Gerry Leinweber: A life of service – and a little hockey

Alberta optometrist Dr. Gerry Leinweber (OD ’80) wears many titles with pride. Optometrist. Practice owner. Clinic director. Consultant. Founder. Volunteer. Donor. Husband. Father. Grandfather.  

But it might be a title he no longer holds – that of hockey player – that influenced his career path as he received surprise passes and stickhandled the puck in new directions. 

Leinweber grew up in Jasper, playing hockey amidst the mountains. When he was in goal, he did well at stopping the close-in shots but had trouble with the long ones. Noticing the problem, his mother took him to an optometrist and he got his first glasses at the age of 12. 

“Lo and behold, I was watching TV with my dad, and I said, ‘Hey, I can see the puck!’” Leinweber remembers. 

That moment planted the seed of interest in optometry. In 1976, Leinweber went to optometry school at the University of Waterloo, where he became class president and co-publisher of the student newsletter. His favourite extracurricular activity, however, was hockey. 

Leinweber was part of a School intramural team, the Flying Eyes. A tournament against archrival Math was where he caught the attention of the clinic director, Dr. Raymond Pellowe, a hockey fan who was looking for students to participate in an eye care project in Jamaica. 

“I had scored a big goal in overtime, so Ray knew all about me. I think he picked me because of my hockey scoring, not because of anything else,” says Leinweber. 

Starting Canadian Vision Care

The five weeks in Jamaica changed Leinweber’s life. By staying with local members of the Lions Club in four different towns, he was not only immersed in the culture, he saw the impact both local and international volunteers could have in communities where poverty was widespread.  

After forming close bonds with some of the Jamaican Lions, Leinweber would go on to get involved with the Red Deer Lions Club in Alberta. Currently, he’s membership chair and president-elect, having served as president multiple times previously. All that, however, was still in the future for a 20-something optometry student suddenly seeing a patient population where severe ocular disease was much more widespread. 

“I saw a man who’d had cataract surgery but never got a pair of glasses afterwards,” remembers Leinweber. “Nowadays, everyone gets implants, but back in the old days, people would have to wear extremely thick aphakic glasses. We had just two pairs of donated aphakic glasses with us, and when we put the first pair on this guy, he wouldn’t even let us try the second pair to see if they were better. He just jumped up and down, saying, ‘Praise be to Jesus! I see again!’” 

The experience had such a profound impact on Leinweber that after he graduated, he wrote to some of the Jamaican Lions with the idea of organizing another eye care project there. The response was beyond enthusiastic. 

In 1981, Leinweber went to Jamaica again with Andy Patterson, who had also participated in the 1979 trip, and two more Waterloo OD ’80 classmates, Gord Hensel and Brad Almond. Upon their return, they incorporated a charity, Canadian Vision Care (CVC).  

“We now do projects all over the world, wherever there’s need,” says Leinweber. “We started an optometry school in Malawi, we have a full-time clinic in Montego Bay and we’ve done projects in Canada too.”

CVC has worked in more than 20 countries. In addition to performing eye exams and dispensing eyewear, it has set up glaucoma clinics and surgical clinics, preventing thousands of people from going blind. The charity calculates the total value of the services it has provided since 1981 at over $127 million, of which less than two percent was spent on admin.  

Many companies donate frames, lenses and equipment. Volunteers include optometrists, ophthalmologists, opticians and students – in fact, the Waterloo student chapter of Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity goes on CVC-run volunteer trips, such as to the Philippines and Malawi in 2024.

Leinweber went on eyecare trips twice a year for most of his career, though more recently, he has gone to Jamaica for a single but longer yearly trip. As director of the CVC clinic in Montego Bay, he coordinates staff training remotely and holds virtual meetings weekly. 

Improving the business of optometry 

In addition to founding and running a charity, Leinweber founded not only Doctors EyeCare, a multi-location practice in Central Alberta, but also Doctors Eyecare Network, now doing business as Eye Recommend, and a consulting business, EyeXperts, which has helped hundreds of optometrists across the country run their practices more efficiently. 

When he first graduated from optometry school, however, Leinweber realized that while he felt well prepared to practice, he didn’t know much about how to run a practice. 

One person who helped change that was Leinweber’s post-graduation roommate, Brett Martin, a chartered accountant. Another was Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, which details systems thinking. 

“The three most important words I’ve learned since I left Waterloo are: structure determines behaviour,” says Leinweber. “The roads you take determine your driving. The engineer who designed your car determined where you put your hands. So if you want to change someone’s behaviour, you have to change the underlying structure.” 

With Martin, Leinweber designed a computer system for his practice, making it the first in Alberta to have a computerized office system. He went on to design three different software packages – the earliest in DOS – to help optometrists run their practices.  

Setting up Doctors Eyecare Network in 1985 with a team of other optometrists was a major milestone in advancing the profession, particularly in Western Canada. Now as Eye Recommend, the co-op has more than 600 members across Canada and provides the training, marketing and buying advantages of being part of a national network while upholding members’ independence. 

Leinweber also served for many years in leadership positions with both the Alberta College of Optometry and the Alberta Association of Optometrists, including a period as president of the ACO.  

Transitioning to a new phase 

Now that he’s 68, Leinweber is transitioning towards retirement. He’s currently practicing three days a week and is confident his partners will keep the Central Alberta practice going once he steps away, though he hasn’t decided on a date yet. 

He isn’t planning to slow down too much. Even if he no longer plays hockey, he does play tennis and pickleball. And he’s not giving up optometry entirely. 

“I have my licence in Jamaica,” he says. “That’s my exit strategy.” 

Group photo from a CVC Jamaica trip in 1997