While his family came to Canada in the 1950s as refugees, a local dentist has built a life in Collingwood, paying society back for the kindness they showed him growing up.
For this week’s edition of People of Collingwood we sat down with Milan Somborac, retired dentist and author.
Q: What is your background? How long have you lived in Collingwood?
A: I was born in Belgrade (Serbia). My parents brought my sister and me to Canada in 1952. I was 12.
None of us could speak English. We were refugees. We were on welfare.
My father practised dentistry for 20 years before we came here. He had to go back to school.
When he graduated at age 51, he was the oldest ever to graduate from the University of Toronto dental school.
My mother was a lawyer. She took her legal training and worked at Ontario Hydro.
We went from being on welfare, to that. My sister became a teacher and I became a dentist, and we paid society back.
Q: What brought you to Collingwood?
I graduated in 1965 from the University of Toronto in dentistry and moved to Collingwood.
Dental practices are bought and sold. There was a practice for sale by Dr. Bill Blakeley. A lot of local people here would know that name. He sold me his practice.
I was supposed to work with him for six months or so, but after the first week he said, “You know, I don’t think you and I are going to get along, so why don’t you take over right now?”
I did, and we remained the best of friends.
Q: The person who nominated you mentioned that you invented a specific kind of dental implant. Can you tell me about that?
A: There were four Canadian dentists who took dental implants from the drawing board to regulatory clearance and compliance. I’m one of those.
We sold the implant in the Caribbean, Canada and South Korea. We managed to launch the implant careers of 500 dentists or so in those areas.
Q: Is it a special kind of dental implant?
A: When people lose their teeth, the dental implant replaces the lost root. Then, you can put tooth on top of it or stabilize false teeth.
There are about 4 million denture wearers in Canada.
The leading implant manufacturer comes from Sweden. Their catalogue came with more than 2,000 components. It had been brought down from 4,000 components.
Our implant had 20. It simplified implant treatment enormously.
Q: What made you decide to move toward invention?
A: I published Canada’s first paper on implants in 1972.
At that time, there were three others world-wide.
Now, there are 400 to 500 published every month.
The first implant patent came out in 1913, and at that time they had a very high failure rate.
Now, implants have the highest success rate of anything we do in dentistry.
It was a high-risk thing. It took a million dollars, three years and four patents. My son is a mechanical engineer and has an MBA. We worked on this implant together.
Q: How did it feel to be able to work on that together?
A: It was satisfying. When we got into implants, there were 80 companies world-wide making about 200 different kinds of implants. Now there are probably 200 companies making thousands of implants and the price has dropped. Nobody is making a buck. Dentists are making money placing implants, but the manufacturers aren’t.
So, we got out of it in 2008 because of that.
Q: When you retired, you started writing. Can you tell me a bit about that?
I retired from dentistry after 53 years. My next career is really blogging and writing about investing.
I’ve had some luck. I’ve been in the stock market for 53 years. The last 20 or so have been successful. The first 30 were mistakes. (laughs)
My first book came out in 2004. In 2017, I released my book Monday Morning Millionaire.
Rosi (my wife) gave me the idea for the title.
If you do the right things with your investments, once you retire, on Monday morning before noon you’ll be able to make more money than you did in your best week while you were working.
It takes time, but it’s do-able for anyone who doesn’t spend foolishly.
It’s important for people to save. Being old and poor at the same time is not a good combination, and many Canadians are headed for that because of their inability to save.
Primarily, it’s because they have too much house and too much car.
Most Canadians of my generation grew up in a house half the size of the house they own now.
We have houses with four bathrooms, but three people live there. When I grew up, you’d live in a house with one bathroom and six people living in it.
People who sell houses take advantage of our nesting needs. They want you to pour as much as you can into it. Then you become enslaved.
I think Rousseau said, the minute you begin to own things, you’re no longer free.
That’s part of the reason so many Canadians have to reverse mortgage their homes to retire, or sell it and downsize.
With proper planning, those kinds of things can be avoidable. So many people use money they don’t have to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.
Q: For how long have you been playing the violin?
I’m an amateur violinist.
I’ve been at it for more than 70 years, and I’m still not getting any better. (laughs)
I am part of a trio and we play at the Collingwood library twice a year. The next concert is June 4 at noon.
Q: What does the future hold for you?
A: I want to keep working on this Monday Morning Millionaire program. It takes up more time now than dentistry did.
If you like what you’re doing, it’s not work.
I do presentations for dental societies talking about the book and program. If I get any money, I donate it to the Salvation Army and Wikipedia.
Back when my family were refugees, the Salvation Army helped us a lot. They didn’t ask us what church we go to. They’re very effective users of whatever money they collect.
It feels good, and they certainly deserve it. I hope they’re able to help other people. The United States and Canada were both built by immigrants who were all escaping something.
Editor’s note: A career celebration will be taking place for Somborac on June 6 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Bear Estates. The event is open to members of the public who would like to express well wishes. All attendees will also receive a copy of Monday Morning Millionaire.
For our feature People of Collingwood, we’ll be speaking with interesting people who are either from or are contributing to the Collingwood community in some way. This feature will run on CollingwoodToday every Saturday. If you’d like to nominate or suggest someone to be featured in People of Collingwood, email [email protected].
