Dr Aruna Thakur

In recognition of her exceptional dedication to providing services to disadvantaged people who require psychiatric attention in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, the City of Saskatoon has named a street after Dr Aruna Thakur of Burnaby, BC.

Dr Thakur’s patients organized a campaign to have a street named in her honor to acknowledge the contributions she’s made to the mental health of the people of Saskatoon. Dr Thakur came to Saskatchewan via England from her native India in 1967 and practised with her late husband, Dr Kripa Thakur, in a clinical psychiatry practice for close to 30 years. Dr Thakur also joined the University of Saskatchewan’s Department of Psychiatry as a clinical professor in 1994 while maintaining an active role in the community as a volunteer for numerous mental health and mental illness initiatives.

As president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association in 2003–04, Dr Thakur became aware of how much responsibility family doctors were taking for their patients’ psychiatric health. When Dr Thakur moved to BC in 2012 she chose to practise at the Central Park Medical Clinic in Burnaby. Having worked mostly in a hospital setting and in a psychiatry clinic in Saskatoon, she saw the move to BC as an opportunity to put some good ideas into practice: to work more closely with GPs and to offer herself as a resource—providing rapid-access appointments for their patients, as well as corridor consults about their own psychiatric cases, medical-legal issues, and available resources.

Thakur Street will be located in the Aspen Ridge neighborhood of Saskatoon.