When John Magill helped preside over the amalgamation of the Queensway General Hospital and Mississauga Hospital, there was one surprise that inspired his confidence in the future.

“Very early on and much to everyone’s amazement and relief, staff focus groups representing our population at every level simply said ‘just get on with it’,” he says. “Obviously, something better was on offer and they were looking forward to it.”

Even so, there were caveats.

“They did insist on two things. They wanted a learning organization that would allow them to grow and they wanted some sense of momentum to reflect that things were moving forward.”

Then Chair of the Queensway General Hospital Board, he became Chair of the Trillium Health Centre Board when Queensway CEO Ken White was appointed CEO.

“It’s a time I’m extremely proud of,” John Magill says. “We made some heart-wrenching changes but everyone believed in the end result.”

Now chair of the Mississauga-Halton LHIN, he acknowledges that “while I was very proud of work we were able to do at Trillium and of the end result, the experience left me concerned about a publicly-funded system that operated in a competitive way.

“That stuck with me and after I retired from the practice of law, I signed on at the LHIN. After all, if you consider that you’ve been part of the problem, you have to become part of the solution. A different way of doing things can bring some rationality to the whole system.”