This is the second part of a two-part Hometown Hero story about four medical school graduates from Quesnel who are entering the world of healthcare. The first part was published May 15.
Jordyn Henderson, Arlo Johnson, Carmen Huang and Cynthia Van Dykhuizen are the now graduates of the program. Henderson graduated from Correlieu in 2017, Huang in 2016, Van Dykhuizen in 2015 and Johnson graduated from Quesnel Secondary School in 2008.
Henderson's goal was to practice family medicine in a rural area, in her third year she did a program in Terrace.
"I really fully fell in love with rural family medicine," she said. "So, when I applied to CaRMS, I just applied to family and I wanted to go back to Terrace and so I matched to rural family medicine and I'm going back to Terrace!"
CaRMS is the Canadian medical residency matching system. It's the system that medical school graduates go through to get placements for their first careers in medicine. The system means new doctors are placed in residency programs based on their ranking of different areas. While Henderson, Huang and Van Dykhuizen all went for family medicine and are staying in B.C., Johnson is going to Saskatchewan for specialized ER training.
"I was born and raised here in northern B.C. so I think my heart has always very much been with rural, northern B.C.," Henderson said. "When I was thinking about what career I wanted to do, I knew I wanted to live and raise my family in hopefully northern and rural B.C."
Both Henderson and Huang said one of the reasons they wanted to go into family medicine is the wide variety of work it offers. Family doctors have the ability to work with different patients who have different needs. But they can also participate in births, surgeries, clinic work and much, much more.
"My journey to medicine, it's been a long time coming," Huang said. "Inspired a lot by the health care that I received in Quesnel from my family doctor and how they treated my grandparents throughout the process."
Huang was also considering plastic surgery as an area because plastic surgeons also see a wide variety of cases.
"But with family medicine, there's longitudinal care. You work with all age groups and I was just really trying to figure out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life," she said. She entered both plastic surgery and family medicine in CaRMS and is happy to have been matched to family medicine in Victoria. "I'm really excited to start my next journey on the island."
She said family medicine gives her the opportunity to discover new passions and interests in medicine and the flexibility means as a doctor she can grow and work towards whatever passions she finds.
Huang was born and raised in Quesnel and said she would love to come back to north once she can and ensure people in underserved communities receive equitable care.
"Like Jordyn, I fell in love with northern B.C. and the community and the people that are there," she said. "Because of my experience with my family doctor in Quesnel I want to go back and work in rural and northern communities and give back to the population and the people kind of made me who I am now."
Throughout medical school, students learn largely from the same materials in the first few years before starting rotations in health care settings. While it can be overwhelming at times, the grads said it was a very rewarding experience.
"It's a whole new world and every day you're exposed to so many things you've never even heard about before," Henderson said. "In a short period of time you become somewhat proficient at understand what's going on."
Between a healthcare roadshow, peer mentoring programs and speaking at the Canadian Medicine Hall of Fame discovery days and health science event, twice and all around supporting rural healthcare, Henderson earned the 2025 Canadian Medical Education Rising Star Certificate of Excellence. Both Henderson and Van Dykhuizen participated in the road show, travelling to different places to try to engage high school students to be interested in entering the field.
Huang said being able to show students in rural communities that people in the north and in rural communities can become doctors is essential to helping recruit more doctors, especially for underserved areas.
"I was first kind of introduced to medicine because of the travelling road show that came to Quesnel," Huang said adding it was extremely valuable to see the road show and Northern Medical Program info sessions at school. "Having those opportunities as a young individual, young student, to learn more about what careers are out there and seeing that that possibility is something I can actually do and achieve."
The grads said they are very thankful to everyone who helped them get where they are from the instructors in the Northern Medical Program to the doctors they worked with in healthcare settings to teachers and support networks they had growing up in Quesnel that helped them get where they are now.
This was the second of a two-part Hometown Hero featuring the four medical grads. The part featuring Johnson and Van Dykhuizen was published online on May 15.
