As we celebrate our 10th Anniversary and acknowledge the 50th anniversary of the opening of South Peel – later The Mississauga –- Hospital and the 52nd anniversary of the opening of the Queensway General Hospital –- we remember a few of those people whose personal stories bring a special focus to the history of our hospitals.

Taken together, their story is the story of Trillium.

There are, without doubt, scores of other stories worth telling and over the next year we’ll bring you more Faces of Trillium.

As you enjoy their stories, you’re invited to tell us a story of your own about The Mississauga Hospital, Queensway General Hospital or Trillium Health Centre, or tell us a story of your own or suggest the name of someone else whose story should be told.

Matthew Casaca | Barbara Doumouras | Jacques Duguay | Virginia Gardhouse
Laurie Gehrling | Betty Gordon | Merritt Henderson | Dr. Norman Hill
Fred Ketchen | Ann Mackay | John Magill | Samantha Moraes
Dr. Krystyna Ostrowska | Beverley Patterson | Dr. Reg Perkin | Harold Shipp | Vicky Sharma | Dr. Roman Sluzar & Dr. Vladimir Sluzar | Kim Stephens Woods | Eric Vandewall | Ruby West

When South Peel Hospital opened in May, 1958, Dr. Jim Brayley says proudly that it was fully paid for. It had no debt.

“But they had no money either. I can remember when I started working here, I myself had to go downtown to buy two instruments because I couldn’t do operations without two Haney clamps. I don’t know whether that would happen these days.”

Dr. Brayley’s father – Dr. L.G. Brayley — was a key figure in the founding of the hospital, a community effort that involved the local newspaper editor Bert Smith, service clubs and what became the largest women’s auxiliary in Ontario at the time.

“It was a great time in those early days. It was a small hospital and my father was the recruiter. He’s the one who got doctors to come here to practice. In the beginning, there were half General Practitioners and half specialists.

Dr. Jim Brayley was one of those recruited, South Peel’s first Ob-Gyn.

“GPs – now they’re called family doctors – did the majority of deliveries. Even up until 1990 there were 30 GPs doing obstetrics. In the 1950s, GPs took out your appendix, set a broken limb, look after your pneumonia. Things have changed.”

Dr. Brayley says his father was his inspiration to become a doctor.

“I grew up doing the ‘dirty30s’. My father was a GP in Port Credit. There were few people around – only 30,000 people living in South Peel in those days. He thought he was really busy if he had four or five patients a day.

“As I recall, he spent most of his time lying on the sofa reading books or playing golf.

“I decided ‘that’s the life for you, Jim’. So that’s how I got to be a doctor. I once asked my dad if obstetrics would that be a good line. He said ‘it’s easy — it’s all in the timing. You get there right after they baby is born and all you have to do is tidy up’,” Dr. Brayley says. “It didn’t work out that way.”

Dr Brayley, who turned in his license in June, 2007 at the age of 80, says he’s often been asked about his my most inspiring moment.

“I can’t come up with one answer but I can come up with 5,000. They say I delivered 5,000 babies and that was the moment every day-to see the smile on the mother as she saw her new baby. And the smile on the father,” he says.

“Now when you talk about fathers in the delivery room, maybe that was one of the most inspiring moments of my life because I claim to be the first father that fainted in the delivery room. That was when our daughter Martha was born. I was sitting there on a stool and I caved over. The nurses caught me — I guess I’d been up all night. Now Martha has made me faint several times since then, too, so maybe there is some truth in this story.”

Dr. Brayley says he’s asked himself “what I’m proudest of and once again there isn’t one single thing”.

“So much has happened since I started – we were 100 to 125 beds and I don’t know how many beds we are now.

“We have an institution that can do everything and I tell people if they’re talking about going to the Mayo Clinic, why go there? We can do everything at Trillium they can do there. We have a superb orthopaedic service, we’ve got neurosurgery, we have an obstetrical service that is doing 4,500 to 5,000 deliveries a year … there isn’t enough time for me to mention everybody, but we have a great number of highly skilled physicians…

“The only thing I’m sad about is that the family docs aren’t in the hospital anymore. They don’t come and make rounds anymore. They sit in their offices and send patients here. That would bother my father if he were alive today.”

Dr. Brayley says that for Trillium’s future, “I hope that it becomes a major teaching centre for a medical school. There’s only one medical school in Toronto and they’re developing a satellite at Erindale. There should be a medical school all by itself in Peel County. We’ve got three big hospitals. We should have our own medical school. Peel County Medical School.”

In 1956, Fred Ketchen was a 22-year-old witness to the sod turning — by 44 school children –- for South Peel Hospital, an institution his father helped build with other members of the Credit Valley Lions Club and the Port Credit Rotary Club. W. M. Ketchen chaired the joint committee and later served on the hospital Board; Fred Ketchen’s mother served for two years as the president of the hospital auxiliary.

Over the years, he watched the hospital’s growth with interest but it wasn’t until 1991 it became personal.

“On the last Saturday in August of that year, I went to the hospital. They figured out I was having a heart attack. Tom Rebane –- now cardiologist-in-chief –- looked after me but they had to put me in an ambulance to go down to Toronto Western for an angiogram. Then they sent me back to Mississauga Hospital. Later, I was back in the ambulance going over to Toronto General for an angioplasty. Then I went back to Mississauga Hospital before going home.”

In early June, 2007 –- 16 years after his heart attacks – there were “signals” that something was not right.

“This time, it was two more stents, but they were done very efficiently, right here,” he says. “It’s handy.”

Fred Ketchen is more than a satisfied patient of Trillium’s Advanced Cardiac Care Centre, established in 1996. Since 2000, he’s been a member of the Trillium Health Centre Foundation Board, served as Chair for two years during the Foundation’s $36-million fundraising campaign and, most recently, is Trillium’s first Cardiac Champion. As part of the Cardiac Challenge he has pledged up to $1 million to match community donations, proving that, even with three stents, he has the heart of a champion. The Cardiac Challenge will raise $15 million in 15 months for advanced cardiac services and equipment.

“It’s a privilege,” Fred Ketchen says. “Those who can encourage others to pitch should do it.”

“We more than doubled in size, expanded our programs and experienced a change in philosophy that led us to work for betterment of patient care through the leadership of Ken White  and the concept of 1001 leaders” Our size allows us to provide many more subspecialty services and better quality of care.

Through its first decade, Trillium has continued to evolve. For example, Dr. Hill says medicine is no longer sole domain of the physician. “We work in inter-professional teams which include other health care experts whose knowledge and training we respect.”

Calling himself a “lifer” – his first job, in 1982, was with Queensway – Dr. Hill, now Vice President of Medical Affairs, says he is happy and proud to work at Trillium.   Dividing his time between general surgery and administration, he sees his role as a bridge, promoting productive relationships between physicians and the administration.

“It is, without question, easier to be a good administrator because I practice medicine.  I understand the challenges that doctors face on a daily basis and am able to hear the concerns of  front line staff.”   He lives that role by demonstrating good medical care, listening, collaborating, promoting and communicating.

“We do have our challenges, but they’re somewhat minor in comparison to what other organizations face.”

Those challenges, he says, include providing state-of-the-art care with a funding model that puts constraints on being innovative, keeping equipment up to date, learning to work within the new LHIN (Local Health Integration Networks) model and transforming Trillium “as we journey down path to become a hospital supporting teaching”.

His goal is to meet those challenges by developing leadership that will help us transition to a culture of teaching, expanding existing programs and developing new programs within a climate of fiscal responsibility.

Harold Shipp likes to joke that 11 Shipps have set sail from Trillium Health Centre and its predecessors.

In 1958, Harold and June Shipp’s third child, Gordon, was born at the Queensway General Hospital, just two years after it opened. Since that time, 10 grandchildren have been born at one of the hospitals.

In fact, he says, a Shipp has been an active part of the hospital since 1966 when his wife, June C. Shipp, became an active Queensway volunteer, a role she continued for 35 years until her sudden death in 2000.

Harold Shipp joined the Queensway Board of Directors in 1971. Uniquely, in 1974 he was invited to join the South Peel Hospital Foundation and so served both hospitals for decades. He remains Honourary Chair of the Trillium Health Centre Foundation Board.

Daughter Catharine Shipp Wells took up the family tradition when she became Chair of the Trillium Health Centre Board of Directors, serving until 2007.

The depth of the Shipp family commitment is easily explained, Harold Shipp says, by two premises. “You do it because it will be there for you when you need it. And you must always say ‘come on and give’ to others, not ‘go on and give’.

That philosophy was spectacularly demonstrated when, in 2005/2006 he issued a $6 million challenge to the community that pushed Trillium’s Capital Campaign over the top to $36 million.

“It’s always been a wonderful place to work with a real sense of community and through all the changes, people have remained genuinely devoted to the care of the patient.”

In a few months, Betty Gordon will retire as the Finance Department’s Manager of General Accounting.

“I’ve loved every year of working here.  Change has been ongoing – it never stops — but it’s always been rewarding.”

One of the highlights of her career was the 1985 purchase of Meditech, a new computerized system that was to make hospital records “paperless”.

“We certainly didn’t eliminate paper but it was exciting and interesting to be part of the team that worked on the transition from a paper system to a computer-based system.”

In the years since, she’s been involved in the evolution of the Meditech system.

“I was given the opportunity to participate in a group that was developing the software to meet the needs of hospitals. I got involved so that we could ensure the enhancements of Meditech met our needs.  “For the last six years, I’ve been treasurer of that board.  I’m appreciative of the fact that Trillium gave me the opportunity to do that.”

She’s also proud of her 10 years as treasurer for Volunteers of Trillium and the fact that she was part of the group that pledged to donate $5 million to redevelopment, a goal achieved through the volunteer Gift Shops.

“I’ve been successful because of my total enjoyment of each day,” she says, adding that she wishes to applaud the people on her team.

“I want to recognize the staff who work with me.  They always take the initiative and are accountable for what they do.  I’m only as good as the people I work with.”

Asked how Trillium will cope without her, Betty Gordon laughs. “I guess I am part of the knowledge base of the hospital.  I’ve been around so long I’m really part of the bricks and mortar.”

Barbara Doumouras became a Trillium volunteer as a Grade 10 student.

Five years later, she’s still distributing water and friendly visits every Saturday afternoon. She’s also starting her third year at the University of Toronto with a double major in biology and pharmacology. She plans to study medicine.

“When I became a volunteer, I began to realize how important health is to people.  When you’re not healthy, you don’t have anything.  Volunteering helped me decide to become a doctor.”

The rewards of being a volunteer have kept Barbara committed even with her busy study schedule.

“I meet such great people -  patients, staff and other volunteers,” she says. Not least, there’s that sense of helping people.

“As a volunteer I’m not giving medical care, but I do help the patients in some way. I’ve gotten so used to being at Trillium every week that, when I can’t make it because I have an exam, the week feels empty.”

“When we weren’t needed anywhere else, our base was Emergency,” he says. The assignment gave him a broad base of experience that has stood him in good stead ever since.

When the unit was disbanded in 1998, he worked in Neural Rehab and then covered a maternity leave in Emergency where he stayed, becoming clinical leader in 2002. In 2007, he was appointed Patient Care Co-ordinator, a new role that, he believes, echoes the work of the nursing supervisor at the time he joined the staff in 1995.

“Remembering that helped me benchmark this role,” he says.

His job is to ensure that patients flow adequately, enabling Emergency to send patients to beds in as timely a manner as possible. Now one of two Patient Care Co-ordinators at Trillium -  a second full-time position was added in the fall of 2008 – he often liaises between staff, family and patients to get the job done.

“There were no real guidelines when I took the job,” he says. “Developing the role has been a continuous surprise.  It’s very challenging, given the multi-layered complexities of an institution that needs to come together as whole in order to function.”

Adding to the complexity, he believes, is the fact that, because of the emphasis on ambulatory care, people who are admitted to hospital are “sicker than they were 10 years ago”, putting more pressure on staff.

Fortunately, he says, the medical staff is up to the challenge.

“The increase in our education and skill is balancing it out.  Trillium has been preparing for this increase in acuity for quite some time.   We’ve been provided with all the opportunities we need for education and development.”

“I decided that if I could volunteer as a visitor, it would make a difference in at least a few lives.”

She visits patients at the McCall Centre or in rehab every Saturday, and spends time with them, talking to them about things that interest them like their family or telling them about her own life as a way of beginning a conversation.

“Being in a hospital can be a harrowing experience without someone to talk to,” she says.

A couple of months ago, Samantha experienced the loss of a patient, a woman in her late 80s she had been visiting for more than a year.  “It was a hard not seeing her the following day.  I used to always stop by to see her.  She had become a really good friend.”

Even so, she has no plans to change her routine.

“I enjoy being with the older patients -  it’s like talking to my grandparents and I really like that.”

It was 1966 and it was also the year Beverley Patterson began working at Queensway General Hospital.

Officially retired in 2007, she has remained a casual employee, making her the longest serving Trillium employee beginning a career at Queensway.

“My first job was in housekeeping, cleaning the nursery in the maternity wing.”  In 1972, she became a darkroom technician, working in the X-Ray department.   Her last 3 years as a full-time employee were spent in the film library, making CDs, scanning requisitions and filing.

“I love it here and everyone knows me.  I’m a people person; I like to interact with people and help people, so working in a hospital was perfect.  When I started, I was the only black person on the staff.

“I was 19,” she adds.  “Now I’m 62 and I hope to keep on working as long as they keep on calling me.”