Bad judgment must be called out

Playing on a tree on the other side of the fence was so inviting, but, it turned out, against the rules.

It happened when I was about nine. The public-school playground got a little boring, so a bunch of us found a maple tree just across the back fence of the schoolyard to climb, sit in and hang from. Word got around to the principal, Mr. Palmer Kilpatrick. If for no other reason than fear of liability, he announced that the tree was off limits.

That didn’t stop us. Next day, we headed back over the fence and scrambled back up the tree. Suddenly, it got quiet. All my fellow tree-climbers disappeared. I was alone. I looked down and there was Mr. Kilpatrick standing at the foot of the tree.

“Ted, come down,” he said sternly. “You know you’re not supposed to be up there.”

“Yes sir,” and I came down. Everybody else who’d climbed the tree with me that day had taken off. And I could have too. But something inside me said, “Fess up and face the consequences.” (more…)

The price of renaming

Just over a year ago, some of our Centennial College student reporters were assembling the latest edition of the East York Observer newspaper. One reporter had been assigned to cover a media conference at the regional hospital in the area. She returned to explain that the hospital, which for probably half a century was known as the Toronto East General Hospital, was now going to be called the Michael Garron Hospital, in honour of the son of long-time hospital donors, Myron and Berna Garron. Michael Burns, the chair of the old TEGH, explained it to our reporter this way.

“If you’re lucky, once in a lifetime a truly extraordinary philanthropic gesture transforms an institution and care for thousands of people,” he said. “We are humbled and beyond grateful that our hospital is in receipt of such a remarkable and historic gesture.” (more…)