St. Michael’s Hospital Foundation Launches New Campaign Celebrating the People at the Heart of Canadian Healthcare
Who is mike? Not a person, but a mindset: compassionate, innovative, committed, relentless.
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Read the full press release
Who is mike?
Real stories behind be like mike
How you can support be like mike
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A film from the frontlines of care
At the centre of the campaign is a 90-second film directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Hubert Davis, built on the real experiences of St. Mike’s staff and patients. In it, a young man wakes in the hospital after an injury and discovers that everyone caring for him—the nurses, the doctors, the surgeons—share the same mindset. The film captures the urgency of trauma care, the ambition of surgical innovation, the impact of philanthropy, and the humanity that runs through every floor of the hospital.
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The people behind be like mike
Dr. Najma Ahmed, Chief-of-Surgery
As a surgeon, there are days I will never forget.
In fact, it is the unforgettable moments that drew me to surgery in the first place.
I have always believed that the combination of hard work, a brilliant team, a lot of coffee, a fierce passion for helping people, and a studious approach to every problem, could result in lives being saved that might otherwise be lost.
That is something I imagined on my first day of medical school—and that belief has never left me.
One of my most unforgettable moments at St. Mike’s happened on a day that many people in this city will also never forget: July 22, 2018.
What started as a regular day changed in an instant. At 10 p.m., I was at home getting ready for bed when I received a Code Orange alert.
Bullets had rung out on the Danforth in a mass shooting.
I rushed to St. Mike’s ED, where patients with life-threatening gunshot injuries were arriving.
That night, alongside unwaveringly dedicated trauma and surgical teams, I operated on three patients—repairing damaged organs and pulling them back from near death.
Together, we saved three lives in the most critical of situations.
Those patients are unforgettable to me. So is the team that stood beside me. And so is this hospital, where I have had the privilege of working for the past 25 years.
On that night in 2018, we helped keep people with their families.
Every day since, I have walked through these doors to do the same thing: to fight for every parent, friend and child who deserves every possible chance.
Moments like these are what make me feel most like mike. And that is something I am very proud of.
Dr. Vitor Pereira, Scientist-Neurosurgeon
Growing up in São Luís, an island in the north of Brazil, I watched my father struggle to access the specialized care he needed.
Seeing someone you love face barriers that have nothing to do with medicine—and everything to do with where they live—is something you never forget.
That experience shaped my life. Medicine wasn’t simply a career choice; it became a mission.
I was determined to make sure that no patient would lose their life, or their chance to recover, simply because expert care was out of reach.
That mission brought me to St. Mike's.
Because this is a hospital that doesn’t accept geography, circumstance or convention as barriers to the best care.
Instead, we ask a different question: How do we bring that level of care to every patient, no matter who they are or where they’re from?
In March, my team and I performed a historic remote robotic mechanical thrombectomy for stroke.
I was operating from Santiago, Panama, more than 200 kilometres away from the patient in Panama City. An exceptional clinical team was at the bedside, working alongside our Panamanian colleagues to care for the patient.
The clot was removed on the first pass.
The patient arrived unable to speak and partially paralyzed. Shortly after, we watched neurological function begin to return. They are expected to make a full recovery.
That was the moment innovation stopped being an engineering achievement and became something much more meaningful: a person getting their life back.
It was a world first.
But what matters at St. Mike’s isn’t being the first or the only ones to do something.
What matters is being able to treat the patient 200 kilometres away as if they were right beside me.
Here, compassion is the starting point of every innovation. We don’t innovate because technology is exciting. We innovate because patients deserve better.
To be like mike means seeing an impossible problem and refusing to accept it as inevitable.
It means believing that where someone lives should never determine whether they live.
It means knowing that good enough is never good enough when someone’s future depends on it.
I often think back to my father. His experience helped define my purpose: to build a world in which every patient can access life-saving care when they need it most.
At St. Mike’s, and with the generosity of donors like you, I’ve had the opportunity to turn that purpose into action—as a surgeon, a scientist and an advocate.
Together, we are not simply imagining a future without barriers to care. We are building it.
Dr. Claudia dos Santos, Scientist-Clinician
I still think about him.
A 22-year-old man who came to us feeling sick. Within hours, he was fighting for his life. His body was shutting down. We were doing everything we could.
But sepsis moves faster than we do.
By the time we had the answers we needed, it was too late.
That moment changed me. It emboldened me to find answers for a condition that claims millions of lives around the world every year.
Because at St. Mike’s, we never accept what is. We challenge ourselves to imagine what could be.
What if we could identify patients at risk before they become critically ill?
What if we could intervene earlier?
What if we could protect the body before it begins to fail?
Those questions are at the heart of our work.
They’re what drove me and a group of scientists to develop a tool that can quickly and accurately predict which patients will develop sepsis.
It’s a game-changer that could help doctors save time, and lives.
I know this is one of the hardest problems in medicine, and that scientists have spent decades searching for answers.
But I have seen what happens when people here have the audacity to think big. And when that audacity is met with investment, commitment and the will to keep going.
That’s what makes St. Mike’s different. This is a place where the hardest problems are not reasons to stop. They are reasons to start.
If this breakthrough can happen anywhere, it can happen here. At the hospital that knows what it means to be relentless. To be innovative. To be committed.
With a team of people, and donors, who share a single belief: we can always do more.
That’s what it means to be like mike.
Dr. Stephen Hwang, Scientist-Clinician
I’ve come to believe that many of us are drawn to this work because, in some way, we have known pain in our lives, or experienced deprivation, or what it means to be an outcast.
Those wounds move us to work for justice and healing.
They stay with us.
They remind us that every person we encounter is so much more than their circumstances.
That belief has guided my work at St. Michael’s.
As a physician and researcher, I’ve always been driven by one question: How do we create a healthcare system that truly works for everyone?
Because health is shaped by so much more than what happens inside a hospital.
It is shaped by where people live, whether they have support, and whether they can access the care they need.
I saw this reality every day with patients experiencing homelessness.
Our teams would provide care. But then came the moment of discharge.
And we would ask: What happens now? What happens when someone leaves our hospital without a safe place to recover, without support, without the resources they need to stay well?
It’s a question our research has given us the answer to.
And that answer impelled us to create the Navigator Program.
Navigator is built on a simple belief: Every patient deserves someone in their corner. Someone to help them navigate the barriers standing between them and their health. Someone to stop the cycle.
That’s the kind of work we get to do at St. Mike’s.
A place that doesn’t look away from the toughest challenges. A place where extraordinary expertise is matched with extraordinary humanity. A place with donors and partners who share our vision to build a healthier, more equitable world.
Sometimes the hardships we carry become the very things that make us stronger.
As Leonard Cohen once said: “There is a crack. A crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
When I think about what it means to be like mike, I think about letting the light in.
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The beat goes on
When award-winning hip-hop musician Haviah Mighty needed heart surgery, she came to St. Mike's and trusted Dr. Gianluigi Bisleri to get her through it. Inspired by her experience, Haviah's viral song “Trendsetter,” is the soundtrack to our launch film.
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