Honoured alum relishes time spent in Saskatchewan

Carl Zylak, the son of Polish immigrants, grew up in small-town Saskatchewan. He started school at age five, walking three quarters of a mile to the nearest school. By the time he was eight, the family was living in Yellow Creek and he was hitching a ride on a freight train with his brother for weekly violin lessons in Wakaw. By age 10, he won first prize in the Saskatoon Kiwanis Music Festival.

A few years later, Zylak’s parents bought a general store in Glenavon, 100 kilometres east of Regina. Zylak was now taking violin lessons in Regina. “Violin lessons were on Friday as I had to work in the store on Saturday,” Zylak explained. “I only went to school four days a week. It was great.”

Music continued to weave its way through his life. As a student, he played with both the Regina and Saskatoon Symphony Orchestras, and later in life he played Ave Maria at two of his children’s weddings.

Zylak was also a gifted athlete. His Campion high school football team won the provincial championship in 1954. Later in life, he curled and competed in the 1996 US Men’s Championship. “Sports, in particular golf, were a nice diversion,” Zylak said. “I could forget about work.”

But education – and ultimately medicine – became the central focus of Zylak’s life.

He boarded near City Hospital while attending university and has chilly memories of walking across the 25^th Street Bridge on winter mornings and evenings. “Medicine was a fairly new faculty, so we were a small class and a small faculty,” Zylak explained. “It was hard work but good times.”

Zylak chose to focus on radiology, with a residency at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, followed by 10 years practicing in Winnipeg. He went on to accept the position of Professor and Chair of the Department of Radiology at McMaster University and, later, Chair at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit.

“Radiology has just burgeoned during my career,” Zylak said. “I started my career interpreting plain film images, examining the G.I. tract with barium. Interventional and newer imaging techniques were in their infancy. For example, our son Christopher practices interventional and neuro-interventional radiology in Spokane, treating intracranial aneurysms with catheter and coil techniques, etc. The images we can obtain with these new tools, CT, MR, PET, ultrasound, nuclear medicine are unbelievably spectacular in facilitating the diagnostic process.

“I loved what I did,” Zylak said. “I was the doctors’ doctor, helping physicians to solve their patients’ problems.”

Zylak grew up in small-town Saskatchewan where helping others was a way of life and consistently tried to give as much back to his profession as it had given him. He was class president during medical school and went on to become president of the Society of Thoracic Radiology, the Canadian Association of Radiologists and the Radiological Society of North America.

“My greatest satisfaction has been in giving back to others, helping medical students and residents to learn as well as sharing knowledge through research publications, presentations and professional associations,” Zylak said.

His father left Poland when he was just 17 years old. His mother’s family of six was also from Poland, moving to 160 acres of bushland, living in a shelter dug out of the side of a hill. Their dream was to give their children a life they could never hope to have themselves, a life full of endless possibilities for future generations.

“Their real and proven bravery has motivated and guided me throughout my life,” Zylak said. “They are the pioneers on which this great province was built.”

“Whenever I went home to Glenavon, I would often stand in a field engulfed by the vastness of the horizon and the prairie sky. It reinforced just how insignificant and unimportant we are,” Zylak continued. “It’s a good thing to realize – that we are just a small piece of a wonderful puzzle, the puzzle of life.”

Zylak was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science last month at the 2015 convocation ceremony, an award reflective of his lifetime of work in both Canada and the United States. Other medicine convocation award recipients were V. Mohan Malhotra and Bruce Schnell, both of whome were also awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science, and Kailash Prasad who was awarded an Earned Doctor of Science.

For a full list of honourees, click here.