A few years ago, while sitting at her desk at University Hospital Southampton on England’s southern coastline, Fiona Dalton was pinged with an enticing recruitment email: Providence Health Care in Vancouver.
“I just thought, ‘Well, maybe I won’t delete that immediately. Maybe I’ll have a look at it,’” shares Dalton, sitting on the 11th floor of Providence Health Care offices on Hornby Street in downtown Vancouver. During Dalton’s six years as chief executive for University Hospital Southampton National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust, she commonly received emails from hospitals around the world that were interested in scooping her up. And although she was “actually really happy doing the job” in England, it was her sense of adventure, and the work to be done here in Vancouver, that helped her decide to pick up her life and move it to Canada.
“This role was probably the only city, and the only organization, that I would have left the hospital that I was working at in the UK for,” she says, seated at a long desk overlooking a collection of shiny glass buildings, with the North-Shore mountains peeking through just slightly. Dalton grew up in the Yorkshire moors, an idyllic-looking place covered with rolling hills-a decent match for Vancouver when it comes to natural beauty. She has always loved the outdoors. “A couple of times in my career I’ve taken a little bit of time out, partly to recharge my batteries, but also because there’s loads of other things I’m interested in life,” she shares, detailing her time leading volunteer hiking expeditions for underprivileged youth in places like Alaska and Africa, and even in Saywood on Vancouver Island.