Plasticity: My Life and Vocation

Plasticity: My Life and Vocation is the autobiography of Dr. Mirek Stranc, a world-renowned Plastic Surgeon. It captures his childhood as a displaced person during World War II, forcibly taken from his home in Poland, loaded in a cattle car and eventually left beside the rail tracks in the middle of the Siberian winter. Plasticity documents the tenacity of the human spirit, as refugees struggled to build a life from nothing, spending years in Siberia and then the Middle East as the war shifted around the continents.

At the close of the war Mirek was moved to England, where he worked to overcome language barriers and other challenges to finally start his medical career. During his studies, his passion for medicine helped him find key mentors who helped guide his career. He specialized in plastic surgery at a time when the field was exploding with new ideas and innovative methods of treatment. He has done pioneering work in lip reconstruction, nasal fractures, and cranio-facial surgery.

In his memoir, Dr. Stranc offers his perspective on the history of medicine (and plastic surgery, in particular), as well as his reflections about how the Canadian medical system and medicine in general have changed over the past fifty years.