Chez PLJ

A few months back we were asked to film an interview for the Orthopedics department at Sick Kids since it was their 50th anniversary. They were interviewing parents of patients for their impressions of the department and staff, and assembling the clips into a celebratory video to play during a gala at the hospital, where you ate decent steam-tray food (Italian, Indian, Chinese) and scarfed down cake. It went reasonably well, and I saw our clip (all 15 seconds of it!) during the party.

Obviously we were then put on the hospital’s list of marks willing volunteers, because since then we were invited to get interviewed during the Sick Kid’s Radiothon (I declined; Peter chose the 6 a.m. shift!), as well as get invited to this year’s “Heroes Dinner”, held last Monday.

The Heroes Dinner is a swanky fundraising gig held annually by the Sick Kids Foundation. About 400 people attended who could be divided into several classes present at each table of 10: current large-scale donors, potential large-scale donors, key hospital staffers. And where did we fit in? We were the fourth category, “Patient Family Ambassadors”: people who could tell the potential donors all about the positive experiences you and your child had at Sick Kids. I’m usually not big on schmooze-fests where you have to make small talk all night, but we can gab for hours about Jon, and I was curious about the event, so off we went.

No steam trays here: the night was filled with sumptuous food held in the chi-chi Grand Ballroom of the Four Seasons Hotel. The whole event was carefully choreographed: The Foundation bigwigs’ speeches were gratifyingly short; the videos of patients’ stories were slickly-produced with just the right amount of pathos and success; these were interspersed with enough time for the Ambassadors at each table to tell our tales of woe and triumph. The donors and would-be donors at the tables were all extremely wealthy and/or powerful (one at our table was an inner-circle man from the former provincial government), and radiated the confidence that wealth and power confer. One donor was announced as offering to match all donations ($10,000 minimum, please) received during that night. Another was honoured for giving a donation of $10 million. 😯

I have to say that the only truly fun part of the evening for us was after dessert meeting Jon’s orthopedic surgeon and his wife, and standing around chatting with them until the hotel staff started cleaning up. But all in all that evening gave us an interesting glimpse of that world, and I’m glad we got to do our part to help the hospital.