JOANNIE ROCHETTE
Every now and then, she will notice someone on a hospital ward giving her a certain look. A lingering glance that ponders if she is perhaps not just another typical student from McGill University’s Faculty of Medicine in Montréal. They know they have seen her face somewhere though they cannot place it right away. Eventually, the penny drops.
More than nine years have passed since that heartbreaking week at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, when Rochette lost her beloved mother, Thérèse, to a heart attack. Somehow, she summoned the courage to produce the defining moment of her career — and as the world held its collective breath she skated to a bronze medal in Vancouver.
As it turned out, Rochette never competed again, moving on to a life of show skating and other off-ice pursuits such as skydiving.
In 2015, she entered McGill University, fulfilling a life-long desire to study medicine. She now spends most of her days on hospital wards, clad in a plain white coat. A year from now, she will be addressed as Dr. Rochette — a thought that evoked a burst of laughter when this reality was presented to her.
Rochette will submit her application for the residency program in November — “that’s the big date everyone is kind of dreading … and we get our answer in March,” she said. Interviews follow in early 2020. Rochette
