Toronto community leader Dr. Joseph Wong receives key to the city for 'lifetime of service'
CBC
Mayor Olivia Chow gave a key to the city on Thursday to a Toronto doctor, community leader and long-time seniors' advocate.
Dr. Joseph Wong is a "man who showed up every time for people who needed someone to support them," Chow said at a presentation in Scarborough.
The key recognizes his lifelong commitment to advocacy, multiculturalism, refugees, seniors and his philanthropy, according to the city.
Wong's advocacy led to the 1994 opening of the first Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care, which provides culturally and linguistically appropriate care to seniors, the city said in a news release on Thursday. The centre, which now has four locations across the Greater Toronto Area, has become a model for geriatric centres around the world.
"There are people who see injustice and suffering and look away, and there are those who immediately organize for change," Chow told the gathering.
"Dr. Joseph Wong is the second kind of person. Again and again across five decades, he has looked at a community being failed, refugees without a home, seniors without dignity, students without justice. And instead of accepting it, he brought people together and got to work."
Wong, born in Hong Kong, immigrated to Canada as a young man and opened a family medical practice in Toronto, where he began his "lifetime of service" to others, the city said in the release.
Wong told the gathering that the key is a community honour.
"Today's award, the key to the city is not mine alone at all," Wong said.
"It belongs to the great group of people, volunteers who have been together ... since the late 1970s, now close to 48 to 49 years, in various community projects."
Wong said he has fought to bring justice to "people on the margins" and Chow, now mayor, worked with him.
"I want to acknowledge all my volunteers who are here today and who are not here today. This is your work, this is your award, this is your honour, this is the honour of the whole Chinese Canadian community."
Chow said Wong has organized communities in pursuit of fairness and equity and fought discrimination along the way.
"When Dr. Wong witnessed seniors living out their years in nursing homes where no one spoke their language, they're lonely, there's nothing familiar. He didn't accept that either. He fundraised. He fought systemic barriers. He convinced government of his vision."
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