By CAROLYN BLACKMAN
Canadian Jewish News
TORONTO – At 81 years old, Dr. Douglas Wilansky, a full-time physician at Etobicoke General Hospital, says he may be slowing down a bit.
He now jogs only two or three miles, three or four times a week.
The founding chief of the hospital’s department of internal medicine and of nuclear medicine, Wilansky was recently honored at a dinner where it was announced that the name of the department has been changed to the Dr. Douglas Wilansky Nuclear Medicine Service.
Dr. Eli Bienenstock, president of the EGH professional staff association, said in a statement that he is “delighted that this honor was given to my mentor and colleague. This tribute is our hospital’s way to say thank you for the many years of education, research, dedication and the provision of outstanding medical service and care to thousands of patients in our community.”
Wilansky said that he feels good about the honor, because it strengthens nuclear medicine at the hospital.
“Nuclear imaging, which studies functions, is one of the divisions of diagnostic imaging. [We use nuclear medicine, for example] to determine the cause of chest pain. Is it due to heart trouble, or to rheumatism of the chest wall? It’s not always clear, and the best way to determine it is with nuclear medicine.”
Born in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Wilansky, who has been married for 60 years and has two children, graduated from medical school at Dalhousie University. Before joining EGH, he was on staff at the Jewish General and Queen Elizabeth hospitals in Montreal, and was assistant professor of medicine at McGill University.
While in Montreal, he was the recipient of a grant at the JGH to study pre-diabetes. He and a colleague showed that the temporary and judicious use of certain blood-sugar-lowering medication could deter the onset of diabetes, which provided a model for intensive study in this area during the past decade.
Since coming to Toronto in 1970, he has served on the board of the Toronto Diabetes Association, and on a panel on early diabetes and its prevention with the late Dr. Charles Best, the co-discoverer of insulin.
He was also founding chair of the education committee of Tifereth Beth David Jerusalem Synagogue in Montreal, and together with his wife, worked to promote Jewish education and helped to formulate the early curriculum of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a pluralistic research and leadership center at the forefront of Jewish thought and education in Israel and the Diaspora. He has been vice-chair of Canadian Friends of Shalom Hartman Institute since 2007.
Wilansky said that since he has been “blessed with fitness, and his brain keeps chugging along,” he has no plans to retire. “I am taking on less work, however, so I have more time for my personal life.”
He keeps fit through running, and by maintaining “a moderately strict eating habit. I liberate myself from time to time, though, and have a scoop of ice cream.”