. 

One day, I became inspired to invent an antenna that would solve the wireless industries woes, and reduce the effects of electromagnetic emissions (EMF) radiated from cellular phones. The day’s momentary musing was prompted by my wife Marlene’s suggestion that I do something to reduce the radiation from my daughter’s phone that we had presented her as a graduation gift. Natalie was a high end user of the phone while working in her chosen career as a photographer. She district managed several of the Bay Portrait Studios in Vancouver area and that resulted in my concern and remark that I should design something to protect her cranium. “If you do it for Natalie, do it for the world,” remarked my wife. 

The invention followed and the result was that the business world swept me out of chiropractic practice, a work that I loved. I became a member of the not so familiar world of big business running a high tech corporation that I moved onto NASDAQ.  Was that of my own design or was it that I responded to a call from within an inspiration that was much deeper than what my conscious mind could do on its own?  Had the Word spoken?  Six years later I sold out of the Corporation Globus that I founded and the millions that was earned for myself and other investors who supported my patents brought me to an early retirement at fifty-four. 

By sixty-one, I had felt something pulling me to the edge again – meaning I was at the edge of the crevasse in the centre of my being feeling that things were about to change again for me. “Travel, I haven’t seen Africa yet!” I thought. My corporate adventures had sent me to Europe and Asia on several occasions; however, the fatigue of corporate wandering was long forgotten and I was ready for more adventure in my life. I choose Egypt with and a side trip over to Israel, just to settle the Christian part of me that needed a walk on holy ground.

In Egypt the visit to the pyramids was eclipsed by the immense effect of seeing the large number of homeless people living in Cairo’s streets torn away from the African Horn nations to become refugees of Egypt’s benevolence. That domicile didn’t permit employment to these misfortunate beings and I was overwhelmed with my own fortune in front of Africa’s lack thereof making the luxury of travel seem a paradox.  Immediately I asked where I could help. Circumstance brought me to meet an elderly missionary priest who had worked throughout the continent with Africa’s ill fated. He was Cairo’s equivalent of Teresa of Calcutta in his work, but in a pastoral sort of way. Fr. Guiseppe Zeno-Picotti, a practical Italian Comboni, who came out of Verona, Italy, asked for my assistance to provide education to Sudanese refugees. I responded and assisted in financing the development of a school in Zamelek, a district located in central Cairo. The school operates today with close to five hundred students attending. 

I returned to Cairo on two subsequent trips in 2002, 2004 and then again in 2006, but by then had been asked to assist with financing the development of a school for the Dominican Missionaries in Offinso, Ghana; so,  I made the additional journey over to the West Coast of Africa to Ghana.

 Dominicans in West Africa had experience with building non-coeducational schools to emancipate the poor of each region that they became involved in. In the case of Offinso they intended to build a school for boys. I insisted that they emancipate the girls of the region as well who are oppressed by a tribal culture that leaves them forging for families on the regions roadsides as vendors along with their children. 

You see?  In most developing countries missionaries are the most active educators. It’s their mandate from home religious affiliation that sends them on to, “go out to preach and teach.”  They have the contact with influential people in home countries who are willing to part with their own resources to assist these workers of various denominational affiliations that in turn carry their services, both spiritual and temporal, to developing nations. At one time it was the same when North America became a missionary outpost for the French, English and Spanish religious.

Offinso is in a bush area of Ghana about fifty kilometres from Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city located near central Ghana. The country is a small nation of approximately twenty-three million residents. 

I approached Dr. Robert Champagne of Calgary, a family member of other chiropractors I respected feeling Dr. Champagne had both the resources and drive that would be a help to me in bringing Chiropractic to Africa. We expanded that concept together to bringing Chiropractic to developing nations.

The core of my being has always been elevated with the love and outpouring of gratitude felt while I provide for those less fortunate than me who live in Africa, shared from both my own resources as a chiropractor and financially. Today, joining Dr. Champagne and me are several great Canadian chiropractors that do the same as we reciprocate our enthusiasm for bringing hope and health to developing nations with healing hands that will bring about a global change.

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