Since 2018, Windmill has received over $2 million in donations from TD Bank Group (TD), through its corporate citizenship platform, the TD Ready Commitment. TD’s latest three-year pledge of $450,000 will support continued enhancement of our services including coaching, mentorship and Canadian financial literacy training for skilled immigrants and newcomers like Trushar.
A pharmacist from India, Trushar is now based in New Brunswick, where he is happy to serve a large community and looks forward to opening his own pharmacy soon.
Trushar came to Canada in 2019 with a bachelor's degree in pharmacy from Sardar Patel University in Anand, a city in the state of Gujarat in India. He joined his wife, who had moved to Canada in 2015 to pursue her own degree in the same subject. They hadn’t meant to spend so many years apart, but Trushar needed to apply for his Canadian visa multiple times. It was a happy day when he finally received permission to immigrate.
With his degree already complete, Trushar needed to pass a series of exams to become a certified pharmacist in Canada. As he studied, he and his wife got by thanks to her steady job at a hospital in London, Ontario.
They were enjoying London and had met many new friends and colleagues in that city, but soon learned it was going to be cost prohibitive for them to both pursue professional pharmacist licenses in Ontario, where the 10-month International Pharmacy Graduate program costs $18,000 per person. They set off for New Brunswick, which offers a more streamlined pathway for foreign-trained pharmacists looking to set up practice. There, they enrolled in a six-month paid internship program in St. John that allowed them to gain the required training and experience to become pharmacists in that province.
Now, they are both working as pharmacists; she in a full-time role with a chain retailer, and he as an independent consultant. Trushar says he would prefer being in London, where he felt at home, but is learning to enjoy New Brunswick, where he travels all over the province, sometimes 500 kilometres from his home, and works up to 52 hours per week to deliver his services. He says New Brunswick could use a major influx of pharmacists to alleviate the shortage he sees in the profession, estimating a need for 50 to 100 new pharmacists could be helpful.
“People are so nice in the Maritimes – I love it. The most important thing for people to know when coming to Canada to become a pharmacist is how long it takes to pass exams, and how expensive it can be. The biggest challenge for us was managing finances. But my wife and I both made it, with help from Windmill, and now in four to five years I plan to open my own pharmacy.”
With funding from TD, Windmill offers customized support, including micro loans to help skilled immigrants and newcomers navigate the Canadian job market with confidence.
