Dr. John Evans honoured by The Learning Partnership and featured on CBC Radio
Dr. John Evans
Dr. John Evans, one of Canada’s leading thinkers on innovation and the chair of Ontario Institute for Cancer Research’s Board of Directors, was honoured this spring for his contributions to public education and research.
Evans, who has been a leader in the medical, research and business communities in Ontario for nearly half a century, was honoured by The Learning Partnership as a Champion of Public Education in Canada. The award honours people who have made outstanding contributions to excellence in public education in Canada.
Evans served as President of the University of Toronto and as founding director of the World Bank’s Population, Health and Nutrition Department. He also founded the McMaster University Medical School, which pioneered Problem Based Learning, a new approach to medical education that has been adopted by many medical schools worldwide.
The Learning Partnership is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to bringing together leaders in industry, government and other sectors to enhance publicly funded education in Canada, with the longer-term aim of ensuring Canada has a well-skilled, competitive workforce. It is supported by all of Canada’s major banks and a number of other leaders in Canadian business.
The Learning Partnership’s award is the latest in a long series of honours for Evans. He is a companion of the Order of Canada and a member of the Order of Ontario and the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. Last year, he received the prestigious Henry G. Freisen International Prize in Health Research for his long-standing contributions to medical sciences.
In June, Evans was featured on Ideas, a CBC Radio program about contemporary thought and intellectual life hosted by Paul Kennedy. The broadcast, “Getting to MaRS,” is about the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto. Evans is the founding chair of MaRS and helped to gather support for MaRS Centre, an innovation-focused development intended to attract researchers and encourage collaboration between the public and private sectors.
“If we can persuade Canadian researchers to optimize their relationships that goes far beyond their local or institutional context, if we can have a view of mobilizing the very best in all of Canada, then I think we can perform at the top of the world,” says Evans in the broadcast. “But we can’t do it unless we have outstanding science.”
Evans explains that MaRS is trying to establish an environment where researchers can build outstanding scientific projects. The first phase of the MaRS Centre – consisting of 23 new floors of research and office space, the restoration of an old wing of Toronto General Hospital and a state-of-the-art conference centre – was completed in 2006. The second phase, consisting of more research and office space, will open in 2010.
