Daily flags raise cash for food bank By Jon Muldoon
Volume 44 No. 19
December 15, 2015
LEUTY AND Violet Avenue residents have increased their goal for this year’s DailyFlag for DailyBread campaign. For the fifth year, neighbours on the street will reveal a new homemade flag each day leading up to Christmas, auctioning the creations to raise money for the food bank. The goal for this year’s neighbour-run artistic advent calendar is $27,000, along with food donations collected at Fire Station 227 at Queen Street and Woodbine Avenue.
Ben Hilliard, who organizes the event with Michelynn Laflèche, spoke to Beach Metro News on Dec. 3. Already there were $1,900 in donations and $6,000 in pledges, he said, and bids for the three flags revealed by Dec. 11 were in the hundreds of dollars each. “There’s still a long way to go to $27,000,” Hilliard said. “Hopefully we’ll pass that, but reaching it is the main thing.” Last year the neighbours surpassed their goal, raising $26,400 through flag auction sales and donations from businesses and individuals. Continued on Page 3
PHOTO: ANDREW HUDSON
Carols ring out in Glen Stewart Ravine Ron Millar, front, plays baritone while Kevin Lau, rear, plays tenor horn with the Scarborough Citadel Salvation Army band, who performed several Christmas carols for Carolling in the Park on Dec. 8. Held in the Glen Stewart Ravine for 26 years, this year’s Carolling brought more than 300 people out on a warm December night to sing along with the brass band and drink hot cider served by local Scouts.
Record $50 million donation spurs hospital name change By Andrew Hudson
SHE DIDN’T know it then, but when Michael Garron came back to see her after starting Grade 7, he was saying goodbye. It was September 1974, and teacher Sheila Davidson knew Michael as the boy who always stayed after class to do his work. Diagnosed with a rare soft tissue cancer at three, he had lost a finger to the disease, then his right arm below the elbow. “He had to work twice as hard as everybody else,” said Davidson, who taught his Grade 6 class at Cornell Junior Public School in Vaughan. But Michael persisted. At his Grade 6 graduation, he won the school Achievement Award – a prize for the hardest-working student. So Davidson was upset when he returned months later and told her he was struggling. They spoke for about an hour. It was the last she saw him. Michael died of cancer that January, at 13. Davidson learned that he had known he was dying when he
visited her, and that he had made a point of going back to see several others who had played a significant role in his life. “He was one of the children that in 40 years of teaching I will always
remember,” Davidson said. “That’s why you do the job, for moments like that.” Today, tens of thousands more people will know Michael Garron’s name.
PHOTO: PHIL LAMEIRA
Berna and Myron Garron listen during the announcement of their record $50 million donation to Toronto East General Hospital on Dec. 2. The hospital is being renamed to Michael Garron Hospital in honour of the Garrons’ son, who was born at East General and died at age 13 from a rare form of cancer.
On Dec. 2, Toronto East General Hospital was renamed Michael Garron Hospital after his parents Berna and Myron Garron made a $50 million donation in his memory. It was the largest donation to a community teaching hospital in Canada, made five years after the Garrons donated $30 million to establish a cancer centre at SickKids Hospital. Speaking at the unveiling, Myron Garron told the story behind the family’s latest gift. Years before he left his bank job to start the auto parts company that made them wealthy, Myron and Berna were newlyweds living in a $67 apartment off Victoria Park Avenue. Toronto East General is where Michael, their first child, was born. Sarah Downey, the hospital president and CEO, said the Garrons’ donation will allow the hospital to buy state-of-art equipment, establish its first teaching and research chair positions, and fund major research studies into clinical care. Such research is bound to have ripple effects across Toronto, since the hospital’s patient population is
in many ways a microcosm of the city as a whole. As Downey explained, some 85 languages are spoken by patients at the hospital, and it serves both Thorncliffe Park, a neighourhood with the highest birthrate in the city, and Flemingdon Park, which has the greatest concentration of seniors. Along with affluent areas such as the Beach and Greektown, it serves more low-income patients than any other hospital in Toronto. The new name, Michael Garron Hospital, will refer to the hospital’s main campus at Coxwell and Mortimer Avenues, Downey said, while corporately the hospital will be known as the Toronto East Health Network – a name that refers to its many off-site programs, including a detox centre at Danforth and Jones Avenues, and a new primary care clinic opened two weeks ago for newcomers in Thorncliffe. Holding a key that hospital cofounder Joseph Harris used to open the hospital doors back in 1929, Downey said the Garrons’ donation is a modern-day version of that key. “It opens something new,” she said.