News & Media

January/February 2008
Director's Corner - Migrating Minds, and Serendipity

Incredibly, the "question" of immigration persists as a topic for continual discussion in Quebec and Canada. Can there be any doubt in the collective psyche, still, about the value of accepting refugees and immigrants? At the Neuro today, our faculty, fellows and staff - refugees and immigrants - were born in 60 countries, but found their way to Quebec to work, raise families and live out their lives. Some come here by open choice, some came by chance. All contribute.

Last May, Drs. Cornelius Borck and Frank Stahnisch organized at McGill a fascinating workshop entitled, "Migrating Minds," at which Dr. William Feindel gave a great history of minds that migrated to the Neuro, and Drs. Rolando del Maestro, Fred Andermann and George Karpati gave very personal accounts of their emigration to North America. The theme was very real to me, having grown up in a post-WWII New York City neighborhood where the common denominator was that in almost every family, the parents of my friends were refugees who fled from Europe, from Asia, from Africa, from the relentless poverty of the deep South and the Caribbean islands. I remember asking my mother why my friend Ron's parents had blue-black numbers tattooed on their forearms, and being stunned by the answer. What I learned later was how often the difference between death in what had been a secure homeland, and survival and success in a foreign country, for a short window in time may hang by a thin thread.

These refugees brought with them prodigious talents and skills - well-developed and latent, and having found fertile ground in North America (and to some extent in South America as well), proceeded to establish strong intellectual environments in which to advance business, science, the arts, music and literature. And many, many owed their survival to serendipitous occurrences that guided their escape from imprisonment and death in the countries of their birth, towards new lives in host countries.

Particularly as a result of WWII-induced migrations, the outcome in terms of scientific progress, especially in the US, was fantastic. Between 1901 and 1932, German scientists alone were awarded 25 Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry. The United States in the same period received only five. But between 1933 and 1983, after the mass exodus of scientists from Europe, the American share of Nobel Laureates soared to 67, while Germany shared in only thirteen. It is fair to say that all great universities in North America benefited from these migrating minds, whose lives were interrupted by political turmoil and oppression, and then by design or by serendipity found their way to safe havens.

A case in point at the Neuro is Dr. Karpati, whom you may know is one of the world's best-known neurologists, and who has contributed immensely to the understanding and treatment of neuromuscular diseases. But his stellar career might have so easily been nipped in the bud. At the age of 8, George found himself in a cattle car traveling across Hungary on the way to a Nazi death camp. However, a sleepy railway switch operator accidently deflected George's train to a forced labor camp, while sending a different trainload of families to their extermination. George survived. Later, as a teenager, George escaped the post-war Hungarian communist regime by chance through a weak border crossing, and then, through the random action of a disinterested sorting officer, was diverted to Canada, rather than the dozen other countries to which he might have been relocated. Once in Canada, he was chosen by lottery to receive his medical education at Dalhousie, and has been on our faculty since 1967.

Talk about serendipity.

Please send any comments about the Director's Corner to David Colman

Recent News & Events

Rio Tinto Alcan gives $1M
Richard Evans, Chief Executive of Rio Tinto Alcan, recently announced a $1 million corporate gift to the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital’s Thinking Ahead Campaign. The donation will help to build, equip and start up the Rio Tinto Alcan Laboratory of NeuroEngineering. Neuroscientists, physicists, chemists and computer scientists work together in the innovative and multidisciplinary NeuroEngineering program, seeking ways to restore function to the damaged nervous system.

Neuro-oncology team success
The MUHC neuro-oncology team is the only program in Quebec to receive the highest level of accreditation through the new Lutte Contre le Cancer review. This rigorous process requires excellence in interdisciplinary clinical practice, teaching, quality improvement and research. Leadership for the review was provided by MNI neurosurgeon Richard Leblanc, Maria Hamakiotis, Yasmin Khalili, Andreanne Saucier and Armen Aprikian.

Neurosurgeons celebrate Yi-Cheng Zhao centennial
The Tianjin Medical University and General Hospital celebrated the 100th birthday of Yi-cheng Zhao with an international symposium. Zhao who trained with Wilder Penfield at the MNI founded the Beijing and the Tianjin Neurological institutes and is recognized as China’s most prominent neurosurgeon. Drs. Shuyuan Yang and Jian-ning Zhang, Chairman of Tianjin Neurological Institute and MNI Advisory Baord member, hosted neurosurgeons Mohammad Maleki, Judith Marcoux, Jeff Hall and David Sinclair who all spoke at the conference.

MNI: a Killam Institute
Killam Trustees George Cooper, John Matthews and Ann McCaig made their annual visit to the MNI, a Killam Institute, to recognize new Killam Scholars: Amit Bar-Or, Barry Bedell, Andrea Bernasconi, Jean Francois Cloutier, Lesley Fellows, Ted Fon, Alyson Fournier, Angela Genge, Tim Kennedy, Chris Pack, Ed Ruthazer, Michael Sinnreich and Robert Zatorre. Joining the group for lunch were George Karpati, I.W. Killam Professor, and Brenda Milner, Dorothy J. Killam Professor.

Award for “Grey Matters”
“Grey Matters”, the MNI Campaign materials, received an honourable mention at this year’s Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) District I Communications Awards (Campaign category). The awards recognize outstanding achievement in higher education, independent school, and non-profit organization communications.

Upcoming events

Prentice to give Penfield lecture
The Honourable Jim Prentice, Minister of Industry, will deliver the Penfield lecture at 4:30 pm on Monday, February 11 in the Jeanne Timmins Amphitheatre. Mr. Prentice will speak on the importance of Canada’s science and technology policy in maintaining a vibrant economy, and highlight the opportunities created for the MNI through its federal designation as a Centre of Excellence in Commercialization and Research. The Penfield lecture is the MNI’s most prestigious event.

Café Scientifique - Drugs: the good, the bad and the useful
Café Scientifique discussions cover exciting and current topics in science in a café setting. The next session, Drugs: the good, the bad and the useful, will be at O Patro Vys, 356 Mont Royal E, at 6 pm Tuesday, February 12. Experts Mark Ware from the MUHC Pain clinic, MNI Neurologist Alain Dagher, McGill researcher Marco Leyton and Rémi Quirion from the Douglas Mental Health University Institute will lead this informal session, which is free and open to the public. For more information please contact: Anita Kar at 514 398-3376 or Isabelle Kling at 514 934-1934 ext 36419.

My Tool Box for patients with chronic disease
My Tool Box is a free 6-week program for people with chronic disease, designed to help them develop the skills to live well with cancer, MS, muscular dystrophy, post-polio syndrome or other conditions. This practical and interactive program is presented by trained volunteers who also have chronic diseases. The next program will start the week of March 10, 2008. For more information, contact
Deborah Radcliffe-Branch, PhD at 514-398-5442 or My Tool Box

Congratulations to …..

Professor Heather Durham who has been named Associate Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies. In this role, she will optimize graduate and postdoctoral education in the Faculty of Medicine and others faculties, while maintaining her research program at the MNI.

Assistant Professors Lesley Fellows and Alyson Fournier who will be Co-Directors of the Faculty of Medicine MD/PhD program. Adding to their teaching, research and, for Lesley, clinical responsibilities, they will guide the program, oversee contributions to the McGill Journal of Medicine and direct the Current Topics in Biomedical Sciences Seminar series.

Ernst Meyer, Jean-Paul Soucy, Mirko Diksic and the cyclotron/ radiochemistry team for their outstanding work as recognized by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission during a recent cyclotron audit.

Condolences to …..

Friends and family of Louis-Philippe de Grandpré, prominent Supreme Court judge, senior partner and counsel at Lafleur, Brown, de Grandpré (now Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP), and brother of MNI Advisory Board member A. Jean de Grandpré. Donations may be made in his memory to the Montreal Neurological Institute’s Brain Tumour Research Centre.

Friends and family of Elizabeth Graham Lennox, a 1945 nursing graduate of the Royal Victoria Hospital who worked at the Neuro after World War II. Her son, McGill professor of chemistry, Bruce Lennox joins MNI colleagues as a member of the Neuroengineering program.

Friends and family of Henry Garretson who trained and practiced neurosurgery at the MNI from 1959-1971. While completing his PhD at McGill, Garretson studied brain tumours cells and later improved injection techniques for tests to localize speech and electrical seizure activity in the brain, and for studies of brain circulation related to aneurysms and other blood vessel lesions. Garretson served as Director of Neurosurgery at the University of Louisville, Chair of the American Board of Neurological Surgery, and was President of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. Tragically, Dr. Garretson and his wife, Marianna, were killed in a private plane crash.

Friends and family of Muriel Springer who was a valued member of the housekeeping staff at the Neuro.

Friends and family of Jadwica Walkosz who was a kind and helpful patient attendant at the MNI for 36 years.

Director - David R. Colman, PhD
Senior Management - Mark Angle, MD; Phil Barker, PhD; Rob Dunn, PhD; Tom Gevas; Marilyn Kaplow; Elizabeth Kofron, PhD; Patricia O'Connor; Catherine Rowe
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Please send any items for the Neuro News to Sandra McPherson or Beth Kofron.