Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s public health chief, taking leave of absence for medical treatment in New York.
The departure, announced Monday by the city’s chief medical officer of health, will not impact services during the holidays, but it’s still an interesting day to be part of the health system in a city where people can make a difference for themselves and their families.
It was hard to not just watch this story over the holiday weekend on the front page of my favourite news outlet, CBC News.
My favourite news outlet should be, by now, a universal descriptor for all national dailies in Canada. But, it wasn’t — until it was.
In the last week, the New York Times wrote a story about how Dr. Eileen de Villa was taking medical leave for treatment in New York. On Monday, the Toronto Star published a story titled “Toronto Public Health says goodbye” with a photo of de Villa and a quote from de Villa. The Toronto Star story was followed by a story from Metro, this one titled “Toronto to take a leave of absence for medical reasons — Eileen de Villa.”
As the Star piece says, “The city said Eileen de Villa’s leave of absence would cover a period of time from Dec. 29 until Jan. 4.”
There are various news outlets and social media accounts about this (as there always are when a medical chief like de Villa takes a leave of absence) so I didn’t feel the need to write a piece (or even to think about writing a piece) about de Villa’s departure. I just wanted to note to you that this story, which you can find in the Star’s archive or, more specifically, in the story entitled “Dr. Eileen de Villa to take leave of absence at public health headquarters,” has been written by a Toronto Star reporter who has recently moved on, after nearly a decade of working at the Star, to the Toronto Life.
This is a story that was likely told in a number of ways, and, in the context of city politics, the Star’s piece was much more likely to have been