So many of the model skills I acquired over the decades are present in the artistic skillset that I employ on a daily basis as I make custom facial prostheses to replace absent ears, eyes, and noses (and combinations thereof) for those patients who have experienced cancer, trauma or were born with a congenital birth defect. When a patient loses part of their face, and if a surgeon cannot rebuild whatever is absent, then they come to our unit where the missing facial features are recreated using medical grade silicones. It’s rather like making special effects pieces but to the end goal that people do not become socially reclusive as they may otherwise become as a result of their facial difference. With a facial prosthesis that nobody notices, our patients can feel that they are able to get out and about again and can blend in with an unsuspecting general public that is oblivious to their prosthesis and facial difference. It’s a wonderful profession and I feel blessed to be working in it and where I do.

I am always keen to mention the hobby as I go about my business and give it the credit it rightly deserves – and when I presented at a local downtown school to offer careers advice, I mentioned the hobby and listed all the many and varied creative attributes it has given me – and it inspired me to write an article on my LinkedIn page.

"A surgeon had been lamenting how hard he finds it to train new surgeons these days as his new generation of students lack an inherent sense of spatial coordination in practical hand/eye skills due to no longer doing arts, crafts and making models as we once all did. Making scale models certainly helped me with that – and so many other aspects that I wrote a second article to try to encourage students coming into my allied medical profession to maintain their art and craft skills in an increasingly digital workplace."

I was a prolific modeler in my youth right through to my early ‘40s but had built less and less since I met my wife 11 years ago. We had got a house together and then built a very full and meaningful life with 8 rescue dogs and a couple of cats. Life was very good and much busier than I could ever have imagined for myself!  And a few years ago, we moved well out of the city and our new home didn’t have a den that I could use as my model room, so my model bench became used for practical storage in the garage.

But I still had the hobby in my heart and would still feel the hankering to head to my local model shops (and Toronto is completely blessed with a variety of amazing model shops! It has been modelling nirvana since I moved out here in 1996) as being in there is very calming for me to hang out with nice people and be amongst all the models (each is a box of possibility and potential) and enjoy a coffee as I relax and peruse the aisles  -- and I would just buy model magazines, to keep up to date with tips and techniques,  the new products and otherwise appreciate what other people had done -- and to build vicariously, so to speak, as it scratched that inner itch for me just sufficiently somehow.

And then the Coronavirus pandemic happened – and the Craniofacial Prosthetic Unit at Sunnybrook was very suddenly closed, and I was laid off for 6 months with no income and everyone had to remain home except for essential travel only.

Fortunately, we live on a nice country property well outside of Toronto, and I was busy virtually every day with all the many household projects that I had intended to do both in and around the house but had never had the time!

But I felt the stress of not knowing when things would improve sufficiently to go back to work and finally return to having an income again with the financial worries I felt. I wondered how best to deal with my feelings of uncertain concern as the weeks turned into months and the seasons slowly changed.

I had just a few models left in my model “stash” in the basement along with my boxed model paints and supplies, so I tidied and levelled a section of the unfinished half of the basement and, although money was tight, I invested in a new, simple desk as a workstation. And, sure enough, it was a wonderful distraction from the 24-hour anxiety-inducing news cycle and it felt as therapeutic as it always did! It was also nice to have a distraction in researching reference material of the spaceship I was making and learning how I was going to build and paint this new kit, and in so doing, maintain my fine motor skills in readiness for when I returned to work.

And after I was able to return to work, the communications department of my hospital asked a variety of employees “What’s getting you through?” the stresses and strains of this global pandemic. I offered up a piece on my model making. Of the many employees asked, I was one of just five staff members chosen to be profiled.

The attached photo (see above) of me at work was taken a few years ago by Media Services for another article – and I include it as, if you look closely and centered in the background, you will see the same two Airfix Series 1 model kits on the wall behind me that were handed to me by my brother - but really from my mum! -  way back in 1973.  The ones I got back then were obviously made and enjoyed, but these other two that I hunted down are there beside me as I spend a lot of time and long consecutive days with my patients and, as we chat as I work on them, they invariably ask me how I got into my profession – and I always start the story with those two kits. By showing the building and painting instructions on the reverse of the blister card, I can explain how everything I do here in my treatment room can be traced back to them; from the importance of orderly and progressive construction, working neatly and paying attention to details, following manufacturer’s instructions, being thorough and not moving on to another section until the preceding one is completed properly as laziness or haste will be revealed and regretted later, my learning of colour theory from Airfix and Humbrol paints and colour charts and employing various camouflage effects and techniques, etc.

Airfix was my first love in modelling, and it was only many, many years later that I suddenly realized why – because the Airfix kits always included finely detailed pilots and crew, and the figures were always my favourite part! As nice or affordable as some other kit manufacturers may have been, if the kit didn’t have a pilot (and many did not), I simply didn’t buy it! And I always liked the way the Airfix pilots looked too, no matter whether 1/72, 1/48 or 1/24 scales and I really went to town on the fine details.

And as the years went by, I found myself building and painting more figures as that was what I enjoyed the best and unintentionally gravitated to – the Airfix soldiers in HO/OO and then the larger Airfix 1/32 figures -- and then working on progressively larger models of my favourite science fiction and comic characters in 1/12 scale and then 1/9 scale, 1/8 and then 1/5 scales. You can see the progression of larger scale as the numbers draw smaller … And I naturally progressed to my working on real life people in 1/1 scale!

It all makes perfect sense to me how I would end up doing what I do at work today and how.  And I simply love my job today here at the hospital where I work and can make a difference in helping someone with my model and art skills in tandem with my UK technical training and healthcare experience. I feel that it’s a combination of the two that allows me to be at my best for my patients, as my profession truly is the perfect balance of art and science.

So thank you Airfix – for the hobby and myriad of kits, catalogues, paints and colour charts that have played no small part and helped me to help so many, many people in a very unique and valued way out here (and there only a handful of anaplastologists in the country and I was brought over as an international hire as I had a training and experience that nobody else in Canada had as a dental/maxillofacial technician working in the NHS).

As I always say, the hobby has never been better served by amazing model companies turning out constant scale kits of such exquisite quality. And yet, I feel that it has also never been needed more by a whole generation of kids that really could benefit from turning off all their busy digital devices and finding some quiet time as an alternative to gaming or television -- and simultaneously discovering some new creativity and other interest in their lives. The mind needs to quietly contemplate in a healthy manner and “process”, in a healthy way amidst the noise and the rush and push of the busy modern world and that’s what the hobby does – and I’m so glad that the hobby still delivers that for me today as much it always did!

An old friend and amazing model maker once told me, 'If everyone in the world built models, there wouldn’t be half the trouble that there is and the world would be a better place’. He was so right, and even more so today. And as the motto of my hobby shop says, “When in doubt, sprue, glue and brew!” I’ll drink to that.

We have included some of the products David mentioned in his article so that if anyone comes to mind who you think would benefit from a bit of Airfix TLC, you can share this with them and recreate some of David's favourite builds.