Hospital for Sick Children Archives • Ted Barris

SickKids doesn’t care who’s naught and nice… just who’s brave!

First, the pages of the big book flipping in the wind caught my attention. Then, the curtain flapping in the breeze at the open window. It looked a bit haunting in the murky darkness of the room. Then, as the camera zoomed to the book of flipping pages of lists, the voice of the announcer intrigued even more.

“Tradition says there are always two lists,” she said. “A list for the nice. And a list for the naughty. Every year, children all over the world are scribbled down on one side or the other.”

The voiceover went on to say there was one place nearby, however, where children were neither good nor bad. “But rather brave. Courageous children who face the unimaginable. Theirs are the names etched on the brave list!” (more…)

Phil Kessel had no intentions of promoting his visit to Toronto Sick Kids Hospital with the Stanley Cup, but hospital staff tweeted out pictures and praise.

He wore a baseball cap that had no team emblem and a T-shirt with no sign of his number 81 on it. He smiled for several of the private photographs taken that day; and that was a bit out of the ordinary. Otherwise his visit to Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children went unnoticed even when he opened up a case and revealed – for the children and staff at the hospital only – the Stanley Cup, the one he and his fellow Pittsburgh Penguins had won last spring. And his visit would have gone unnoticed, but for a hospital staffer who tweeted:

“SickKids was buzzing with #StanleyCup fever today! Thx for visiting our patients & families @PKessel81 #NHL.” (more…)