Video Transcript – Spinal Cord Injury

[ Press Release 2011-36 ]

Charles H. Tator, CM, MD, PhD, Professor of Neurosurgery, University of Toronto:

Spinal Cord Injury is still a major cause of disability in our Country.

For example, young people every year dive into shallow water, break their necks and become quadriplegic, which is so tragic. These injuries are eminently preventable by organizations such as Think First, which is Canada's national brain and spinal cord injury prevention program.

The impact on families who have had spinal cord injury among their family members is profound - the emotional impact, the physical impact, the financial impact. The big problem is that, after major spinal cord injury, recovery is really impaired. We have not yet discovered ways to get the spinal cord to recover.

Barbara Turnbull, Chair and President, Barbara Turnbull Foundation for Spinal Cord Research:

I suffered a spinal cord injury in 1983 and I've been paralyzed from the shoulders down since then. I wrote a memoire in 1996; it was published in 1997. And as I was concluding that, Christopher Reeve came on the scene and really inspired me to step up and do more to support basic scientific research. So I began the Barbara Turnbull Foundation, that's when we created the Foundation. And in 2000, I was in New York at a Gala for the Christopher Reeve Foundation, and two Canadian scientists, Dr. Lisa McKerracher and Dr. Albert Aguyo, were awarded the Christopher Reeve Medal and given a very nice prize of $50,000.

I was amazed first at the fact that Canadian science is at a global level that it could be recognized in this fashion, and secondly, by the fact that we didn't have an award like that in Canada. So I came back determined to, and hopeful, to start something similar in our country that would honor our scientists.

With the help of some inspired and inspiring friends, we were able to create the Barbara Turnbull Award. The year after the Barbara Turnbull Award was established, I was approached by Dr. Michael Fehlings, who like me - we are both ardent fans of Dr. Charles Tator - and Michael was interested in establishing a lectureship in Charles' name, and wondered if our Foundation might be interested in supporting this venture.

Now somewhere along the way my name got linked to it and I am very proud, of course, to be associated with Charles Tator in any way, and so this lectureship was established. And it has come to be a day that I really do look forward to, not just hearing the keynote speech from somebody who's doing really cutting edge work, who's brought in from anywhere, this year from Sweden, but also to get a chance to confirm with scientists who are working around Ontario to catch up with what everybody has been doing in the last year. And also, to tap into some of the hot new scientists that are coming up.

The poster session is always so interesting. And, that's something that I have really enjoyed. And last year and this year, the fact that we could link the award and the lectureship together on the same day has made it a lot of fun for me.