A crowd of 550 community and business leaders at this morning’s President’s Breakfast held at the Shaw Centre got a brief glimpse of The Ottawa Hospital’s plans to reshape health care in our region through the construction of a new state-of-the-art facility.
The future hospital campus along Carling Avenue remains the focus of the hospital foundation’s $500-million Campaign to Create Tomorrow. To date, the campaign has reached $336 million, but still has a way to go in what is the largest campaign in the city’s history.
The stories and messages shared at the breakfast were powerful, inspiring and touching enough to leave attendees with renewed motivation to rise to the occasion. Additionally, Peter Doherty, founder of Doherty & Associates Investment, was matching all donations, up to $65,000.
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Zaahra Mehsen was three years into a biology degree at a local university when she realized she wanted to take a different path. “I realized that it’s not my thing,”
“Each and everyone of us in the room this morning is in a privileged position to shape the future of health care for generations to follow,” Tim Kluke, president and CEO of The Ottawa Hospital Foundation, told his audience. “We need your help, as donors, as volunteers, and it will take each and every one of us in the entire community to allow us to reach our ambitious goal.
“There’s a place for everyone in our campaign. No gift is too small and, I dare say, no gift is too large.”
Returning for his second year to co-chair the breakfast was Mark Noonan, vice chair and partner at Deloitte Canada, joined by Lisa Setlakwe, an assistant deputy minister with Transport Canada. They got a helping hand from the President’s Breakfast volunteer cabinet and lab-coat-wearing table captains.
Special guests included Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and former Canadian prime minister Joe Clark and his wife, Maureen McTeer. They were hosted by their daughter, Catherine Clark, president of Catherine Clark Communications. She’s on the hospital’s board of governors while her other half, Chad Schella, recently took over as board chair of Queensway Carleton Hospital.
Roger Greenberg, executive chairman of The Minto Group, has recently passed on his volunteer leadership role to four new campaign co-chairs: Calian Group CEO Kevin Ford, Inflector Environmental Services CEO and chairman Jeff Clarke, GAP Group president Ginger Bertrand, and Dr. Kwadwo Kyeremanteng, head of critical care at The Ottawa Hospital.
Greenberg remains involved with the campaign as its chair emeritus. “Roger isn’t going anywhere,” said Kluke while expressing his gratitude to the business leader for his “leadership, his dedication and his vision and tenacity”.
According to The Ottawa Hospital’s president and CEO, Cameron Love, the future of health care will be shaped by the new hospital campus. “We have an incredible opportunity as a community that very few communities in Ontario or even, for that matter, across Canada have,” said Love of the city’s largest-ever health infrastructure project.
The chief executive also gave a special shout-out to the people working hard behind the scenes. “The reality is: our success over the last 25 years that I’ve been part of this organization is 100 per cent attributable to the 17,000 people that work at The Ottawa Hospital. We’re incredibly fortunate to have a remarkable team. We’ve recruited people locally, provincially, nationally and internationally who have completely changed the platform of care of what we do today and will absolutely change the platform of care of what we do for tomorrow.”
The hospital’s new executive vice president of research and innovation, cancer surgeon and researcher Dr. Rebecca Auer, reminded everyone of the sense of hope that research can bring to patients and their families.
She recalled a dinner conversation with her young family a few years ago, when her middle son introduced them to what he felt was the most powerful word in their vocabulary: Yet. “Because it makes everything that is impossible possible,” said Dr. Auer. “One of the most common questions I get asked as a cancer surgeon is, ‘Is my cancer curable?’. In the past, when it wasn’t, I would answer ‘No’, but ever since my son told me that story, I’ve answered, ‘It’s not curable, yet’. In the last decade, I’ve witnessed many miracles of science that are now so commonplace that we call them standards of care.”
Former patients shared incredible stories at the breakfast of how the hospital saved their lives. Travis Vaughan came very close to dying after a serious snowmobile accident almost five years ago. “It’s difficult to describe the emotions you experience in a moment like this. ‘Acute existential crisis’ is the best I can come up with,” he said of his severe leg injury, which left him believing he would meet his end lying in a field north of Almonte. He took his audience through those harrowing moments, describing how he dragged himself home, where his brother managed to stem the bleeding until help arrived. He’d been able to call 911 earlier, from a cell phone that had been in his pocket.
Vaughan spoke about the “unbelievable” level of care he received from the large team of professionals at the trauma centre of The Ottawa Hospital’s Civic Campus. “I remember telling them, ‘I can’t believe this is what you do every day’.”
The father of two young children praised Dr. Geoff Wilkin, the orthopedic trauma surgeon whose “skill, thoroughness and determination gave me the best chance at a future with a fully functional leg” and “a second lease on life.”
Emeric Leblanc shared his patient story of being diagnosed at age 13 with a rare type of bone cancer, called Ewing sarcoma. The growing tumour, about the size of a grapefruit, was found in his pelvis.
On July 5, 2022, Leblanc became the first patient in Canada to undergo surgery using new VR technology.
His mother, Hélène Lachance, expressed her heart-felt gratitude to Dr. Joel Weier, an orthopedic oncologist and the head of The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) Sarcoma Program; to the hospital for its innovative thinking; and to the donors for helping TOH provide world-class treatment. “I’ve been given the gift of time with my son and, for this, I will always be grateful,” said the mother, her voice filled with emotion.
