Gold magnate Peter Munk gave Toronto General Hospital $37-million yesterday, the largest gift ever to a Canadian hospital.
The money will be used to acquire the next generation of diagnostic equipment, much of it still experimental, that will allow the hospital to develop what Robert Bell, president and CEO of the University Health Network, described in an interview as "minimally invasive, image-driven treatment."
The equipment that will be purchased with the grant from the Peter Munk Charitable Foundation will allow doctors to obtain the three-dimensional images of the heart that will allow surgeons to treat cardiovascular problems without the need to open the chest, Dr. Bell said.
For instance, heart valves are now being repaired through catheters inserted in a blood vessel in the groin, and "there is potential for replacing entire heart valves that way," Dr. Bell said.
The province also donated $7-million, bringing the total for the project to $44-million.
The foundation, located at Toronto General, which is a part of the University Health Network, will also fund an academic chair in cardiovascular imaging, so that the new techniques and methods for treatment can be evaluated "in the Ontario context, rather than the marketing context as is often done in the United States," Dr. Bell said.
Mr. Munk, whose grandfather, father and uncle died of heart disease, gave the hospital $6-million to establish the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre a decade ago and has since donated another $2-million to it. He described his first donation as "a very successful investment as far as we were concerned because it produced very tangible and very spectacular results."
Mr. Munk, the founder and chairman of Barrick Gold Corp., said the donations his foundation has made to TGH and the others are meant to change the community for the better.
"I wasn't born here, my parents and grandparents did not create this country. I was taken in and I felt . . . the country was more than good to me, and I felt I owed it a debt of gratitude, which I felt I had to repay."
Charitable giving by successful people is "part of the ethos of North America. Voluntarism, because we are two young countries, is really respected very highly. . . . That really distinguishes in my mind Canadians and Americans to a certain degree from Europeans, who never give."
In Europe, where there is no endowment of university chairs or gifts for hospital wings, "they believe in handing out the money to generation after generation [of their own family]"
But that is not the answer, he said. "Handing out motivation, a set of values, which I have done to my family -- and I've got five kids -- is more important because giving them money is not giving them the most important part, which is self-confidence. I think all my kids have that, and I had it because my parents were penniless refugees."