Over the past couple of weeks I have been seeing the spirit that is the Toronto Western. At the Long Service Awards there seemed to be more people there to cheer than recipients who were coming forward to receive their pins from
Jan Newton,
Mike Nader and me. And then again last week, as Health Minister Eric Hoskins announced the government's intention to invest in the Surgical Services redevelopment at TW, the clinicians behind the Minister broke into a spontaneous cheer. You can watch a video of the event here. In the new year, my EA
Grace Ivo and I will be based at Toronto Western for January and February so I very much look forward to being part of the culture and spirit that is Toronto Western.
I have written about the reopening of Hillcrest before so I'm delighted to let everyone know that
Mike Nader and
Sue Jewell have now signed a contract with Saint Elizabeth Health Care so that Hillcrest can reopen as a Home and Community Care Centre for the acute care hospitals in the Toronto Central Local Health Integration Network. We expect to start accepting patients well before the holidays.
Last Wednesday we hosted a visit for the Honourable Reza Moridi, the Minister of Research, Innovation and Science for the Province of Ontario who came to see iDAPT and Driver Lab at Toronto Rehab. My thanks to
Geoff Fernie,
Brad Wouters,
David Jaffray,
Milos Popovic, and
all of the research team at Toronto Rehab for their work in arranging the visit and providing Minister Moridi with such a great window into the work done at TR. The photograph below was taken in front of Winter Lab where TR is working to both find and develop the very safest of winter boots to prevent falls. If you haven't bought your boots yet, check out the Rate My Treads website
here.
I also wanted to mention the Fairchild Radiothon which took place on Thursday. Fairchild has been with our foundations for a number of years, holding the event for Toronto General and Toronto Western Foundation in past years. This year the radiothon was held for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation and I want to thank Fairchild and their team for committing time and energy to raising funds for our foundations and
Franco Ng for working so hard to make the radiothon a success. Towards the end of the day I heard that they had raised over $310,000 and I've included a picture below of the radiothon as it was set up in the Research Atrium at Princess Margaret.
Charlie
