The Dr. William S. Monk Community Health Care Development Fund has been created as a way to bring, train, and keep health care workers in Muskoka.
Kathryn, Dr. Monk’s daughter, is working with the Muskoka Community Foundation (MCF) to offer the grants.
“My purpose in establishing this fund in my father’s name is to empower communities and individuals to participate in finding solutions to the primary health care crisis in Muskoka,” she said. “We are often only presented with public or private health care system approaches to these issues, both of which have limitations, as we know. I’d like to propose a new option to complement current efforts; a community-centric approach where we all have a say in creating sustainable health care in Muskoka, and where folks can come together in unique partnerships to find practical solutions.”
A $150,000 seed investment has been made by MCF. The grants will be awarded to local qualified donees and charitable organizations that “are working to support the development of sustainable primary health care outside of a hospital setting.”
Initially, fund officials will work with the Township of Muskoka Lakes to bring a new doctor to that area since the one there currently is planning to retire.
Kathryn Monk says her father was a practicing general practitioner and surgeon for close to six decades.
After graduating from the University of Toronto in 1951, Dr. Monk began working in Gravenhurst as a family doctor, later returning to school to become a general surgeon. After moving to Bracebridge, he played a role in building the South Muskoka Memorial Hospital at its current location on Ann St., while spending every other weekend at the Huntsville District Memorial Hospital to give the surgeon working there a break. “My father’s patients took precedence over all other areas of his life,” she says. “He was extremely dedicated to serving Muskoka as a doctor, and he sacrificed much of his personal life to ensure generations of Muskokans were cared for.”
Lynn DeCaro, Executive Director of MCF says that charitable gifts will be accepted for the fund.
“The Muskoka Community Foundation is excited to work with Ms. Monk and be a part of finding sustainable and innovative solutions that help people across Muskoka access primary health care services,” she says.
