One built for veterans, one built because Jewish doctors were shut out elsewhere
Toronto's Hospitals
Beyond the insulin story covered in our medical history guide, two of Toronto's major hospitals carry genuinely distinct founding stories — one built specifically for Second World War veterans, the other founded because Jewish physicians couldn't get hired anywhere else in the city.
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Our medical history guide covers the 1921 discovery of insulin. Two of Toronto's other major hospitals carry their own distinct, less-told founding stories.
Sunnybrook: built for veterans
Sunnybrook Hospital was commissioned in 1943 specifically to meet the medical needs of returning Second World War veterans, which had outpaced what existing military hospitals could handle. The first wounded veterans arrived on September 26, 1946, and Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King formally opened the hospital in June 1948. It has since grown into a major University of Toronto-affiliated teaching hospital, while still running one of the country's largest dedicated veterans' care programs.
Mount Sinai: founded because other hospitals wouldn't hire Jewish doctors
In August 1913, four women from Toronto's Jewish community began going door to door raising money for a hospital. Their effort became the Toronto Jewish Maternity and Convalescent Hospital in 1922, renamed Mount Sinai Hospital the following year. Its founding wasn't incidental to Toronto's Jewish community — it existed specifically because Jewish physicians were routinely excluded from practicing at the city's existing hospitals at the time. Mount Sinai became the first hospital in Canada to serve kosher meals and one of the first anywhere to actively employ Jewish doctors, directly connected to the broader history covered in our religious diversity guide.
A hospital row
Sunnybrook, Mount Sinai and Toronto General all sit within the same University Avenue medical corridor discussed in our medical history and tech scene guides — one of the densest concentrations of hospitals and biomedical research anywhere in North America, built up institution by institution over more than a century.
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Sources
- Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre — Our History
- Sinai Health Foundation — Mount Sinai Hospital: A Story of Firsts
- Wikipedia — Mount Sinai Hospital (Toronto)