Doctor Sahib and Me: Two Years as a Missionary Family in India is an award-winning memoir that explores family, culture and the lasting impact of childhood experiences. (PHOTO COURTESY OF TOM CARTER)
By John-Paul Bonadonna
Tom Carter (BA ‘72) arrived at the University of Windsor in 1968, having already lived experiences few his age could imagine.
At 12 years old, Carter left Windsor with his family and travelled halfway around the world to India after his father, a Windsor physician, accepted a missionary medical appointment at a hospital in the state of Madhya Pradesh.
For two years, Carter and his three younger brothers lived in a boarding school in the foothills of the Himalayas while their parents worked more than 1,000 kilometres away – a 20-hour journey by train.
More than six decades later, those experiences have become the foundation of Doctor Sahib and Me: Two Years as a Missionary Family in India, an award-winning memoir that explores family, culture and the lasting impact of childhood experiences.
The book, published in 2025, is the culmination of a story Carter says never truly left him.
“India sat in me like a stone,” he writes in the book’s preface.
“Permanent. Immoveable. And unspoken.”
Doctor Sahib and Me weaves together two narratives: Carter’s memories as a young boy navigating boarding school life in India and his father’s account of managing a mission hospital during the final years of Western missionary influence in the country.
Sahib (as Carter’s father was referred to) is a term of respect inherited from the British colonial era and can mean friend, companion or master.
Research for the memoir revealed a larger historical story than Carter had anticipated.
His father had been advocating for modernization and local control of the hospital years before those changes became inevitable. India had already gained independence and many institutions established during the colonial era were transitioning to Indian leadership.
The Carter family, Tom later learned, was among the last missionary families permitted to serve in that region before the Indian government stopped issuing visas for long-term missionaries.
For Carter, uncovering those details added new dimensions to memories that had once been purely personal. The resulting book has resonated with readers far beyond his own family.
Earlier this year, Carter received the Presbyterian History Society’s award for Best Memoir, a recognition that affirmed the broader significance of the story he had spent decades carrying with him.
The book also touches on a subject that has gained increasing attention in recent years: the experience of “third culture kids” — children who spend formative years living outside their home country and often struggle to fit neatly into either culture.
Looking back, Carter recognizes many of those characteristics in himself.
Living in India taught him independence at an early age. He often assumed responsibility for helping care for his younger brothers. The experience accelerated his maturity and shaped the way he viewed the world. While beneficial, it also separated Carter from the norms of typical kids his age.
When the Carter family returned to Windsor in 1965, Tom was placed into Grade 10 at Kennedy Collegiate. Like many young people returning home after a transformative experience abroad, he struggled to explain what he had lived through.
“People would say, ‘Oh, you’re the guy who went to India. What was it like?’” Carter recalls.
“I’d start telling them, and after about five minutes their eyes would glaze over. So eventually I just shut it off.”
Instead, he focused on building a future.
After high school, Carter enrolled in the University of Windsor and found himself drawn to languages. Having experienced life in a country where he could not read the signs, navigate the alphabet or understand much of what was being spoken around him, he had developed a deep appreciation for communication across cultures.
Two professors proved especially influential.
Peter Halford, who taught French language and literature, and Father Ron Pazik, who taught Spanish, opened new academic doors for Carter. Their passion for language inspired him to pursue studies in both areas, eventually completing a general Bachelor of Arts degree.
Another professor, linguist Paul Cassano, would help alter the course of his life.
Cassano encouraged Carter to consider graduate studies and pointed him toward opportunities in Alberta. With family already living in Edmonton and a growing desire to experience something beyond Windsor, Carter accepted a teaching assistantship at the University of Alberta and moved west.
What began as a graduate studies adventure ultimately became a permanent relocation.
After realizing a career in romance linguistics offered limited opportunities, he pivoted to law school, built a legal career and later reinvented himself again as an educator. He spent years teaching law and developing curriculum at what would eventually become MacEwan University in Edmonton. Along the way, he also authored several practical legal guides for Canadian readers.
Yet throughout his professional life, India remained in the background.
In 2003, a discovery sparked a new level of curiosity and a renewed openness to revisiting the past.
While attending a course in Toronto, Carter visited the Presbyterian Church archives and discovered two boxes of documents related to his father’s work in India. Inside were decades-old correspondence files detailing the challenges his father faced while running a missionary hospital during a period of enormous political and cultural change.
When Carter later discussed the files with his father, the conversations deepened.
Eventually, shortly before his death in 2009, his father handed over what Carter calls the “India box” — a meticulously organized collection of diaries, letters, photographs and records documenting the family’s time overseas.
His father had always intended to write a book about the experience but never did. Instead, the responsibility passed to his son. What emerged was far more than a travel memoir.
“I figured I knew the man,” Carter reflects.
“Then I started reading the letters and diaries and I realized there was much more to understand.”
And while it took more than 60 years for the story to reach the page, Carter believes it was worth the wait.
“I don't think I could have written this book 20 years ago,” Carter says.
“I needed the distance. I needed the perspective.”
Some experiences, it seems, never really leave us. They simply wait for the right moment to be told.
Doctor Sahib and Me: Two Years as a Missionary Family in India is available on Amazon, Kindle and Kobo. It can also be purchased directly from Pagemaster Publishing. Use promo code CARTER15 for a 15% discount.