Trish Newport

The sun beat down on a one-storey stucco building in Tchad – an African country where temperatures often reach a blistering 45 degrees Celsius. 

It was an afternoon in 2012 as a group of women made their way outside this malnutrition hospital run by the government health authority and the humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). 

Trish Newport (BA’00), a Canadian aid worker, watched the women in their beautifully patterned cotton robes raise their arms to the sky and begin crooning. “What are they singing about?” Trish asked a translator standing nearby. “A child has just died,” he replied. “They are praying for him not to return to earth as a human, because being a human in Tchad is too painful. They are asking for him to return as a bird or a tree instead.” In Tchad, malnutrition is responsible for nearly half of all child deaths. 

It was a scene that was difficult to witness, but Trish did not look away. She has been doing her best to confront these realities since she was a child growing up in Oakville, Ontario. “I have never thrived in ‘easy,’” she says. “I do better in situations where I am challenged physically, mentally, or emotionally.” 

She vividly remembers when a catastrophic famine struck Ethiopia in 1985. Sensationalized pictures of malnourished children flooded the news. “I had nightmares for years trying to figure out why these children were starving,” Trish says, “and why it wasn’t me in those pictures – it was my 10-year-old existential crisis.” 

That same year, Trish’s grandmother, a doctor, retired and went to Malawi, Africa, to practice medicine. She began writing her granddaughter monthly letters chronicling her experiences. “I was totally mesmerized,” Trish says. “She gave me a very strong desire to work in humanitarian aid.” 

Trish’s resolve never wavered after these early formative events and she pursued her vocation in a way that was methodical yet quirky. “My grandma told me that I marched to the beat of my own drummer,” she says. “As a kid, I was absolutely clueless about following any norms or social rules.” When she finished high school, Trish applied to Lakehead’s outdoor recreation program, believing it would help her develop as a person and move her forward on her journey towards humanitarian work. 

She became a well-known figure on the Thunder Bay campus. “Trish inspired a lot of students because she had strong values she lived by,” says fellow outdoor rec grad Rob Horne. 

“Trish was very passionate about animal rights and human rights. She was the first vegan I’d ever met but she was never preachy or judgmental about other people’s choices.” In third year, Trish, Rob, and several other outdoor rec students shared a house. Trish lived in a hammock in the basement. “She was in a funk band called the Filling Station,” he recalls. “At home, she’d play the didgeridoo and the bongo and write music.” 

Trish and Rob have remained good friends. “He’s like my family,” she says. After graduating, both of them ended up moving west and working with at-risk youth for the Yukon government. Trish’s fondness for testing herself meant that she wasn’t interested in renting an apartment or buying a house. Instead, her home for 10 years was a simple canvas tent. “I loved living in a context where if I didn’t cut the firewood or haul water, I would feel the consequences,” she says. 

Marching to the beat of her own drummer 

Several years later, Trish applied to the University of British Columbia’s nursing school and then got practical experience at the Whitehorse General Hospital. But even before she started her degree, she had her sights set on one organization alone – MSF. 

Also known as Doctors Without Borders, MSF’s stated purpose is to “provide medical humanitarian assistance to save lives and ease the suffering of people in crisis situations – including epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare – irrespective of race, religion, creed or political convictions.” 

In 2009, Trish embarked on her first overseas mission. Her destination was an MSF malnutrition hospital in Djibouti – a small country cradled in the Horn of Africa. During this period, Somalians displaced by civil war were travelling through Djibouti on route to Yemen. It was a gruelling trek made with little food or water. “Djibouti showed me that my role as an MSF nurse was more about supervision and teaching than direct clinical care,” Trish says. “It was about leadership and risk management, skills I learned in outdoor rec.”

The majority of people Trish works with on MSF missions are local staff from regions facing crisis. In a disputed territory between the border of South Sudan and Sudan, for instance, MSF is able to deliver excellent care in difficult conditions because of South Sudanese hospital workers. “I have a profound respect for the local staff,” Trish says, “their dedication is beyond anything I’ve seen.” 

It was on the border of two other African countries – Cameroun and the Central African Republic (CAR) – that Victoria Christensen-Lopez first encountered Trish. “We clicked straight away,” Victoria says. 

Now based at the MSF headquarters in Geneva, Victoria was in charge of the response to a massive influx of refugees from CAR following ethnic violence in 2014. Trish oversaw the medical side of the operation. “People were walking for weeks to get to the border of Cameroun,” Trish says. “One family arrived at our health centre after eating only leaves for weeks.”

Trish and Victoria became a closeknit team. “She’d come to my room at 4:30 in the morning,” Victoria says, “climb onto my bed with her laptop and we’d have coffee and do paperwork for a couple of hours.” Since then Victoria has seen Trish take on increasingly important roles. “You could easily underestimate Trish when you first meet her,” says Victoria. “She is physically small, only about 5’2”, but she has an internal strength beyond anything you’d imagine and a huge capacity for compassion.”

Victoria was also impressed by Trish’s fearlessness. “She has this peace with her mortality that most people don’t,” she explains. It was a quality that became indispensable when Trish accepted a post as a project coordinator responding to the Mosul war in Iraq. “In 2014, ISIS took over Mosul – a city of more than 1.8 million – and controlled it for two years,” Trish says. “Then in 2016, the Iraqi Army, the Kurdish Peshmerga, and the US army launched an offensive to take it back.” 

MSF was there to provide trauma stabilization to the injured – mostly civilians but sometimes soldiers if the army response team was overwhelmed. “To treat the wounded right away,” Trish says, “MSF moved their clinics every time the combat zone moved – at some points, we were only 2 km from the front line.”

When Trish and her team were closest to the action, they wore bulletproof jackets and took other precautions to ensure that they stayed safe. 

Even in the bleakest of circumstances, Trish finds hope. “I have witnessed the incredible power of humans, from both the positive and the negative perspectives. And I have seen the strength of the human spirit.” 

Friends she has made like Mahmoud – a Mosul resident and a guard at MSF’s trauma stabilization unit – inspire Trish with their resilience. Mahmoud was a familiar sight in the city because he always carried a mint plant with him. The small potted plant had been grown by his youngest daughter and he’d promised to care for it when his family went to a displacement camp to escape the conflict. 

“On days when the fighting was really intense,” Trish wrote in a story for the Globe and Mail newspaper, “I would look outside the clinic to see Mahmoud sitting calmly in his shelter – with the plant on his lap.” When it was time for Trish to return home to the Yukon, Mahmoud brought her some mint seeds. “He asked me to plant the seeds at home, where the plants could have a better life.”

Despite the intense nature of the high-security assignments Trish chooses, she says she laughs a lot. Once, in Niger, Trish and a colleague were working late at headquarters. “He texted me saying ‘What are you doing?’ and me, being a geek, texted back, ‘I’m hiding.’” As he began counting down from 10, Trish looked around wildly for a place to conceal herself – there was nothing but a big table and an armoire. 

Trish opened the armoire and saw that the bottom shelf was empty. “It was only about a foot and a half tall, but I do yoga so I’m super bendy,” Trish says. She wedged herself into the shelf and shut the door. Suddenly, she heard voices. Her colleague was called outside and footsteps began ringing down the corridor. She felt a creeping dread when she realized it was her boss and all of the staff delegates. They paused at her empty office and her boss said, “This room is free, let’s meet here.”

Should I stay or should I go now? 

Trish was stuck, in more ways than one. Should she make her escape after everyone dispersed or stay – twisted up like a pretzel – where she would overhear confidential information? “I have to get out now,” Trish decided. 

The delegates, deep in conversation, fell silent when the armoire door swung open and an arm, followed by a head and then the rest of Trish, emerged from the tiny space. Trish straightened herself up and said – with a puzzled expression on her face – “Well, it wasn’t in there,” and walked out of the room.

In between MSF missions, Trish returns to the Yukon – a place where she can recharge emotionally and psychologically. “When I’m home, I want to be moving and in the trees. I go hiking and walking with my friends – both my human friends and my dog friends.” 

Most recently, Trish has been in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), combatting Ebola. “It’s a horrible disease that attacks families and communities,” she says. “Initially, the virus has a 90-92% death rate.” During the DRC’s first outbreak of 2018, Trish ran an MSF project that used a new experimental Ebola vaccine to contain the outbreak. 

Trish’s willingness to reach out to those who are struggling, even when it would be easy to be overwhelmed with despair, has brought her fulfillment. “Every day I am grateful for who I am, for where I come from and how I live, for the people I have in my life, and for the work I do. I think I am one of the luckiest people in the world.