Alumni of Influence recipients

Influencing Education and More

By Allan Britnell

The recipients of the 2022 Alumni of Influence Awards share a common passion for teaching dentistry. But their influence goes beyond the classroom and teaching clinic, spanning forensics, national and international organized dentistry and academic leadership. Meet our three honourees and find out how their extraordinary commitment to serving others is making dentistry a better profession.

MARIE DAGENAIS 8T8 DIP OR

Marie Dagenais’s career in health care seemed almost inevitable. Her father was a physician, her mother a nurse and her brother is a surgeon. “I was initially attracted to dentistry by the manual component. I was good with my hands,” she says.

But becoming a specialist, a teacher and eventually a leader in academia and organized dentistry was never by design. Dagenais has followed her passion, and that’s led to an esteemed career that’s made a mark on dentistry.

During her studies, Dagenais discovered an interest in radiology. “I was attracted to the fact that it required knowledge of medicine, pathology and disease processes,” she says. After completing her DMD and a residency at the Université de Montréal, she earned her diploma in oral radiology at the University of Toronto.

After graduation, she began to teach. “Teaching is a significant part of my life. Deep inside me, I’m a teacher,” she says of her 27 years as an associate professor at McGill University. “I enjoy sharing and learning from the students.”

She was the associate dean of academic affairs for 13 years, followed by two years as the chair of the admissions committee for McGill’s Faculty of Dentistry.

She served as president of the Association of Canadian Faculties of Dentistry and the Canadian Academy of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology, plus maintained a private practice. She still works as a consulting radiologist a few days a month.
 
For the past seven years, Dagenais has worked for the National Dental Examining Board of Canada, serving as its executive director and registrar since 2018.

Her contributions via this organization have been considerable. Professor Jim Lai, vice-dean of education at U of T’s Faculty of Dentistry, calls her an “innovative thought leader responsible for maintaining the quality of these evaluations and fostering the development of her team, the board of directors and future Canadian dentists.”

While Dagenais’s commitment to McGill and the wider dental community runs deep, she harbours a soft spot for U of T. “The training is exceptional. I’m very proud to have gone here.” With just a couple of oral radiology students each year, the program fosters a tight-knit community. “We all know each other. The graduates are like family.”

VICTOR MONCARZ 6T9, 7T3 DIP OMFS

For Victor Moncarz, treating patients abroad has had a profound influence on his life and career.
Born in the USSR to Holocaust survivors, his family immigrated to Canada when he was eight. By age 12, he was working in a factory on Saturdays to help support the family.

Moncarz’s specialty training and early work years were busy: he and his wife, Sharon, a teacher, had three children in six years while they paid down student debt. Moncarz turned down an internship in Israel and a fellowship in Europe. “We felt we missed out,” he says.

In 1981, the family headed to Montpellier, France, where Moncarz took on a hospital fellowship in plastic surgery. He learned to speak and write in French and treated facial and jaw injuries and performed plastic surgery. “It honed my professional skills,” he says of the intensive experience.

In the late 1980s, he went overseas again, taking an unpaid sabbatical to work at the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem during a Palestinian uprising. “It was at the epicentre of trauma,” says Moncarz, who treated patients with armed guards outside the door. “I’d never seen a gun- shot wound in my life.”

Those experiences opened the door to national and inter- national appointments, including executive director of the International Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons and president of the Canadian Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons.

Moncarz’s local contributions have been notable, too. Since 1974, he’s worked in the department of surgery at North York General Hospital. He’s been a clinical instructor in oral and maxillofacial surgery at the Faculty since 1975. “Teaching has been the highlight of my career. It’s so enriching,” says Moncarz. He further supported students as a bilingual examiner for the Royal College of Dentists of Canada.

“I consider myself such a fortunate man,” says Moncarz, whose travels taught him the value of life balance, so he maintains hobbies, and just took up stand-up paddle boarding and guitar. His students, patients and colleagues would say they’re the fortunate ones.

FRANK STECHEY 7T1

When it was first suggested he study dentistry, Frank Stechey was aghast. “There’s no way I’m putting my fingers in people’s mouths all day,” he says now with a laugh.

He overcame his initial reluctance to spend more than 30 years in general dentistry, while also becoming an innovator in sports dentistry, forensic dentistry and teaching. Today, Stechey is grateful for that long-ago advice and those who supported him at the Faculty of Dentistry.

After his undergraduate degree, Stechey planned on pursuing a master’s, but a mentor suggested dentistry. After briefly running a practice in Bramalea after graduation, he was offered a teaching position at a dental residency in Hamilton in 1973, so he moved and set up a practice there.

He began volunteering as a team dentist for the likes of the Hamilton Bulldogs, Toronto Rock and Canada’s national lacrosse team. Stechey then developed custom mouth guards not only for each individual, but for the sport and position the athlete played. “The mouth guard for a quarterback is different from what a tackle needs,” he explains. He was also consulted in the development of a line of over-the-counter guards for amateur athletes.

“It was through sports that I got into forensic dentistry,” says Stechey. Patterns he’d noticed in sports injuries helped him see correlations in domestic abuse cases.
 
Through lectures and papers he’s taught police, teachers, physicians and nurses how to identify potential abuse cases. He established and served as the first clinical director of a medical-dental clinic for Hamilton’s Children’s Aid Society. As a result of his wide-ranging expertise in forensic dentistry — he created a search warrant template for collecting dental evidence — Stechey was the only Canadian dentist invited to join New York City’s dental identification team to help identify 9/11 victims.

He’s received numerous honours and awards, but is proudest of serving as a clinical instructor at the Faculty of Dentistry and George Brown College, where he helped the next generation of dental professionals realize putting their fingers in other people’s mouths wasn’t all that bad.

Top Photo: Marie Dagenais (Fred Cattroll), Victor Mocarz (Stef + Ethan), and Frank Stechey (Stef + Ethan)

Interested in more stories? Read the PDF edition of the U of T Dentistry Magazine Winter/Spring 2022 Issue