Mount Sinai Hospital

In May 1922, a charitable women's group called the Ezras Noshem founded the Toronto Jewish Maternity and Convalescent Hospital in a small house on Yorkville Avenue. It was founded for two overlapping reasons: non-English-speaking Jewish immigrants needed culturally safe healthcare and access to kosher food, which no Toronto hospital provided, and — with very few exceptions — no hospital in the city was willing to hire Jewish doctors.

A career-long barrier for Jewish physicians

The Jewish community, and Jewish doctors specifically, faced sustained prejudice in Toronto after 1900 and through the interwar period. Dr. Abraham Isaac Willinsky, who graduated from the University of Toronto medical school in 1908, was initially unable to find a residency position or job anywhere in the city because of antisemitism — one of the only Jewish physicians allowed to work at a Toronto hospital other than the one his community was building.

Growth into a major research hospital

The hospital, renamed Mount Sinai Hospital, grew over the following decades from that Yorkville Avenue house into a major teaching and research institution, now located at 600 University Avenue and connected by bridges and tunnels to Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and the other hospitals of University Health Network.

Sources

• Being Jewish in Ontario — Mount Sinai Hospital
• Temerty Faculty of Medicine — Honouring Canadian Jewish Heritage Month

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