Haldimand Workforce: Haldimand Is A Place For Healthy Roots

Cayuga Family Dental is proof that caring for local community is a valuable reward.

In dentistry, there’s often a lot of talk about “roots”. Like those on trees, dental roots are the bottoms of your teeth that exist below the gums. Even though we can’t see them, they are critically important to the health of our teeth.

It’s an apt metaphor for Dr. Benjamin Chiu, the owner and dentist practitioner at Cayuga Family Dental. His move to Haldimand back in 2017 took many of his friends and family by surprise, he says. “I grew up in Toronto,” Chiu explains. “And so, most of my friends wondered why I was leaving
the big city, and all of the money I could be making there, to go live in the country.”

The answer, for Dr. Chiu, was related to what he learned in dental school about healthy roots. “I moved because I knew it would be better for me,” he says. “It’s all of the underlying factors that really made my big decision an easy one.”

In addition to running his business, Dr. Chiu recently expanded Cayuga Family Dental into a new home, offering a broader set of services and adding staff. In recent years, Cayuga Family Dental has added an in-house specialist that specializes in sedation and surgery, as well as two additional family dentists and a nurse to their crew of three hygienists. “We’ve essentially grown the practice from just one dentist to three dentists and a specialist,” says Dr. Chiu.

Dr. Chiu is also a new dad – his son just celebrated his first birthday. So, there’s really not a lot of “spare time” for him.

But despite the busyness, Dr. Chiu believes that moving to Haldimand was still the right call. “I think about what my life in Toronto and Bowmanville – where I worked my first year after dental school – was like,” he says. “And I know I made the right choice.”

The reason, he says, is due to the hustle and bustle of the big city. “I’d have ten or twenty appointments each day,” Dr. Chiu recalls. “And they’d all be interested in the immediate problem. ‘I have a toothache,’ or ‘I have a cavity.’ But they’d be uninterested in more complete care. They wouldn’t have the time.”

But in Haldimand, Dr. Chiu says, it’s different. “Things are a bit calmer here, for sure!” he laughs. “I find that patients are a lot more willing to actually listen to you, to consider their overall health here. And that matters to me, who wants to make sure they’re as healthy as possible.”

It’s not just the patients that have made the move to Haldimand a rewarding one. “I’ve become an outdoors person!” Dr. Chiu exclaims. “I have an inflatable kayak that I take down the Grand River.” He also lives just 15 minutes away from his office. For a new dad, that means the world. “Being so
close to home – that matters to me,” he explains.

Moving to Haldimand, taking over an established business in Cayuga Family Dental, and then working to expand his business – all while growing his own family – was the best decision of Dr. Chiu’s life, he says. And he encourages skilled professionals like him to consider Haldimand’s communities as destinations as they start their own careers.

“If you have the right type of business,” he says, “you’re going to have a long list of clients who don’t want to drive into the city. You’ll be able to provide better service, and you’ll be happier.”

So, why wouldn’t you want to make the move yourself?