As a second-year medical student at the University of British Columbia, Greg Powell visited a mobile army surgical hospital in Saigon during the Vietnam conflict, an experience his Alberta Order of Excellence profile says shaped his later work. In 2021 the Government of Alberta named him to the Order for co-founding the Shock Trauma Air Rescue Service, known across the province as STARS.
A childhood in Edmonton and a farm near Blackfalds
Dwight Gregory Powell was born in Welland, Ontario, on November 24, 1947. His family moved to Alberta when he was about six months old, and he grew up in Edmonton. He spent summers on relatives’ farmland west of Blackfalds.
Building emergency medicine in Calgary
Powell studied medicine at UBC, completed family medicine training in Calgary and trained in emergency medicine at McGill. He returned to Foothills Hospital in the late 1970s as Director of Emergency Medicine and helped plan and launch the Emergency Medicine Residency program with the University of Calgary. He also contributed to the formation of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians in the early 1980s.
How STARS grew beyond Calgary
Powell co-founded STARS, which flies helicopters staffed with medical crews to patients who cannot otherwise reach care in time. The profile does not give a founding year. A community fundraiser in Hanna, a year or two after STARS began operating, led to the STARS Foundation.
Bases followed in Edmonton in 1991 and Grande Prairie in 2006, with operations opening in Regina, Saskatoon and Winnipeg between 2011 and 2012. The profile credits Powell with introducing night vision goggle technology for helicopter crews and blood product transport, and with building the STARS Emergency Link Centre, a 24-hour hub connecting rural providers with specialists.
Honours and roles beyond STARS
Powell earned his pilot’s licence at age 26. His honours include the Alberta Centennial Medal in 2005, recognition as one of Alberta’s Physicians of the Century and the Order of Canada in 2006, the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012, the naming of the Foothills Medical Centre helipad in his honour in 2015 and induction into the Canadian Aviation Hall of Fame in 2018. He retired as STARS President and CEO in 2012.
He chaired Emergency Medical Services for the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics and served as Medical Director for Internationally Protected Persons at the 2002 G8 Summit. He sits on the Health Quality Council of Alberta and the Foothills Country Hospice board and advocates for organ and tissue donation. The profile does not describe STARS’s finances, so this account stays with the record of Powell’s career.
