Show Transcript – October 16

Transcript for Saturday, October 16, 2010 – 1830

Also airs Sunday, October 17, 2010 – 0700 and 0000

Monday, October 18, 2010 – 0630

eHealth Update

GUEST –

Greg Reed, CEO of eHealth Ontario

GUEST –

Roy MacGregor, Author: Northern Light

The enduring mystery of Tom Thomson and the woman who loved him

SEAN MALLEN: In the seven-year history of the McGuinty government eHealth remains more of an expletive than achievement. It was just over a year ago that the affair climaxed with a damning Auditor’s report on the spending practices of the agency and the resignation of the health minister. In the meantime they’ve gone through several interim CEO’s before arriving at a permanent choice, and now the folks at eHealth believe that they’re finally on track towards the worthy goal of electronic health records for all, but the opposition is not convinced.

(video clip)

Here’s an example of the progress eHealth claims to be making. Twenty-six hospitals in southwestern Ontario announced that they can now share diagnostic images digitally.

Hon Deb Matthews, Health Minister: I want you to know eHealth is back on track in the province of Ontario and today we are celebrating a significant milestone in that.

And there’s the new CEO of the agency, talking about how eHealth is supporting these kinds of projects and planning to bring them province-wide.

Greg Reed, CEO eHealth Ontario: So we’re very proud to be here and this is emblematic of the way we’re moving ahead at the agency.

But memories are fresh of a billion dollars spent without delivering electronic health records. And the Tories say more than $300 million more has been spent over the past year, but the agency has missed some crucial deadlines.

Tim Hudak, PC Leader: And now the PC caucus has found out that not only is eHealth not up and running, they haven’t even begun the procurement process for figuring out who is going to do that.

On this week’s Focus – The Health of eHealth.

From the Global News Room in Toronto, Focus Ontario with Sean Mallen.

SEAN MALLEN: Thanks for joining me again. Later in the program we’ll revisit one of the great mysteries of Ontario. I speak to the author of a new book on Tom Thomson, but first eHealth. Greg Reed is the new CEO, welcome to Focus Ontario.

Greg Reed: Hi Sean.

SEAN MALLEN: You’re a new face for a lot of people so a quick summary of a few things in your resume. You have a bachelor’s degree in computer science from U of T; an MBA from Harvard; you were the CEO of Altamira Investment, Dundee Bank, and also in your resume many years as a consultant specializing in turning around distressed companies, which I suppose has a certain analogy in taking over eHealth. What kind of shape did you find the agency in when you arrived and what are you doing to get it going?

Greg Reed: Well, I think the agency has been through a tough couple of years of course with the events of 2009. One of the first things I did was try and bring in a very strong management team. So we probably replaced eight or nine vice-presidents at the top of the organization and they in turn are building very strong teams around them. So we start at the top and work our way down, but we have considerably more talent in the agency now than I think we previously did.

SEAN MALLEN: So the goal has been in the past electronic health records for all by 2015. In the past year that’s been called into question. Do you think that’s still a reasonable deadline or is that achievable?

Greg Reed: I think it is. I think one of the reasons it is is that unknown to many people the province is awash in electronic health records now. They are used now in most hospitals, 5300 physicians are using them already. At community care centres we are using them. So the problem isn’t that we don’t have electronic health records, the problem is they don’t talk to each other. Hospitals can’t move patient records between hospitals, hospitals can’t push information out to physicians, they can’t provide community care centres with the right information. So our goal is to make sure that whenever a patient is with a provider, and it could be a GP in their office, it could be a specialist in a hospital, and you could be unconscious in ER. That provider has a consistent comprehensive electronic view, everything they need to know about you to provide the best care possible.

SEAN MALLEN: So lots of electronic health records out there but disparate agencies, and independent free agents like doctors, who might have a different opinion about what constitutes the best way of getting to talk to each other. How do you get all these people to come together on one way of communicating?

Greg Reed: It’s a great question and I think the key is to focus on what they all agree, what they all agree about, and what they all agree on is that to do a better job taking care of Ontarians and patients is that every one of those practitioners needs more information than they currently have on their own system. So hospitals would love to get at the history that your doctor has on you so they don’t keep asking the same questions over and over again at the hospital; or know what medications you’re on when you show up unconscious in emergency, or what pre-conditions you have. The same would be true of your family doctor who would love to see your radiology report or a discharge summary, or know if they changed your meds when you were in hospital. So everybody knows they need to get more information from other systems, and part of the cost of that is agreeing to share their information into …

SEAN MALLEN: Okay, we saw in the opening there Mr Hudak speaking about some missed deadlines. I only have about a minute left, let me ask you to speak to one or two of these.

Greg Reed: Sure.

SEAN MALLEN: One is “˜still no health information access layer’, which you describe as an essential component for an electronic health system. What’s happening with that one?

Greg Reed: Certainly in the time I’ve been CEO we haven’t missed any deadlines. You know we are on track and working very hard to stay on track. The health information access layer, the original conception was there would be one for all of Ontario, and I think that was back in the days when we were thinking there would be a big bang in 2015 when suddenly 13 million people would all have electronic health records. I think we have advanced that thinking and we realize there’s natural referral areas around the province like southwestern Ontario, hubbed around London, the greater GTA area, eastern Ontario around Ottawa. And those hospitals have already started finding ways of connecting with each other and pushing information to physicians. So what probably makes much more sense is regional integration points, hyles, and it could be that the provincial hyles are actually much smaller as it were.

SEAN MALLEN: Okay, I am going to stop you there, we’re going to pursue that a bit more when we come back with Greg Reed.

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SEAN MALLEN: Welcome back to my conversation with eHealth CEO Greg Reed. I know you just said in the previous segment you don’t feel you’ve missed any deadlines, but let me give you another one which Mr Hudak raised in the legislature, which is “˜no diabetes registry’, which I think a lot of people consider an important element of any electronic health records system. Where are we on the diabetes registry?

Greg Reed: We began work on that in May or June of this year and we’re hoping to have it in limited production release out to users by the middle of next summer.

SEAN MALLEN: That one is behind schedule though, yes?

Greg Reed: It is, and I’m speculating, but it could be that in the transition in 2009 where there were multiple interim CEO’S that some dates just slipped from their original, but certainly under the new management team we’re trying to hold very close to the dates that are on the calendar now.

SEAN MALLEN: You mentioned about some of the changes. You brought in a new management team. Of course one of the many sensitive points about eHealth was use of consultants. The point has been made that there’s fewer than a third the number of consultants now than there were about a year ago, but still more than a hundred in use now. Why do you need so many consultants? One would think there’s supposed to be a lot of smart people getting paid very well at eHealth to do this work.

Greg Reed: Very good question and I think the agency at its peak had 385 consultants. We’re down to below 120 now and I think that’s actually about the right number. In an IT organization there’s always very specialized skills you need, but you don’t need them permanently, and sometimes you need search capacity to work on a particular type of a problem, get it fixed, but then you don’t need to have hired them permanently. So we made a big transition away from consultants and towards hiring in the skilled help and people we need, but there will always be probably between ten and fifteen per cent of our staff will be consultants that have specialized expertise that we need to have temporarily.

SEAN MALLEN: And as you came into this job you of course heard all the stories of the consultants expensing their doughnuts and picayune things like that. We know that nothing is sole-sourced any more, it all has to be tendered, but what kind of message has been sent down to these consultants?

Greg Reed: Well, there was a tremendous effort at remediating the activities of the agency based on the Auditor General’s report. So we have new polices for procurement, we have new practices, in fact we’re right now in the middle of an internal audit sweep to make sure we’re actually complying with the practices we put in place. So I think the taxpayers of Ontario can be much more confident now that their money is being well spent.

SEAN MALLEN: You said you brought in a bunch of new people. Of course you mentioned to me when you were offered the job – you were head-hunted – that you thought a little bit long and hard when you decided to take it on. Is it hard to attract good people given what’s happened with eHealth in the last year?

Greg Reed: You know it hasn’t been and one of the reasons is that the people I speak to, when I talk about the vision we have for eHealth and the importance of providing improved care for 13 million people, people understand that there’s a much greater goal that we’re playing for here, we’re talking of improving lives of the people of Ontario. That’s a pretty inspirational thing to do and it’s not very often in a career you get to play for stakes that high. This is a high-wire, no net, high visibility, high risk, but huge payoff enterprise, and for the right kind of people that’s just the sort of challenge they’re looking for.

SEAN MALLEN: Just about thirty seconds left. Is there a danger that everyone’s a bit gun-shy though? You need to move quickly but what happened in the past year.

Greg Reed: No, I don’t think we’re gun-shy. I think we’re being prudent, so for example the idea of doing regional plays as opposed to one big Ontario play is an example of mitigating risk.

SEAN MALLEN: Okay, I am going to have to leave it at that. It’s a big topic, thanks for coming on the program. Good luck.

Greg Reed: My pleasure, thank you.

SEAN MALLEN: And in a moment we turn from 2010 health care policy, back to a 1917 murder mystery.

* * *

SEAN MALLEN: We have spoken before on this program about Tom Thomson, the great Canadian artist who died under such mysterious circumstances almost a century ago. Thomson’s body was found floating on Canoe Lake in July of 1917, fishing line wrapped around his ankle and a bruise on his temple. The official verdict – an accident, but there have always been doubts. A new book titled Northern Lights, pulls together the many threads, including the story of Winnie Trainor, the woman who might have been a lover, perhaps a fiancée; and also a man named Shannon Fraser, who ran a lodge where Thomson often stayed, and who some suspect of murder.

Roy MacGregor grew up in Muskoka and has been living with this story most of his life. He is the author of Northern Lights: The Enduring Mystery of Tom Thomson and the Woman who Loved Him. He’s in our Ottawa bureau. Welcome to Focus Ontario, Roy.

Roy MacGregor: Thanks, Sean.

SEAN MALLEN: You and many others have written about this story. Why the need for a new book on Tom Thomson?

Roy MacGregor: Well, it’s of continuing interest, in fact I would say that Tom Thomson is more interesting to Canadians now than he’s ever been. But I think now the reason for this book is that we have different science now. We have CSI levels, computer programming, imaging and that. We had a situation in 1956 where a grave was dug up at Canoe Lake and people maintained it was Tom Thomson, and the Ontario government declared it was not him at all, but a young aboriginal who just happened to have a brain operation at that point where you said there was a bruise in the skull. We were able to use the modern science to take a look at that skull again and do a whole new examination of the situation and reach some pretty astounding conclusions.

SEAN MALLEN: In fact it’s new evidence, strangely enough, ninety odd years after the fact. You had someone, without telling them who the skull might be, do a sketch of it, an expert at reconstructing faces, and what happened?

Roy MacGregor: Well, we used Victoria Lywood, who is probably as well known around the world for forensic art as anyone, certainly in this country, and she was able to take the images of the skull, and in fact I was given a brand new photograph of the 1956 skull as it came to the surface, the photograph had not been seen for more than half a century, and she was able to use that and she applied flesh to the bone, if you like, and when she delivered it to me, all I can tell you is that I almost fainted.

SEAN MALLEN: Looked an awful lot like Tom Thomson.

Roy MacGregor: Identical twins.

SEAN MALLEN: Let’s backtrack a little bit back to the original source of the story, why things went wacky right from the beginning. What went awry with this whole story right from the beginning, especially having to do with Tom Thomson’s remains?

Roy MacGregor: My theory is that it’s all good intentions, basically people covered up not meaning to really cover up a murder, as I think it was, or manslaughter as at least it was, but they covered up so as not to disturb things. You had a superintendent of Algonquin Park in 1917, George W. Bartlett, who basically was sent up there to make sure there was no more problems at the park. So he was very quick to sign a document saying accidental drowning. You had a coroner come in late, and so late at night that he didn’t even bother to view the body, which was already in the ground. He held an inquest which was a total joke. You have in 1956 the digging up of the bones where people maintained they were Tom Thomson, and I can categorically tell you it was Tom Thomson, but the Attorney General of Ontario at the time, Kelso Roberts, came out and announced that it was not Thomson at all.

And then we have the papers of a man who was in a meeting with Kelso Roberts, a senior bureaucrat, Dr Harry Evs, and doctor Evs was the first medical practitioner to look at those bones. He went down there to complain and to say that this so-called science that they were producing in 1956 was hog-wash, took a bit of a beating, and was told basically to button his lips, that they wanted no more fuss, no more fear, and the family didn’t want to hear anything, so we’re not going to talk about it. And they put out this word that it was an aboriginal and that was the end of it.

SEAN MALLEN: And officially the family said even a couple of days after Thomson was buried at Canoe Lake that the body had been moved over to a family plot near Owen Sound, but you have evidence now that it never actually happened.

Roy MacGregor: The body was supposed to be moved at the family’s request. An undertaker came up from Huntsville, worked through the night by himself, somehow managed to remove the bloated body that had been decomposing for several days into a steel casket, seal the casket, get it on a train and send it off to the family. Right from that very moment on you have to doubt if he really did do that job. I certainly don’t believe for a moment he sent anything back but a few shovelfuls of sand.

SEAN MALLEN: And Thomson of course, you said there’s some debate about whether he was an expert canoeist or a good canoeist, but he was a competent canoeist and his paddle was missing. It was found in the middle of the lake, his canoe was found floating a couple of days beforehand. There are all kinds of threads to this that have caused suspicions from the beginning, yes?

Roy MacGregor: Oh, he was competent enough. My grandfather was a chief ranger in Algonquin Park and knew him quite well. My uncle was married to the sister of the woman that Tom Thomson was engaged to, so the family connections were strong and they had a bit of disdain for him. But I don’t really think that disdain had as much to do with his prowess in the canoe, as perhaps his prowess in the ah – bedroom.

SEAN MALLEN: Yes, and maybe a little bit in the bar as well. I want to save time to talk about Winnie Trainor. This is the woman who loved him you think. Tell me about her part in the story.

Roy MacGregor: Well, Winnifred Trainor has no other family but ours. As I said earlier her sister was married to my uncle Roy, and she was a spinster, and her family basically disappeared. We kind of adopted her, or she adopted us. So I knew her as a child when I was growing up. I was terrified of her, and she was considered a witch in our town, which is not a nice thing. We played knicky, knicky, nine noors on her and we had all sorts of trouble with her. I had no idea really that this was a very tragic figure, and in 1917 she’s betrothed to Tom Thomson, they’re about to marry and head off for a honeymoon. She may very well have been pregnant, as certain circumstantial evidence would strongly suggest that. And in July 8th,1917 when he goes down in Canoe Lake basically her life goes down too. So it’s a love story and a tragedy.

SEAN MALLEN: And as you said some months after he died she mysteriously went off to the United States, unheard of for some months, around the time when if she was having a baby, she would have.

Roy MacGregor: Yes, the time frame all worked out. She was living with friends near Philadelphia. The way they worded it in the local paper she went down with her mother and she stayed over until the following Easter. The time frame works perfectly. Also as soon as they came back to Huntsville they moved to another town. Her father essentially never set foot in town again, and there were always these small little rumblings around town that she had been off to a home for unwed mothers. I’ve been working for years trying to track that one down. Still working on it, I promise you that.

SEAN MALLEN: And Shannon Fraser, I mentioned in the opening there have been a couple of people mentioned as possible suspects, but you seem to come to the conclusion Mr Fraser, who owned a lodge that Mr Thomson stayed at, may well have been the guy who did it. Tell me about that.

Roy MacGregor: Well, when we were very young there was a CBC documentary and a best-selling book on Tom Thomson that pointed the finger at another cottager, Martin Blecher, Jr., and I think that the work that Judge Little did was pretty good, except that he pointed the finger at the wrong person. I now have produced two witnesses who say that they were told by the wife of Shannon Fraser that – her name is Annie Fraser – and Annie said that he husband did do it accidentally in a fight over money or over whether or not he was teaching Tom a lesson, I don’t know what that lesson might have been about. Tom fell down and hit his head on the fire grate and that’s what caused the puncture in the temple, and she was forced to help dispose of the body. She said she was the one who went out there and tied the line around the ankle and dumped the canoe over and subsequently told only two people that I was ever able to track, but she did confess so to speak, to those two people. So the finger really points far more strongly at Shannon Fraser now than it ever did with Martin Blecher.

SEAN MALLEN: So here we are ninety-odd years after the fact and I don’t know how many books and articles have been written about it. Is this the final word? We now have solved the Tom Thomson mystery.

Roy MacGregor: No, we have to accept that the mystery is a part of the art. The art is part of the mystery. Tom Thomson wasn’t even known really in 1917 outside of a very small circle of art people. He’s renowned now around the world. There’s a big exhibition coming up in England, there was one in Russia a couple of years ago. He’s more famous now than he ever was. He has a James Dean quality too. He’s very romantic, and now that we know the story of Winnifred Trainor it’s equally tragic.

SEAN MALLEN: Okay, we’ll have to leave it that for now. Roy MacGregor, author of Northern Light. Thanks for coming on Focus.

Roy MacGregor: Thank you, Sean.

SEAN MALLEN: And one segment to go on our program, with your comments and a different kind of Play of the Week – previewing an upcoming edition of our show – A Father’s Gift.

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Play of the Week

(video clips – Toronto General Hospital)

While most of the city slept the McClelland family from Sault Ste Marie walked into Toronto General Hospital for a life-changing moment. Glen was here to donate a kidney to his 18-year-old son Cody.

Glen McClelland: I want to get this done for Cody and I’ll see him in a couple of hours I hope.

Sean Mallen: How about you Patti, how was your sleep?

Patti McClelland: Not very much.

She is the wife of the donor and mother of the recipient.

Sean Mallen: How did you sleep last night.

Cody McClelland: Not bad, excited. A new life.

In a drama that has become if not routine, at least common-place in this unit. The father then goes into surgery to have his kidney removed and not long afterwards the son is wheeled in to receive it. By mid-afternoon it’s done.

Dr Michael Robinette, surgeon: Cody’s fine. The kidney transplant procedure went fine. The kidney looked really good.

Patti McClelland: I knew he was going to say that. Pretty positive and I wasn’t even bracing myself for any other answer.

This is a preview of a special Focus Ontario coming in the weeks to come. A program we’re calling – A Piece of Myself.

– – –

And now your comments. Last week we spoke about the court decision that struck down Canada’s prostitution laws. First an e-mail on the subject from Gary Malott who writes: “It’s about time Canada legalized its unconstitutional stance regarding this profession, and ended the hypocrisy that surrounds this issue. Sex workers have a right to expect protection from abusive clients who extort these workers by using their services. Safety regulations could ensure designated work areas, protection of workers from dangerous clients and pimps, while providing medical checkups for these women.”

And listen to this voice-mail on the same subject: “I have nothing against prostitution, but they have changing laws now and they want police protection. Are they ready to pay income tax as well.” Mrs Sedgley

We do like to hear from you. You can reach us this way. Write me a letter to:

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And that’s our program for this week. I’m Sean Mallen, thanks for watching. We’ll see you next weekend.

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