The Scarborough Hospital, April 2012. Photo: Jeremy Hopkin

*From www.insidetoronto.com, Apr. 22, 2012.

The Scarborough Hospital honours its past
Longtime doctor joins archive committee to preserve hospitals’ past.

Article By Danielle Milley

A lot has happened in the more than 50 years since The Scarborough Hospital opened and now there’s a group of people who’ve stepped up to document those five decades of history.

The hospital recently formed an archive committee to preserve the past of the 56-year-old general campus and the 27-year-old Birchmount site. Dr. Barney Giblon is one of the three co-chairs of the committee. The retired family physician has always been interested in preserving history and with his long history at the general site, he wanted to be a part of the committee. “I’m almost the longest serving physician on staff and I’ve always been interested in archives so when this ad appeared I thought ‘won’t this be a wonderful thing to do,'” he said. The hospital has a lot of information, but it’s also missing a lot so Giblon is glad the committee came about to preserve the history, photos and documents before they were lost.

With the general site being Scarborough’s first hospital, Giblon believes archiving TSH’s history isn’t just important for those associated with the hospital. “It is a really wonderful thing, not just for the people who worked at the hospital or who work there now, but for the whole community of Scarborough because it’s part of the history,” he said.

The Scarborough General Hospital, circa 1961.

The archive committee is made up of volunteers, many of them former staff members such as Giblon. The goal is to collect, catalogue and preserve hospital memorabilia, including publications, photographs and documents from both campuses. The committee is reaching out to staff, physicians, volunteers and the community for any items that would be historically significant to the hospital in an effort to build the collection of hospital archives.

The committee has already been the recipient of a large donation of items from the family of Marion Goodchild, the hospital’s first medical laboratory technician and a member of the first group of 13 staff members to join the hospital in 1956. The donation included newspaper articles; programs from milestone events such as the hospital’s expansion in 1958 and its 25th anniversary celebration; copies of “The Pulse,” the hospital’s first newsletter, and a booklet developed in 1972 to commemorate the departure of the Sisters of Misericorde, the founders of TSH.

Goodchild was also an avid photographer and her collection of photo albums documented a variety of events at the hospital. “We are so grateful to Ms. Goodchild’s family for providing us with such a remarkable piece of our past,” said Anne Marie Males, the vice president of patient experience at TSH and the champion behind the creation of the archives committee. “Our hospitals have a rich heritage and we need to recognize and celebrate those individuals who helped build these hospitals and our community.”

Giblon is asking anyone else with documents, photos or stories to share them with the committee. “If people have memorabilia from the hospital we’d love to be able to access it, see it or copy it,” he said.