Oak Island tour guide expected a question about the trip when a woman approached — instead, she touched his neck and told him to see a doctor
Tour guides who are experienced know what kind of questions to expect from tourists. Yet, one woman's inquiry surprised Charles Barkhouse. The man from Oak Island was expecting a standard question from one of the visitors during one of his tours in September 2025. Sharing in a post on Facebook on April 24, 2026, he revealed that she instead walked up to him and touched his neck. Later reported by CTV News on April 30, 2026, she urged him to rush to the doctor, and what followed had him calling her his guardian angel.
Barkhouse, who is famously known for his role in the hit TV series "The Curse of Oak Island," was wrapping up a trip with his visitors. One woman approached him and introduced herself as a doctor, and asked if she could examine his neck. She checked him and urged him to seek medical assistance immediately. The man took her advice and paid a visit to his doctor, and after several tests, it was found that he had medullary thyroid cancer. "If left undetected and untreated, it will affect your liver, your lungs, and can be fatal," he explained. Fortunately, the Nova Scotia resident underwent surgery on New Year's Eve, where doctors removed more than 40 lymph nodes, out of which 23 were found to be cancerous.
Barkhouse is recovering, but he cannot express more gratitude toward the stranger who saved his life. He also expressed his regret at not taking any of her information. "I truly believe that that doctor was on the tour that day for a reason, whether it was fate, destiny, or serendipity," he noted. Calling her his "guardian angel," he added, "Everything lined up. She was in the right place at the right time." Some people come into our lives at the most unexpected moments but leave a profound impact. In another story, taxi driver Brian Kelly was fortunate enough to meet a passenger named Tam Hewitt during one of his trips.
Hewitt began having a conversation about prostate cancer. That's when he suggested Kelly get a checkup, even if he had no symptoms. When the taxi driver visited his GP, he was shocked to learn that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He immediately received treatment options from the oncologist and began conducting his own research, discovering a procedure called brachytherapy that was the best fit. Although the diagnosis process took six months, he was happy to have found out before the cancer spread further. Interestingly, Hewitt was a survivor of the disease himself, so he ensured he spread more awareness about it, and it turned out to be life-saving for someone.
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