[Blitz]

^ Yep, a few other places too I think.

This medical school is being called the best news to hit Windsor in over a decade....


A coup for Windsor

By Gord Henderson
The Windsor Star
February 10, 2006

What? No victory champagne? A triumphant taste of the grape was the one festive element missing when this city's movers and shakers crammed into a University of Windsor lobby to toast the best news to hit Windsor in more than a decade.

But these folks didn't need alcohol to get high Thursday at 10:10 a.m. Packed in like anchovies, these key players from every sector of the community were all but levitating with excitement over the province's announcement that Windsor, defying all the odds, has landed a full-scale medical school and joined the big leagues of a burgeoning health industry.

"This is better than any Super Bowl party. This is our Super Bowl party," gushed meat baron Ted Farron, former chamber president and one of the key players in Windsor's marathon campaign to secure a medical school that will have enormous economic, social and medical spin-off benefits.

The Windsor Campus of the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Western Ontario. Sure. It's a mouthful. But let it roll around on your tongue for a bit because that prestigious title will in time prove as meaningful to Windsor as those of established institutions like DaimlerChrysler and Casino Windsor.

The naysayers insisted it couldn't be done. They figured community leaders were blowing smoke in thinking Windsor could some day join the Medical School Big Five -- London, Hamilton, Toronto, Kingston and Ottawa -- in boasting the most coveted of educational institutions. After all, we learned long ago that the province ends at London.

Only it doesn't anymore. Luckily for us, we had an MPP in Dwight Duncan who refused to swallow this entrenched defeatism. Duncan, who can be as relentless as a badger, believed that Windsor, hamstrung by an appalling shortage of doctors, could and should be part of any provincial solution.

He sold community leaders on the idea and they ran with it. With people like big-hearted city philanthropist Tony Toldo, CAW Local 444's Gary Parent, Medical Officer of Health Dr. Allen Heimann and Farron leading the way, a Conservative government which owed this area nothing was miraculously persuaded to award Windsor a small satellite medical school.

That was the foot in the door. And when our MPPs became ministers in the Dalton McGuinty government, it was time to go for broke. With Duncan guarding the treasury as minister of finance and Sandra Pupatello, minister of community and social services, sitting just inches from Health Minister George Smitherman's ear, there would never be a better time to smash that door down.

Now it's done. A $400-million Casino Windsor expansion and a medical school on the University of Windsor campus. Some legacy. God help the wretches who'll be dragooned into running against Duncan and Pupatello in next year's provincial election.

Duncan managed the considerable feat of sounding humble in his hour of glory. "I only stated the obvious at the beginning," he told me. In other words, he planted the seed. Others watered and fertilized it.

"I never imagined this would happen as quickly as it did," said Duncan. "To have a school that will have 96 medical students here once it's up and running with a new building affiliated with one of the great medical schools, not only in Canada but in the world, is just unbelievable.

"There were skeptics," he conceded, "but there were far more people like (University of Windsor president) Ross Paul and others at the university and the chamber of commerce and the local labour movement. Everybody came together and we did it the right way."

The unsung hero of this story, said Duncan, is Dr. Carol Herbert, dean of Western's medical school. "Every one of these initiatives needs a gift from heaven and that was Dr. Herbert. She is a visionary in medical education and an amazing human being. She brings a vision of medical education that is just ideal for this community."

A Vancouver native and the first family physician to serve as dean of a Canadian medical school, Dr. Herbert could have conducted a turf war to preserve and expand the Schulich School's London base. Fortunately for us, she had the breadth of vision to recognize the needs and opportunities presented by Windsor.

And now we have the beginnings of a diversified industry that will beef up medical care in this city, generate numerous cutting-edge jobs and bolster the University of Windsor's reputation.

Lucky us.