Random Access

Bill Evans finds himself as the guardian of the Chimney Swifts in Streetsville.
He's 77-years-old, completely deaf in one ear and partially deaf in most of the other one, but Bill still talks a blue streak, especially about the fate of the birds which have become his passion in the past few years.
He was born in 1931 in a house at 88 William St. in town. Bill has lived in Streetsville all his life. Whatever you do, don't call him a Mississaugan.
His grandfather Ephraim Evans bought the old Credit Valley Railway Station when a new brick station was built in town in 1914.
When he was a kid, "I spent more time in the bush than I did in school," he says, with a little cackle in his crackling voice that accompanies so many of his stories. "I wish I'd paid more attention in school," says Bill. "I don't talk or read so good."
In his childhood, Evans recalls the magnificent site of the Swifts, bobbing and weaving by the hundreds in the centre of town. They were especially thick down by the power dam that his dad looked after.
Their main haunt in those days was the chimney of the old soap factory.
Bill forgot about the birds until just a few years ago, when they suddenly appeared again around town after an absence of some four decades.
Bill found a colony of them living in the chimney of the Streetsville United Church, at Queen and Princess Sts.
Since then, you can often see Bill out on the site with his binoculars, counting birds and generally keeping a watchful eye on the proceedings. The Swifts arrive in early May. At the end of the season, the birds — which build their nests by using their saliva to plaster sticks on the side of the chimney — choose one large chimney for a season-ending party.
They circle the skies in a mass flying formation and then make a bombing run into the chosen chimney where hundreds of them wait for the mass migration that soon follows. It's one of the most unusual and spectacular sights in nature.
Swifts, like many swallows and other insectivores, are in decline everywhere.
When Bill reads in the newspapers about larvicides being applied to our sewers to try to control West Nile virus, he wonders why we don't do more to save the mosquito-eating machines like the swifts.
There are about 15 swifts in town this summer, says Bill. Some of them are again in the chimney at the church and some at the Oddfellows Hall. There are a few on Reid Dr. but they had to move house and home after someone got tired of all the chittering and put some wire over the top of their first home.
People unknowingly lighting fires in the chimneys were they live is one of the chief causes of Swift mortality.
Bill, who is running his own kind of adopt-a-bird-species program as one might participate in an adopt-a-roadside plan or an adopt-a-park scheme, is worried about his feathered friends.
He has a simple idea about how to help them. In other places, communities have built free-standing artificial chimneys, surrounded with educational boards about the life cycle of the Swift, which have proven to be popular tourist attractions.
"In the United States, they seem to be a lot more interested in the Swifts," says Evans, pointing out that some schools make the arrival of the birds an annual celebration. It's even part of their science curriculum when students plot the return roots of the birds from Peru and the Amazon Valley.
There's no reason that a chimney couldn't be built for the Swifts at Riverwood or, even in the middle of Streetsville Memorial Park beside the Vic Johnston Arena, which is currently being renovated, says Evans
He has approached another good old boy from Streetsville, Ward 11 Councillor George Carlson, about the notion.
Evans bemoans his lack of ability to write letters to his MPPs about the birds or get up in front of City council to articulate the benefits of his old-fashioned simple solution.
But in his own slow, sweet way, Bill is doing just fine in advancing the cause.
All he needs now is someone willing to do more than listen.
For more information on swifts, visit www.chimneyswifts.org.

As he loads and unloads flatbed trucks every day at his job at St. Lawrence Cement, Armando Castro keeps glancing anxiously toward the sky. He keeps a pair of field glasses hanging on a nearby machine and every once in awhile, he will take them down and direct them toward the object of his avian passion — a pair of peregrine falcons who live year-round at the plant.
Castro and Barb Smith, another long-time employee of SLC, are the resident guardians of the falcons, keeping an ever-watchful eye on the nest and keeping in regular contact with Mark and Marion Nash of the Canadian Peregrine Foundation.
Once a year, in what has become an annual ritual, biologist Mark Heaton, the Nashes and rock climber John Miller make an early June appearance at SLC for the entertaining and highly important task of banding the new crop of chicks.
Miller rappels down from a silo above the nesting site, puts the fluffy chicks into a duffle bag, sends them back up on the rope and then spends an anxious hour or so fending off the attacks of the parent falcons who dutifully try like to rip his face off. He waves his arms wildly in big circles to fend them off. Every once in a while, he takes a glancing blow.
The chicks, meanwhile, are taken down to the plant where they are sexed, weighed and banded by Heaton and Castro, then returned to the nest so that, theoretically, their parents never even know they have been gone.
That's the way it is supposed to go.
Then there was yesterday.
When the trap-door hatch high above the nest site was opened so that Miller could prepare to descend, the falcon parents took off as expected in screeching complaint.
Then, surprisingly, there appeared two little bodies teetering on the edge of the roof. They were not the fluffy little balls of peregrine that were expected, but were more like gawky adolescents, already resplendent with distinct brown and beige streaks on their chests. The birds were 10 days older than estimated. That meant it was too dangerous to band them, because they would likely jump in panic rather than allow themselves to be caught.
But, as fate would have it, another opportunity would soon arrive. One of the birds fell from the nest about an hour after the biologist left the site. The ever-watchful Castro was there to scoop him up and put him in a rescue box. This morning, biologist Heaton returned to the plant to band "Clarkson" as the battling little male was named, in honour of the 200th anniversary of the village where he was born.
Castro has a long-standing interest in birds. He keeps a Harris Hawk in a huge coop in his own backyard. When SLC help a suggestion program called Eureka many years ago, he suggested they try to acquire a pair of peregrines to keep down the pigeons who frequent the plant.
That didn't prove practical but word must have been passed along on the peregrine hotline, however, because they arrived to stay a few years later.
The first of them was the legendary "Nate the Great" who garnered a boatload of publicity because he was one of the first of the birds to be outfitted with a tracking transmitter. The technology was able to show the bird's incredible migration patterns.
"Nate was a fierce little guy," recalled Castro yesterday, pointing out on the side of a building near the kiln where he and his mate settled in the "Cadillac of nesting boxes" to raise their young.
Nate's territory was challenged more than once by interlopers, sparking some of the amazing aerial duels between the males that are legendary among birders.
After a long career, Nate was killed at SLC at night by some kind of predator, probably an owl.
His successor, named Jackson "caught a bus" as Castro refers to being hit by a vehicle, at Winston Churchill Blvd. and Eglinton Ave. W. a short time later.
That's when Storm, the current SLC male, moved in. His mate has not yet been identified so she has not been given a name, in deference to the fact she may already be a known quantity from another site.
The experience of having the falcons nest at the plant has been a rewarding one for everyone who works there, says Barb Smith, the other key employee in the falcon protection phalanx.
"I can't say enough about what he puts into it," she says of Castro. "We purchased a scope for him because the one he had wasn't good enough for the resolution he needs. He's absolutely devoted to these birds."
And he is not the only one.
"Every person here watches out for them," Smith says. When a young red-tailed hawk went to the ground recently with a broken wing (he may have come to close to the falcon nest), Armando was immediately notified and the bird was sent to the Toronto Wildlife Centre for repairs. "It's really raised the whole awareness level about the natural world" with employees, says Smith.
A construction road that runs through the plant is officially called "Peregrine Way" and the plant schedules its construction work around the nesting habits of the bird.
"They kind of rule the roost," says Smith with a laugh.

Al Gilbert isn't sure why he kept that five-by-seven inch piece of film: the one he shot shortly after he opened his photography business in Toronto, the one of the young kid, just in from Montreal who couldn't even pay the $2 fee.
The young guy was looking for a job. After he got off the plane at Malton Airport, he jumped into a cab and asked the driver if he knew where he could get his picture taken for a job application. Lucky thing the driver was Gilbert's brother-in-law.
A few years later the young man was on the phone again, looking for the original picture and saying he needed some more publicity shots taken.
"He said 'My name is Oscar Peterson and I'm now playing piano for a living," the 86-year-old Gilbert recalled with a laugh yesterday evening as he sat in the office of Oscar Peterson Public School Principal Caroline Mochrie.
Peterson told the young photographer that he wanted to use him to do lots of his photo shoots in future.
And indeed, he did.
That's Gilbert (above) now 86, beside the first picture he ever took —lo those many years ago —of the man who would become Canada's greatest contribution to the international world of jazz in the image above.
"Anytime I had a new camera, he was my model," says the photographer.
A few moments before he chatted at Peterson Public School's annual "Symphony of Spring" fundraising event, Gilbert had done a truly magnanimous thing.
He had officially donated a collection of 10 iconic images he had taken of Peterson through the years — a collection valued at more than $30,000.
"We're going to have them framed and put all around the school," Principal Mochrie explained, "so that wherever we are in the school, Oscar will be smiling down at us."
Both Gilbert and the late, great pianist who died Dec. 23 of last year at his Mississauga home, are members of the Order of Canada.
They are both perfectionists of the first order, who shared a passion for photography. Peterson was an avid photographer and camera collector and the two shared many long chats about the profession over the years.
In 1968, Gilbert got a call from Hasselblad Cameras in Sweden, offering a chance to compete in an invitation-only photo event with the best in the business around the world. The idea was to take a photo of a famous person from your home country and submit it for use by Hasselblad.
Gilbert — who in Jan. 2007 became the only Canadian ever to be presented the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Professional Photographers of America — took a photograph of Peterson, naturally.
"According to Hasselblad, it was the finest image taken in all the entries in the world," he says. In the world of black and white photography, there is a "grey scale" that measures the various levels of exposure. Gilbert's photo achieved the rare feat of having every zone on the scale represented in the image. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance that produced that image."
Funny how those miracles occur a little more often when a true professional is being the shutter, or at the keyboard.
In walking around the stage at Peterson Public School to look at the Gilbert prints last night, you saw indelible images of Oscar that are immediately recognizable. One of them was projected as a huge (30 ft. by 24 ft.) backdrop behind the performers last Feb. 14 at the mayor's tribute concert to OP at LAC. It featured the pianist's huge fingers in the foreground.
Then there was the one of Oscar behind the piano bench, with its top up, taken from a distance. It was used as the model for the life-size painting that of the pianist that now hangs at LAC.
So why did Gilbert choose OP Public School to house his extraordinary collection?
"Because the school is named in his honour," he says simply.
"I can't believe the type of diversity of the children that are here. It's just magnificent that you can have all these children here that can learn together, learn French immersion and learn to play music and learn all these instruments and, most importantly, to live together in harmony," says Gilbert.

Hugh Arrison admitted last night — after he won the Mississauga South nomination for the Conservative Party — that it has been a frustrating, tortuous trail to the candidate's seat.
"There was a point there where we were all questioning ourselves," about staying in the race, the personable international financial consultant said in an interview at St. John's Anapilis Hall after he took the victory. His party certainly couldn;t have been said to have welcomed him with open arms.
Raya Shadursky, the Orchard Heights ratepayers' president who gave the best speech of the night by some distance, reminded the audience of some 500 people that she first filed her intent to seek the job in Oct. 2006. She noted that some babies who were born in the interim are probably walking and talking by now.
"Every candidate was questioning why we were in the race," Arrison recalled after the party made them all resubmit their credentials, then stalled the nomination call, despite several requests from the local executive.
The party was obviously waiting for Mr. or Mrs. Designated Celebrity to magically appear from the wings to sweep the delegates off their feet, one must presume.
Major Ted Opitz was the next-closest thing. But he faced an uphill battle with the locals from Mississauga South — where residency seems to matter more than it does in the rest of the City and the country — because he came from out-of-riding.
The image would have been perfect for his detractors if he had been a paratrooper, and could have been popped in, complete with political parachute in hand. As it was, they made quite enough hay simply from the fact he didn't live here.
Voters used the preferential ballot system, where you rank your first, second and third choices for election at the same time on the single ballot. If no one has a 50 per cent plus one majority on that vote, the votes of the third-place finisher's supporters are set aside.
That candidate's supporters second choices are then used to determine the winner. They are redistributed between the remaining candidates to determine the ultimate victor.
Rumour has it that Arrison didn't get a clean win on the first tally, but managed to go over the top with the second count.
He wasn't particularly worrying about how he did it in the first flush of victory.
It might have been tempting to pull out when it seems the deck is stacked against you, Arrison said but, "when you become a candidate you discover that people are counting on you. You've got a lot of people relying on you. There were many times we we were discouraged by the length of time it took and then, of course, they bring in someone else," he said in reference to the Major.
With the lack of success the Conservative Party, provincial and federal, has experienced in trying to massage the results of nominations in Mississauga South, you'd think they might cotton on to the fact that there is a real grassroots tuned-in membership extant, who aren't going to be cowed by Party Central.
Arrison knows how tough a row he has to hoe in order to beat incumbent Szabo.
Asked what he must do to win, he got right to the heart of the matter: "We have to get into the homes of our Liberal buddies and get them to chance their minds."
An earlier nomination might have helped with that strategy.

Must apologize for the sporadic nature of these entries but learning a new job is proving much more time-consuming than anticipated. Hope to be with you much more often as things slow down (please, please) in the summer.
Some catch-up notes would seem to be a good idea. Here goes:

You might have noticed it's been very quiet on the Rambo front. Assistant defence attorney Carolyn Parrish says that's a good thing because the alleged pit bull's chance of gaining acquittal grows — along with his body — with each passing day.
"He's getting really elongated and he's way too big to be a pit bull," the Ward 6 councillor says.
The pressure to get the case to court has largely been mitigated since owner Gabriela Nowakowska can now make weekly visits to see her dog as a result of a City council ruling. There's also the looming court date on the main court battle against the pit bull ban. That case will be heard in mid-September when Clayton Ruby takes the appeal to the upper courts.
The rambunctious Rambo, meantime, is about to be neutered. That should make him a more presentable witness if he ever has to make a court appearance. An anonymous donor who is fond of pit bulls and plaid jackets and high collars in equal has come forward to fund the procedure.
Nowakowska is once again appealing to the public for funding to continue her case.
• • •
On the bird front, it looks like Mississauga's permanent peregrine nesting sites have officially been reduced to two.
The birds who used to nest at the Lakeview Generating station, which mimicked their natural nesting sites on cliffs, have departed the scene to take up residence at a condo on Mill Rd. in Etobicoke.
Since no other falcon couples were interested in moving into the lovely lakeside condo that Ontario Power Generation and the Canadian Peregrine Foundation (CPF) fashioned for them, the artificial tower with the nest atop has been disassembled. It will be relocated to the Nanticoke Generating Station site according to Mark Nash, the executive director of CPF.
• • •
Geography Professor Emeritus Thomas McIlwraith of UTM began his fascinating lecture about the physical history of the campus a couple of months ago by referring to a mailbox just north of the North Entrance Road on the original property of the O'Neil family. Their farm is one of four that originally formed the foundations of the campus. The good professor wondered how many people these days recognize the historic significance of the wagon wheel that adorned a mail box in front of the abandoned home.
Well, not many will recognize that symbol now that it lies on its side on the ground after the house was knocked down and the property cleared. Wonder what happened to all that lovely Credit Valley stone that formed the foundation of the old barn?
Maybe someone should grab the mailbox and hold it as one of the first holdings of the campus archives that McIlwraith espoused at the end of his speech.
• • •
This just in — Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen are just as good now as they were last April when they made their first appearance at Hugh's Room in Toronto.
Their sold-out show last night was a feast of high harmony, mutual respect and irrepressible passion for the music. Hillman (Byrds, Burrito Brothers, Manassas, Souther Hillman Furay, Desert Rose Band) couldn't help but break into a big smile and extol the virtues of Pedersen's harmony singing after the opening number, Bury Me Under the Weepin’ Willow.
Pedersen, like Emmylou Harris with whom he recorded many times, is a master at setting off his singing partner's voice to the optimum degree.
Highlight of the night was their version of the Burrito classic called Wheels. You could almost hear the ghost of Gram Parsons adding a third part in the background.

Former Mississauga Mayor Ron Searle gave out an award named in his honour Saturday afternoon at the inaugural Lakeview Ratepayers' Association picnic.
Called the Ron Searle Community Contribution Award it was presented to Ward 1 Councillor Carmen Corbasson for her aid to the community in beating back the Hazel McCallion Perpetual Generating Station on the site of the former Lakeview coal-fired plant.
After Searle made the presentation to the councillor, she turned the tables on him by presenting the long-time Orchard Heights resident with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Like so many things in Lakeview, the picnic and the awards were orchestrated by Lakeview ratepayer president Jim Tovey. That's him above on the left in this photo taken by Amanda Farion, with Searle in the middle and Corbasson on the right.
The award winners were presented with a lovely vintage photo montage of the female workers at the small arms plant that once stood at the foot of Dixie Rd. in what will soon be Arsenals Park.
"There was a French-Canadian photographer that the government sent to the munitions factory and there were some terrific photos taken," says Tovey. "The photos are really well-lit and the grain is outstanding. He must have really used a good camera.
We contacted The National Archives and got 60 of the photos. Then we took the top eight and mounted them," for the award presentation," Tovey said. "We figured it was strong women for a strong woman," he said in reference to Corbasson.
Tovey hopes that all of the photos will eventually be part of the "heritage walk" that the association has proposed to be part of Arsenals Park.
Searle is having serious problems with one leg and has some hearing problems but is, "hanging in there" as he likes to say. He was front and centre at the Mississauga South Tory nomination meeting last week, where he voted and held court for all those who came around to chat.
Asked what the ex-mayor was honoured for, Tovey replied: "Just for being Ron." He was largely responsible for the acquisition of the property that became Lakefront Promenade in the early 70s, says Tovey, a member of the City's heritage advisory committee. "He was involved in the purchase and we owe him an eternal debt of gratitude," he added. "Besides, he's such a wonderful man."
After the fun Saturday, it was back to business this morning as the Ontario Municipal Board hearing on the Queenscorp development application to put a 21-storey, 260-unit high rise condo at the northeast corner of Lakeshore Rd. E. and Deta Rd. got underway at the Civic Centre.
"They unveiled their own vision of Lakeview," said Tovey, who helped develop the community vision known as the Lakeview Legacy project. "Their vision is a line of condos on both sides of Lakeshore."
Tovey and the Lakeview residents get their chance to speak to the future of the critical strip along Lakeshore Rd. E. Thursday at 10 a.m.

There are a few people you just seem to run across over and over in the course of your working life. Your paths just seem to intertwine naturally over time.
Sometimes that's good and sometimes, it's bad.
In the case of Wilma Davis, it was all good.
I first met Wilma in the late 1970s when we were covering the same story. Wilma worked for The Oakville Journal Record. I worked for The Mississauga Times, two newspapers defunct since 1981.
It was a story about a film chronicling the life of flamboyant gay British actor Quentin Crisp, which was considered so controversial at the time that it was the proposed subject of a public ban.
A short time later, Davis went "over to the dark side" (as those who stay on the editorial side of the great divide refer to it) when she became information officer for Sheridan College. She was a single mother with a daughter to raise and the income in public relations was no doubt a critical factor.
Unlike a lot of PR people, though, Davis still felt like one of us, perhaps because she never pretended the organization she worked for was perfect and she always maintained a passionate interest in the general state of politics.
She had a collection of political buttons collected over numerous campaigns that would be the envy of political junkies everywhere.
She worked for the Peel Board of Education for about a decade. We shared the press table at the old board building on King St. W. (now a long-term care facility) through numerous late evening debates about French immersion busing and school closings, not to mention mill rates and budgets. That was back in the days when trustees really were responsible for policy — and taxes.
After a decade at the board, Wilma moved on to the City of Mississauga where she again gave yeoman service — not just to her employer but to the public through her involvement in several public organizations, including the United Way of Peel in its struggling formative years.
The Hamilton native moved back to her hometown to work for the new amalgamated municipality there and then took a job at the Ministry of Education under Gerard Kennedy. She was most recently employed by the Ministry of Labour.
Earlier this week, she was found dead, aged 57 at her Toronto apartment. She had been in poor health and the pneumonia that had floored her a couple of years ago apparently made a fatal reappearance.
"Wilma was the most unselfish, devoted friend that anybody could ever have," says Maureen Ellis, of the City's communications department, who bonded with Davis during the labourious process of putting together several mayor's galas. "She really knew how to be a friend. Mostly, she really knew how to have fun. She had that infectious laugh and she worked hard to make you laugh. That made a lot of the work so easy. She was a mentor, a teacher and a supportive friend."
John Fraser, former director of education at the Peel board, said, "Wilma was extremely positive and excellent at what she did. Part of that, of course, was that she was very intelligent but she always had such a positive attitude. She was hardworking, loyal, dependable and intelligent. She was an ideal spokeswoman for our organization."
She was also always an advocate for the broader community. Because of her own need for care for her daughter Lisa, Davis was one of those instrumental in the establishment of the Peel Lunch and After School Program, an invaluable pillar of the community that survives and thrives to this day.
She was also a stalwart political campaigner.
Ward 1 Councillor Carmen Corbasson remembers Davis volunteering for her first electoral campaign in 1994 with the words, "I'll do anything except knock on doors." Not only did she do everything, "but she knocked on more doors than anyone else," recalls Corbasson. "She was incredible."
Most of Wilma's political campaigns were unsuccessful, mostly because she supported the NDP.
She never looked at it that way, though.
Remember speaking to her at a union hall on Matheson Blvd. after a particularly bad electoral night when things hadn't gone well for her party. She was having a "victory beer" anyway because life isn't always about the winning and the losing.
It's more often about advancing the good cause a few inches at a time, she explained. Wilma was always very good at that.
There is visitation tonight from 7-9 p.m. at the Trull Funeral Home and Cremation Centre at 11 Danforth Ave. in Toronto. The memorial service is tomorrow at 11 a.m. in the chapel.
Donations may be made to Wind Fall Clothing Service, 29 Connell Court, Unit 3, Toronto ON M8Z 5T7 or at www.windfallclothing.ca.
Windfall is a charity that provides new clothes to clients of Toronto homeless and emergency shelters.
Still supporting those good causes, eh Wilma?

Somebody at the Erin Mills Auto Super Campus ("The Test Drive Capital of Canada") can't see the forest for the tease.
Over the past few weeks, what used to be a lovely little green space on the south side of Dundas St. W., from Glen Erin Dr. to west of Woodchester Dr. — opposite Woodchester Mall — has been transformed into an outdoor ad gallery that despoils what used to be a rather pleasant little break in the landscape from the various malls along the street.
The auto retailers are obviously not happy that a berm and a lovely line of trees planted along the south edge of the auto campus by some landscape architect who knew what he or she was doing, hid the hideous view of acres and acres of cars parked behind auto dealerships on Motorway Blvd.
After all, in Mississauga, we just can't have enough views of giant parking lots like the ones at Square One that signify our true civic values.
In any event — since the landscaping of the Auto Super Campus did its job in screening the miles of cars behind the berm — the campus members obviously worry that no one will know they are there. As if we couldn't get the jingle, and the ads that seem to run constantly on so many Toronto radio stations, out of our heads.
Several nice stands of shrubs have been removed over the past couple of weeks and a series of monuments to commerce, complete with giant logos, have replaced them as you can see in the photo by Fred Loek above.
There has been much burrowing and trenching on the berm, obviously to prepare to get electricity to the message boards to bombard drivers as they navigate the pending gauntlet of auto ads. Undoubtedly, some of the messages will include such public services messages as: "Don't read this. You should be paying attention to your driving."
It's only a matter of time until one of the message crawls advises us that we should drop into one of the dealerships and save the environment by buying a hybrid vehicle.
They compromised a nice little green strip, added some unnecessary plastic lumps to the streetscape and will spend a small fortune on power to add a few more intrusive messages to our lives. Then they'll try to appeal to our consciences by playing the environmental card.
Just another day in auto paradise.

If you were going to pick one person to epitomize the history of Trillium Health Centre, you need look no farther than Merritt Henderson.
In 1957, Henderson responded to a newspaper advertisement for an accountant. The name of the potential employer wasn't even listed, but it turned out to be a new hospital in what was then the Township of Toronto.
He got the job and in April 1958, several weeks before the first patient was admitted, Henderson joined South Peel Hospital for its launch. He was the accountant and office manager for a financial staff that consisted of just four people.
"Our budget was $450,000," recalled Henderson yesterday with a laugh. Last year, Trillium's budget hit the $400 million mark.
The spanking new building on The Queensway at Hurontario St. was all paid for when Henderson arrived, which was the good news. But there was no money for the operating budget, which was the bad news. Somehow, Henderson cobbled together the funds and the hospital made ends meet.
A few years after he joined Trillium, Henderson became President and CEO when the founding president, Ray Copeland, died suddenly of heart failure. Copeland knew of his heart condition and had already recommended Henderson as his successor to the board should anything happen to him.
Henderson, a tall, quiet, humble, soft-spoken man must have seemed an unlikely choice — on the surface.
In fact, he seemed way too nice a guy to be a CEO. (In 50 years, Trillium has only had five: Copeland, Henderson, Dennis Egan, Ken White and now Janet Davidson.)
Henderson must have been a pretty good CEO, because he held the post for 34 years.
In the way that things have of coming full circle, Henderson is back at Trillium these days — as a patient.
The 76-year-old, who retired in 1994, has Parkinson's disease and has been in the complex continuing care program since last October. It's been a rough patch but Henderson and his wife Frances (seen above with Merritt) are still working on getting him home.
Henderson and the hospital's other founding fathers will be in the spotlight this year as the hospital officially celebrates its 50th anniversary. Queensway Hospital celebrates its 52nd year of existence at the same time and the joint entity they became when they merged in 1998, and now known as Trillium Health Centre, celebrates its 10th anniversary.
From his wheelchair, Henderson recalls some of the hallmarks that made him so successful: regular presentations of the budget to his staff to keep them fully informed about why some tough decisions had to be made (There were layoffs several years towards the end of his career); regular patrolling of the hall so that staff could bend his ear on needs; direct meetings of hospital representatives with ministry personnel ("We fought our battles quietly in the board room. They weren't generous as a result but they were reasonable."); and an open door policy for staff.
A good dose of common sense and compassion for people also helped immeasurably.
"Hospitals are very much a people organization," says Henderson. "There's an historic tension between the medical staff and the administration. If you can handle that, you can survive," he says with a laugh.
"We always treated the staff as a family. By giving them a venue for having their input, there always was a feeling that their voice would be heard. If you can build in an element of that, then half the battle is over."
Merritt Henderson still walks the halls of Trillium these days, or rather scuffles along in his wheelchair with a gentle push. He is met with smiles and greetings everywhere he goes.
The funny thing is, he says, everyone still calls him "Mr. Henderson."
"I could never get them to call me Merritt," he says.
Guess that's small price you have to pay for a big thing called respect.

Mississaugans seem to have an unusual love affair with their hydro utility.
Back in 2000, when deregulation of the hydro industry first reared its head, City residents turned out in droves to several public meetings to implore their political leaders not to sell Hydro Mississauga. The depth of the sentiment, and the uniformity of opinion, was quite surprising.
Mayor Hazel McCallion has said on more than one occasion that she had never seen such uniformity of strongly-held feeling on any single subject.
Based on last night's public meeting at City Hall, not much has changed in eight years.
When it comes to Enersource, some City councillors seem to be obsessed with the principal of the thing, as in how much cash can they levy out of it if they sell it. On the other hand, the public seems to be interested in the principle of the thing: as in 'Why are we in a rush to hand over yet another critical piece of our infrastructure over to people who have the bottom line, and not the public interest, at heart?'
As long as the City owns 90 per cent of Enersource — even though it operates as a private company — there is still some vestige of control for us, the lowly light-switch flickers.
Of course, such a significant decision can't be based on sentiment, no matter how widely it may be shared.
But if you were looking for data that would support a sale, it wasn't on display last night.
The financial experts hired by the City to lay out the options (which council already knew) couldn't publicly talk about their estimate of Enersource's value because that could skew the bidding process to come.
On the other hand, it left the public with the discomfiting feeling that the real basis of information on which the decision must be based is considered none of their business by City Hall.
One good thing about last night's session: for a change, council had to sit on its hands and listen to the public pour out its opinions, rather than the other way around.
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The beautiful field stone fence that used to mark the boundary between UTM and the Hugh McNeil property to the north on Mississauga Rd. is not permanently gone after all.
Ward 8 Councillor Katie Mahoney says that the new owner of the property, Mario Durso, formerly of Streetsville, has plans to use the stone as part of the new residential development that will be going up on the land. Durso also rescued a marker stone that exactly dates the construction of the barn. It will be used as part of the new fence that will be constructed.
Mahoney is in Newfoundland today as husband Steve attends a conference as the head of the Workers' Safety Insurance Board. She set the trip before she learned the date of the Enersource public meeting.
Mahoney doesn't sound too enthusiastic about selling. Many of the residents who questioned the sale last night were from her Ward 8. "It's part of the fabric of the community," says Mahoney of the utility. "We own it and it's an asset."
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You learn something new every day, as they say.
Didn't realize that the three Tim Hortons franchises at Trillium Health Centre were owned by the hospital auxiliary, until the hospital's communications director, Larry Roberts pointed it out Wednesday.
Great idea for fundraising. You could say it "double doubles" the pleasure of taking a coffee break at Tims when you know the caffeine is going to a good cause.
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Off for three weeks' vacation now at the cottage with the mosquitoes, the magnolia warblers (we can only hope) and the martinis.