Health Sciences North in Sudbury is important to all of Northeastern Ontario as our regional go-to health facility for serious health concerns and traumas. The current drive to raise the last $2 million towards the purchase of a PET scanner to increase the level of diagnostic services is certainly something we should all support.
But there are other, less high profile agencies and resources in the North’s largest city that are, in their way, equally important to people from small communities such as ours on Manitoulin Island.
One of these, the Glenn Crombie Centre, at Cambrian College’s main campus is a facility unique among Ontario’s community colleges as its sole purpose is to assist people with any kind of disability in their goal of achieving a post-secondary education.
This includes people who have lifetime physical or intellectual challenges as well as those who may have suffered an injury that makes their previous work impossible for them to do.
The late Glenn Crombie, after whom this unique facility was named, served as Cambrian College’s president for many years, retiring in the mid-1990s.
The notion of accessibility to the school over which he presided was very important to Mr. Crombie who was acknowledged earlier in his career in Sudbury for making Cambrian College the first in the provincial college system to remove or adapt physical barriers for people in wheelchairs.
He went on to envision a place of regional significance where there would be no barriers, physical or otherwise, for people facing any number of challenges but who wanted to go to college.
Once again, this concept was ahead of its time and when it was operating and Mr. Crombie had retired, the college board at the time decided to name it in his honour.
Similarly, and at about the same time, Sudbury community leader Chris Sheridan had a flash of inspiration that led to the House of Kin, a repurposed hotel at the Four Corners, where out of town families or individuals facing treatment at Health Sciences North can find comfortable, affordable accommodation.
The House of Kin gets its name from the Sudbury Kinsman’s Club, the service club that took on Mr. Sheridan’s idea and made it a reality. (The Kinsman’s Club is also Canada’s largest all-Canadian service club.)
The Glenn Crombie Centre has served a number of Manitoulin citizens over the 20 years since its opening and will be there to serve those who need it in the years to come.
Similarly, the House of Kin has been vitally important to Manitoulin people who have needed to be near a family member who was receiving treatment at Health Sciences North or any other of Sudbury’s medical facilities. It has meant that they have been to stay in the city in very affordable accommodations thanks to the Kinsman’s Club’s efforts and Mr. Sheridan’s vision.
We take resources like the Glenn Crombie Centre an the House of Kin for granted but they exist as unique regional facilities that make the lives of Northern Ontario people just a little bit easier.
What is remarkable is that these resources began as “good ideas” in the minds of, respectively, Glenn Crombie and Chris Sheridan.
The same is true of the current fundraising campaign for the PET scanner diagnostic equipment.
It was initiated by the late Sam Bruno who, when he was being treated for the illness that ultimately claimed his life, was forced to travel to Toronto to access PET scanning diagnostics.
From this first-hand experience, Mr. Bruno set out to convince the Ontario Ministry of Health that the North needed its own PET scanner to avoid this additional travel. Sudbury and Health Sciences North have been approved for the device and the fundraising for its purchase is now more than half complete.
Once again, this is someone’s visionary project that, when it is in place, will be one more regional resource that people from Manitoulin Island as well as the rest of Northeastern Ontario will have ready access to.
There is also the NEO (Northeastern Ontario) Children’s Treatment Centre that is presently being planned and for which funds are also being raised throughout the North, another project aimed at easing the lot of Northerners.
We are fortunate that people not only conceive of these projects as good ideas but then also go on to act on them to bring them into reality.
Manitoulin Island is geographically fortunate to be located as close as we are to Sudbury and the resources we’ve recounted but, even for people from Kapuskasing, White River or Fort Albany, a trip to Sudbury is easier on the nerves then a trip to downtown Toronto would be to access similar services.
