Dr John Bienenstock inducted into Canadian Medical Hall of Fame
June 29, 2011
Dr John Bienenstock, one of Canada’s most recent inductees into the Medical Hall of Fame, knows what it is to be an alien. He’s been one.
Twice in fact. The first time was in 1939 when he was three years old. His parents managed to flee Budapest, where he was born. His father ran a successful business and owned various properties. Being Jewish put everything at risk and his parents managed to escape to England where they began, as best they could, to start all over again. None of the Bienenstock relatives they left behind in Hungary survived. “We have no family, tree,” says Bienenstock bluntly. Read more
From the Water Polo Pool to the Troubled Streets of Peshawar: The Canadian-Hungarian Connection
September 29, 2010
There’s a direct link between Canada’s 1976 Olympic water polo team and Canada’s participation in development initiatives in one of the most troubled areas of today’s Pakistan. That link is Ivan Somlai. When Canada hosted the twenty-first Olympiad in Montreal, the water polo team was managed by a recent arrival from Hungary. Read more
Dr Emoke J.E. Szathmáry C.M. receives Order of Manitoba
March 5, 2010
We are pleased to congratulate Dr Emoke J.E. Szathmáry, C.M., President Emeritus and Professor in the departments of Anthropology and Biochemistry/Genetics of the University of Manitoba on having been inducted into the Order of Manitoba in July 2009. Dr Szathmáry is on the Advisory Board of the Canada-Hungary Educational Foundation. Read more
Professor Diosady receives Order of Ontario
On January 28, 2010 Professor Levente Diosady of the Chemical Engineering Department of the University of Toronto was named to the Order of Ontario, the province’s highest official honour. The Order recognizes Ontarians who have made an outstanding contribution to society in Ontario and around the world and is awarded for excellence and achievement in any field. Past recipients have contributed to education, the arts, community and public service, science and medicine, citizenship and multiculturalism, business, sports, and many other fields. Read more
Wolfville’s Dr Zoltan Dienes to receive honour from Hungary’s Pecs University
Zoltan Dienes, the former Director of the University of Sherbrooke’s International Psychomathematics Research Centre still speaks Hungarian. He emigrated to Canada in 1966 and, after a long and successful scientific career, he retired from academic life in 1988.
Dr. Sándor Klein, professor of psychology at Pécs University in Hungary and former colleague of Dr Dienes’ in Sherbrooke came in person this past summer to invite him to receive the honorary doctorate to be awarded this winter. Read more
Tibor Fekete, petroleum engineer and philanthropist
Based on an interview with Randy Ray, February –March, 2009.
After witnessing the horrors of war during World War II as a 10-year-old, Tibor Fekete had no interest in remaining in Hungary in 1956 after the collapse of the Hungarian Revolution. Instead, he fled from Europe to Canada where oil had been discovered and there was ample demand for engineers, the career he was studying at university when Hungarian revolutionaries unsuccessfully attempted to liberate his homeland from Soviet rule. Read more
Dr. Gabor Maté widely recognized for his views on ADD and drug addiction
Gabor Maté is making a name for himself on many fronts. Born in Budapest in 1944, shortly before the Nazis occupied the city, Dr. Maté is the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and resource centre for the people of Vancouver’s downtown east side. Many of his patients suffer from mental illness, drug addiction and HIV, or all three.
He has had regular medical columns in The Vancouver Sun and The Globe & Mail and he is the author of a handful of books, including his latest, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction, which The Ottawa Citizen recently described as “a harrowingly honest, compassionate, sometimes angry look at addiction and the people whose lives have been disordered by it.’’
Widely recognized for his unique perspective on Attention Deficit Disorder, and his firmly held belief in the connection between mind and body health, he is a sought-after speaker and seminar leader on these topics. Read more
Aspiring poet turned statistician counts on reason over rhyme
By Deirdre McMurdy, The Ottawa Citizen, Monday, November 5, 2007
The biggest decision in Ivan Fellegi’s life was to pick reason over rhyme. As a student in his native Hungary, Canada’s chief statistician for the past 22 years was passionate about poetry and literature. But in order to win a place in a university under the Communist regime then, he entered a national academic competition. Placing within the top five would guarantee him a spot. Read more
Ivan Fellegi retires as Canada’s longtime chief statistician
By Randy Ray
After a career devoted to statistics, Ivan Fellegi will step down on June 16 to spend at least some of his retirement time dabbling in poetry, his first love.
“I still have a love of poetry,” he told the Ottawa Citizen in mid-February after announcing his retirement, recalling how as a young man in Hungary he was “a budding poet.” Read more
Hungarian Canadian entrepreneur working on new book about cancer survivors
Ottawa entrepreneur Mr. Frank Hegyi, a native of Nyõgér, Hungary, is pulling together a new book that will help people with cancer face the challenge of living and beating the disease.
Challenges of Living With Cancer is to be published in June and will feature the stories of 30 people who have survived cancer, including CTV Ottawa broadcaster Max Keeping, former Ottawa major Jacquelin Holzman and Mr. Hegyi, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer about two years ago.
About 160,000 cases of cancer are diagnosed in Canada every year, says the Canadian Cancer Society. Read more
Dr. Endre Sass-Kortsák
By Rose Dancs
DR. ENDRE SASS-KORTSÁK is remembered in the history of Canadian healthcare as a pediatrician. However, in the history of the Helicon Society, the establishment of the Hungarian Helicon School was, in large part, his achievement. He was awarded his certification as a specialist in pediatrics from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 1952.
As a pediatrician Endre Sass-Kortsák was primarily interested in the metabolism of the liver. He is considered internationally to be a pioneer in the early diagnosis and treatment of Wilson’s Disease… Read more
Andrew Benedek wins international award
Andrew Benedek, who left Hungary for Canada at age 13 in 1956 and who founded one of the world’s most successful water filtration companies, has been named the inaugural winner of an international award. Read more