So our local Walmart pharmacy in Cornwall just got named Pharmacy of the Year by Walmart Canada for 2025. And yeah, I know what you’re thinking. It’s a corporate award. It’s a press release. It’s a pat on the back from a billion dollar company to one of its own locations.
And you’re not wrong to be skeptical of that framing.
But hold on a second, because there’s something worth paying attention to here, especially if you live in Cornwall and you’ve ever had to navigate our healthcare system.
The pharmacy is led by a guy named Walid Henry. He started at that same Walmart in 2015 as a staff pharmacist, worked his way up, and became pharmacy manager last year. He’s not some corporate transplant. He’s been right here, in this community, for a decade. And when he accepted the award at Walmart’s annual meeting, he didn’t talk about metrics or market performance. He talked about his team. He talked about the patients. He thanked his manager and his director by name.
That tells you something about the guy.
Here’s the thing about small cities like Cornwall. We’re underserved when it comes to primary care. Walk-in clinics are packed. Wait times are real. A lot of people don’t have a family doctor, and if they do, good luck getting an appointment this month. So where do people turn? Often, they walk into a pharmacy. They ask the pharmacist a question they’re embarrassed to ask anyone else, or they’re trying to figure out if their symptoms are worth a 24-hour-long ER visit or just a conversation with someone who actually knows what they’re talking about.
That’s what Walid and his team show up for every day. And Walmart, whatever else you want to say about them, has 1,300 licensed pharmacists across Canada available seven days a week. For a lot of people in towns like ours, that framing is their entire healthcare system.
I’m not naive about what Walmart is. They’re a massive corporation and massive corporations love a good photo op. But sometimes a corporation does a thing for its own reasons and the outcome is still genuinely good for people on the ground.
But Walid Henry has been standing behind that counter in Cornwall for ten years. He didn’t win Pharmacy of the Year because a marketing team decided it looked good. He won it because his team actually takes care of people.
In a town where that’s harder and harder to find, that’s worth saying out loud.
Congratulations. Really.
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