Community & Alumni Blog
Bridge-builder profile: Julian & Lynnette Regehr
Starting medical school is challenging enough when you’re in your early 20s – never mind starting when you’re 33 with a wife and children.
But that’s what Julian Regehr did. After working as a paramedic for 10 years, he quit his job in the summer of 2005 and started med school that September.
Before med school, Regehr and his wife, Lynnette, had long discussions about what it would mean for him to go back to school.
Regehr graduated in 2009 and is currently in the midst of completing a five-year residency in emergency medicine. His life over the past eight years has included longer days and shorter nights than he and Lynnette anticipated, but he says it has never been the wrong decision.
“At the end of the day, I didn’t want to look back on a career and say, ‘I think I could have done something more,’” Regehr says. “Being a paramedic was almost done teaching me things, and I wasn’t done learning.”
Regehr started his academic career in 1990 when he began studying at Mennonite Brethren Bible College (MBBC). He initially wanted to become a musician, and graduated in 1995 with a degree in Christian Studies from MBBC as well as a B.A. in Music from the University of Winnipeg.
“Part way through my undergraduate degrees, it dawned on me – or I listened to the reality – that I wasn’t going to be a professional musician,” Regehr says. “So, I started to rethink what I was up to.”
Health care had always been one of his interests, so in 1992, he took a first responder course and started volunteering with the provincial Emergency Medical Service. In 1995, he was hired as a paramedic in Winnipeg.
Interacting with patients is what Regehr enjoyed best about working as a paramedic, and he believes working as an emergency room physician will allow him to impact even more people in a positive way.
“I think I have an ability to connect really rapidly and generate a relationship with people – such as it is – in a short period of time,” he says. “I can make a connection with them and walk with them during that short period of time so they feel there is someone on their side [and] engaged in what they’re going through.”
Regehr says that studying at MBBC was a time of questioning and learning what it means to live out the Anabaptist Christian life responsibly and faithfully.
His time at MBBC also introduced him to the people who remain the most important to him, including his core group of friends and his wife.
It’s for these reasons that the Regehrs recently purchased a tile as part of CMU’s Come Together: Be a Bridge Builder Campaign.
“We have seen many people go through that school and go on to do and learn great things. We will always be committed to CMU,” Regehr says.
“If the kinds of things we thought served us so well can be taught to the next generation of young people, we want to support that.”
You can make a difference in the life of CMU for less than $14 a month. Find out how you can become a Bridge Builder and support CMU's new Library, Learning Commons and Bridge by going here and clicking on "Alumni: Buy a Tile."
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