Pontiacers in need of basic dental care this week have one more reason to smile, as the county’s newest dental hygiene clinic welcomed patients for the first time on May 12.
Blanche Pontiac, located on Front Street in Campbell’s Bay, is now the third dental clinic in the Pontiac and the first to open since the Centre Dentaire Shawville closed in 2022.
Owner Vanessa Sloan is a hygienist, not a dentist, which means she does not offer diagnostic services, but she does offer routine teeth cleanings, gum assessments, and is also going to provide whitening services and custom sports guards.
She can also refer patients to a dentist if she notices there is something wrong with a patient’s teeth that needs attention.
Sloan worked two streets over at the Centre Dentaire du Pontiac for over a decade before realizing there was a gap in the region’s dental care she could fill herself.
“When [Shawville] closed we got even more patients, and they’d be like, ‘I’ve been trying to get an appointment, it takes a long time,’ etc,” she said.
Sloan, who is a Vinton native, said the closure of the Shawville office left only one dentist for 14,000 Pontiacers, forcing many people to travel to get their pearly whites polished.
“A lot of people have jumped ship and brought their money to Renfrew or Pembroke, or [ . . . ] Luskville,” she said.
“There’s not a lot of options for patients, and I just thought it was really important to open another clinic and increase availability.”
A designer helped her narrow down every detail of the marketing, from the name to the wall colour to the business cards, which feature an inverted “V” to represent Sloan’s first initial as well as a diamond to represent her patients’ polished teeth.
Blanche Pontiac is open this week at 136 rue Front in Campbell’s Bay. The clinic can be reached by phone at (819) 650-0287, by email at info@blanchepontiac.com, on Instagram @blanche.pontiac, or on Facebook at Blanche Pontiac.
