ORBAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-05-02 published
PURDY,
Dorothy
Anne (née
BIRD)
Peacefully, after a long illness at the Bowmanville Hospital,
on Friday, April 29th, 2005 in her 83rd year. Beloved wife of
the late Leonard
PURDY
Sr.
Loving mother of Leonard
PURDY Jr.
and daughter-in-law Dianne of Oshawa. Loving and devoted companion
of Roy NICHOLS. Dear grandmother of Bill (Lisa) and Rob. Great-grandmother
of Sarah and William. Survived by two brothers Bill (Helen)
BIRD,
Melvin (Marg)
BIRD and four sisters Shirley (Mel)
LAWRENCE,
Leona
DANDURAND, Patricia (Gus)
MORRISON and Phyllis
SLADE. Predeceased
by three brothers George, Eldon, Robert and two sisters Betty
CLEARY and Eileen Helen
ORBAN.
Sister-in-law of Flora
PIETRACUPA.
Dear aunt of many nieces and nephews. The family will receive
Friends at the Karl A. Hammond Funeral Home and Chapel, 26 Ormond
Street South, Thorold on Monday from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. Funeral
Service will be held at Church of the Transfiguration (320 Glenridge
Ave., St. Catharines), on Tuesday, May 3rd at 11: 00 a.m. with
Rev.
Canon
Robin
GRAVES officiating. Cremation to follow. If
so desired, donations to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, Canadian
Cancer Society or Kidney Foundation would be appreciated by the
family.
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ORBANIC o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2005-08-15 published
SMITH,
Helen▼
Shepherd▼
Suddenly at her home on Friday, August 12th, 2005. Predeceased
by her parents Duncan and Mary
SMITH, her beloved sister Jean
PATTERSON and brother-in-law James
PATTERSON.
Will▼ be missed
by cousins David Wm.
YOUNGER and Jenifer
MOORE.
Many▼ thanks are
extended to the Sherman family, Nora and Lindy
BRETT,
Dorothy▼
Forbes JOHNSTONE and Mr. and Mrs. Ivan
ORBANIC for their kindness
and compassion over the years. At her request there will be no
service. Cremation to take place. If desired, donations to Sharon
House, 24 Montgomery Road, Toronto, Ontario, M8X 1Z4 would be
appreciated.
R.S. Kane 416-221-1159
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ORBANIC o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-08-15 published
SMITH,
Helen▲
Shepherd▲
Suddenly at her home on Friday August 12th, 2005. Predeceased
by her parents Duncan and Mary
SMITH, her beloved sister Jean
PATTERSON and brother-in-law James
PATTERSON.
Will▲ be missed
by cousins David Wm.
YOUNGER and Jenifer
MOORE.
Many▲ thanks are
extended to the Sherman family, Nora and Lindy
BRETT,
Dorothy▲
Forbes JOHNSTONE and Mr. and Mrs. Ivan
ORBANIC for their kindness
and compassion over the years. At her request there will be no
service. Cremation to take place. If desired, donations to Sharon
House, 24 Montgomery Road, Toronto, Ontario, M8X 1Z4 would be
appreciated.
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ORBIS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2005-12-14 published
Garth TAILOR/TAYLOR,
Doctor And Humanitarian (1944-2005)
As president of
ORBIS
Canada, the ophthalmologist from Cornwall
circled the globe in a flying eye hospital to personally treat
thousands of Third World patients
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special to The Globe and Mail, Wednesday, December
14, 2005, Page S9
Toronto -- The call to Ontario in 1982 came from Garth
TAILOR/TAYLOR's
beloved native Jamaica. Did Dr.
TAILOR/TAYLOR, an ophthalmologist in
Cornwall, Ontario, know of a new flying eye hospital committed
to curing blindness and eye diseases in developing countries?
He had never heard of such a thing, he replied, but he would
look into it.
Two years later, Dr.
TAILOR/TAYLOR was president of
ORBIS
Canada, and
a quiet practice in a quiet town was supplemented with a calling:
eliminating preventable blindness around the world.
It was all aboard the state-of-the-art
ORBIS
Flying
Eye
Hospital,
a converted DC-10 with a high-tech mobile surgical suite and
lecture theatre that's billed as the world's only airborne eye
hospital and training facility.
ORBIS is an international non-profit humanitarian agency that
grew from a vision that Houston ophthalmologist David Paton had
more than 20 years ago. More than one million people have received
direct medical treatment, and some 93,000 health-care professionals
have received training through its programs in more than 80 countries.
At the time of his death, Dr.
TAILOR/TAYLOR had completed 111 missions
with ORBIS, the last to Changsha, China, in September. As the
organization's busiest volunteer eye doctor, he treated thousands
of patients and trained many more doctors and surgeons in cornea,
cataract and refractive procedures, including the treatment of
ocular parasites, in more than 40 countries.
"ORBIS doesn't go to get rid of all blindness; it's developmental,"
Dr. TAILOR/TAYLOR said in 1997. "We teach them to do the surgery, or
we teach them to teach others in their country."
The philosophy jibed well with his, a Chinese proverb he was
fond of repeating in his Jamaican lilt: "Tell me and I will forget
show me and I may remember; involve me and I will understand."
Dr. TAILOR/TAYLOR's maiden mission in 1982 was to his birthplace, Jamaica.
"I found my nirvana aboard my first
ORBIS flight," he would recount.
"By treating avoidable blindness, people don't just get back
their sight, they get back their self-esteem."
He also credited the organization with making him a better doctor.
"He was this skinny kid from Montego Bay with a big, easy grin,"
remembers the current president of
ORBIS
Canada,
Ottawa retina
surgeon Brian
LEONARD, who interned with Dr.
TAILOR/TAYLOR at Ottawa
Civic Hospital. "We considered him a legend. No one knew more
about global blindness."
Sadly, there's much to know. The World Health Organization estimates
there are 45 million blind people on the planet, and 135 million
with low vision; 90 per cent of the world's blind live in developing
countries, with nine million in India, six million in China,
and seven million in Africa; every five seconds, someone in the
world goes blind. A child goes blind every minute. A 2003 report
warned that global blindness is set to increase over the next
20 years, to 76 million individuals. What fuelled Dr.
TAILOR/TAYLOR
was the sobering fact that as much as 80 per cent of global blindness
is avoidable -- 60 per cent treatable and 20 per cent preventable.
Dr. TAILOR/TAYLOR first landed in Canada at the age of 20, on a scholarship
to the East Ontario Institute of Technology in Ottawa to study
biochemical technology. "We all had to work on frogs," recalls
his wife, Beverley, who met Dr.
TAILOR/TAYLOR at the institute in the
mid-1960s. "You could tell he had a talent for surgery. His frog
was always perfect."
But he quit the program when a spot he had applied for earlier
at the University of the West Indies' medical school opened up
in Jamaica. He graduated in 1970 and returned to Ottawa, followed
by a residency in ophthalmology at Queen's University in Kingston.
In 1976, after becoming the first black ophthalmologist to graduate
from Queen's, Dr.
TAILOR/TAYLOR planned to return to Jamaica to set
up practice, but political turmoil forced him to reconsider.
Instead, he hung out a shingle in Cornwall, where he honed his
expertise in microscopic eye surgery, cornea transplants and
laser eye surgery, became chief of ophthalmology at Cornwall
Community Hospital, and taught ophthalmology at Queen's, a 90-minute
drive away.
With ORBIS,
Dr.
TAILOR/TAYLOR spent up to 14 weeks a year volunteering
in the Third World, and he recruited other Canadians as volunteer
surgeons and staff. As for the plane, it took the 25 crew members
doctors, nurses, pilots and technicians -- nine hours to convert
it into a hospital each time it landed. "I have done everything
except fly the plane," Dr.
TAILOR/TAYLOR said a few years ago. "I've
cleaned toilets, done surgery and washed the plane."
In Third World countries, the aircraft must provide power (with
its own generator), clean water (through a sterilization system)
and clean, filtered air. A satellite dish permits communication
with anyone in the world. In many countries, security is ensured
by soldiers with machine guns who patrol the tarmac around the
plane.
As well, 17 cameras, eight microphones and 54 video monitors
permit viewing surgery for 50 observers in the plane's theatre
(with potentially hundreds more in a remote location) and allow
for interaction with the surgeons in the operating room. Surgeries
are also recorded, edited and burned onto Digital Video Disks
for distribution in the host country's ophthalmic community.
Instead of the studied calm of a normal operating theatre, the
atmosphere aboard the plane was "bedlam," said Dr.
LEONARD, who
accompanied Dr.
TAILOR/TAYLOR on 14 missions. "There were engineers,
technicians, translators running around, and questions flying.
We could feel the jet blasts from other planes taking off. And
Garth would push people to their limits." But he never saw Dr.
TAILOR/TAYLOR lose his cool.
Well, maybe once. It was in Africa, and a local official refused
to board an internal flight until his palm felt a crisp $100
bill. "Garth couldn't stand that," Dr.
LEONARD recalled. "He
had a little chip on his shoulder, which we loved. But he would
never rant about a personal problem."
Dr. TAILOR/TAYLOR loved to play dominoes and consume, as well as bake,
rum-soaked fruitcakes (his parents had a bakery in Jamaica).
To anyone not used to meeting an eye doctor who was black, he
offered a great icebreaker: "Hi, I'm Dr.
TAILOR/TAYLOR, in living colour."
The ice didn't always break. Once, in Swaziland, a white man
from South Africa balked at having Dr.
TAILOR/TAYLOR operate on his
son. The man eventually gave in to his pleading son, and the
boy's sight was restored. "I welcome the uninformed, the misguided,"
Dr. TAILOR/TAYLOR told Maclean's magazine, which named him to its honour
roll last year. "It gives me the opportunity to set them straight."
This year, he was awarded the Order of Jamaica. In October, he
was the keynote speaker at Eyes on Jamaica, a program to support
ORBIS
Canada's plans to build an eye-care facility at the Bustamante
Hospital for Children in Kingston, the country's capital.
Dr. TAILOR/TAYLOR was also a co-founder of Can
SEE, the Canadian arm
of the aid agency Surgical Eye Expeditions, and he donated a
week annually aboard the Canadian National Institute for the
Blind's Eye Van, a mobile clinic designed to bring eye care to
remote areas of Northern Ontario.
Friends and colleagues recall a man who accepted many kudos with
humility. One simple letter from a patient touched him deeply,
though, because it so sublimely expressed the impact of Dr.
TAILOR/TAYLOR's
work: "I write this letter to you because prior to meeting you,
I couldn't see to write."
Garth Alfred
TAILOR/TAYLOR was born on April 29, 1944, in Montego Bay,
Jamaica, and died on November 19, 2005, after emergency surgery
at the Ottawa Heart Institute. He was 61. He leaves his wife,
Beverley, and children Leanne and Gregory.
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