Vicky (Pulver) Bach was a clinical nurse specialist with expertise in gerontology, medicine, and palliative care.
Vicky was born on July 1, 1951 in Barbados to Jewish Romanian parents. Six years later, in 1957, she and her family emigrated to Montreal, Quebec. In 1967, Vicky graduated from high school and entered the workforce, holding secretarial positions at various companies. Five years later, in 1972, she married Joshua Bach and moved with him to Windsor, Ontario, where he attended law school and she continued to work as a secretary. After his graduation, in 1977, they moved to Oakville, then to Hamilton. They were joined the following year by Vicky’s sister, Molly, and her husband. Between 1978 and 1987, Vicky and Molly pursued a freelance typesetting and graphic arts business. During this time, Vicky gave birth to two daughters: Sarah, in 1981, and Eva, in 1986. She also volunteered in the emergency department at McMaster University Medical Centre.
Between 1987 and 1993, Vicky completed a Bachelor of Science in Nursing at McMaster, graduating with the highest standing in her class. For the next twelve and a half years, Vicky was employed with Shalom Village, a Jewish non-profit organization in Hamilton that provides services for older adults of all religions, including senior’s apartments and long-term care. There, she held a number of positions including Program Director, Director of Resident Services, Chaplaincy Nurse, and Acting Director of Care. During this time, Vicky became certified in long-term care management and as a parish nurse, and received training in palliative care.
Between 2001 and 2005, Vicky completed a Master of Science in Nursing at McMaster, focusing on decision-making in palliative care. In 2006, she left Hamilton and moved to Abbotsford, British Columbia, where she was employed with the Fraser Health Authority as a clinical nurse specialist, first in Residential Contracts & Services, then in the Older Adult Program, and finally in the Medicine Program. Specialising in acute geriatrics and clinical practice guideline development, Vicky developed documentation and acute staff education related to quality of care, transitions, care planning, care pathways, and nursing ethics. She also served as Adjunct Professor in the School of Nursing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Her professional involvement included serving as Chair of the Clinical Nurse Specialist Association of British Columbia and as a member of the British Columbia Ministry of Health Seniors’ Hospital Care Working Group.
In July 2013, Vicky was diagnosed ALS, and resigned from her position with the Fraser Health Authority that October. She died on December 31, 2014 at the age of sixty-three.
Dr. Marek (Marc) Balin was born in Warsaw, Poland on July 5th, 1918, to Adam Balin and Paulina Kijewska. Dr. Balin went to the medical school of Sorbonne University in Paris, France before being called back to Warsaw by the Polish Embassy in 1939. He worked at the Jewish Hospital (Czyste Hospital) in the Warsaw ghetto as an in-house staff after the invasion and continued his medical training in the Warsaw ghetto underground medical school from May 1941 to July 1942, when the massive deportations began. Having managed to escape from the Treblinka deportations, he was sheltered in Warsaw until the liberation of the city in 1945. Dr. Balin obtained his MD at the University of Warsaw in 1948 and then a diploma in anesthesiology at the University of Paris. in 1956, Dr. Balin moved to Cleveland, U. S., where he became a Lake County Memorial Hospital physician and anesthesiologist, got married, and had two daughters (Paulette Balin Yasinow and Joyce Fried). Dr. Balin died in 2006 of a stroke.
Irena was born as Irena Borman in Warsaw, Poland in 1924, to Jan Bakowski and Helena Dobrejcer, who were both dentists. She was raised and educated in Warsaw until the war interrupted her high school education. To hide her Jewish identity, she assumed the name of Irena Bakowska throughout the war. Irena received her Lyceum education in an underground school in Warsaw and earned her Certificate of Maturity (i.e., Baccalaureate degree) In 1941. From 1941 to 1942, she studied in the underground medical school in the Warsaw ghetto as a medical student. During the massive deportations she and her family managed to get out of the ghetto and went to Zakrzowek, a village in Lublin. In January 1943, she was deported to a slave labour on a German farm in Lorraine. Surviving the war, Irena received education in France as a lawyer, and then migrated to the United States in 1955, where she continued her studies in law and as a librarian. Irena spent the last two decades of her professional career as a professor of Law and Law Librarian at Queen's University, Faculty of Law, in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Dr. Ludwig Stabholz was born on November 11, 1911, in Warsaw, Poland to Lgnacy Yitzkhak Stabholz and Franciszka Stabholz. After graduation from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Warsaw in May 1939, Dr. Stabholz worked as a surgeon in the surgery department of the Jewish Hospital (Czyste Hospital). In the meantime, he taught anatomy in the Warsaw ghetto underground medical school for two semesters, until the liquidation started. Before the Warsaw ghetto uprising in April 1943, Dr. Stabholz was smuggled out of the ghetto and hid in Milosna, a village outside Warsaw. In the spring of 1944, Dr. Stabholz and his wife made their way to the Soviet forces, and then Lublin, where Dr. Stabholz joined the Polish army. Following the war, Dr. Stabholz continued to serve with the Polish army's medical corps in a military hospital in Gdansk, helping with the rehabilitation of wounded war veterans. Dr. Stabholz immigrated to Israel in 1950 and dedicated his professional life to the research and development of spinal treatment. Dr. Stabholz Died in 2007 in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Eisen was born in Vilno, Poland, on December 17, 1908. She finished high school in 1932 and accepted nursing training in a school called Dolsz. After moving from Vilno to Warsaw, she worked as a nurse in hospitals in Czyste. She took her State Board Examination in 1938 and then worked as a full-fledged nurse in hospitals in the Warsaw ghettos until the mass deportations began in 1943. She managed to escape from the ghetto and worked with a church from 1943 to 1945. She got married at 48 years old and moved to New York.
Arthur Riley Armstrong was born in Toronto, on December 23, 1904, to Arthur Leopold Armstrong and Bessie Irene Massey. At the age of four, his father passed away and his mother remarried E.S. Glassco. From 1923 to 1930, he studied medicine in the medical school in Toronto, during which period of time he attended the London Medical School Hospital as an undergraduate for a year. After graduation, Dr. Armstrong went to Oxford University for a year before he came back to Toronto and went into Pathological Chemistry. In 1933 he joined the Banting Research, where he worked under Professor E.J. King and together they devised the King-Armstrong method for the measurement of the alkaline phosphatase activity in serum. Following that Dr. Armstrong worked directly with Sir Frederick Banting as his technician, before he went to the Mountain Sanatorium in 1935, where he worked as a part-time biochemist and later the acting director.
During World War Two, Dr. Armstrong joined the army medical corps and being seconded to chemical warfare, where he worked with anti-gas ointments. Later he went to Munsterlager, Germany and worked with the mobile unit until the end of the war in 1945. After the war, Dr. Armstrong resumed as the acting director of the laboratories. He later became the director, serving until his retirement in 1970.
John Leslie King was born July 4th, 1892, in Hornby, Ontario, to his father John Thomas King, and mother Mary Graham. He was the eldest of six children. During high school, King lived with his paternal aunt and her husband John Thomas King in Brampton. In 1910 King enrolled at the University of Toronto (UofT) to acquire his Bachelor of Arts to become a teacher. However, in his second year of the program, King developed a ruptured appendix. During his hospital stay, King was inspired by the work of the medical staff and decided to switch to medicine. King withdrew from the Arts program in late 1912 and took his first year of medicine at the University of Toronto the following year. The First World War broke out in 1914, causing many in UofT’s faculty of medicine to go overseas and, consequently, King’s medical program was accelerated. He and his classmates, one of whom was Frederick Banting, graduated in 1916 instead of the intended 1917.
Following graduation, King did an internship in surgery at the Guelph General Hospital and then took over a general practice in the village of Alton, Ontario, where he practiced for a year. King joined the army in 1918 and travelled to Siberia with the 16th Field Ambulance. Once the war was over, King worked 6 months at the Mayo Clinic before returning to his hometown of Hornby. He then worked for Dr. Marshall E. Gowland in Milton for seven years beginning in 1919 and ended up marrying his boss’ sister-in law, Amanda Partridge, with whom he had one daughter. In 1926, King opened his own general practice in Galt, purchasing it from a Dr. Charlton. In Galt, he was on the staff at both St. Mary’s and Grand River Hospitals. Dr. King died in 1984 at the age of 92 and is buried in Milton, Ontario.