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The largest paediatric hospital in North America, The Hospital for Sick Children was opened in the spring of 1875 by Elizabeth McMaster and a group of friends in a small downtown Toronto house with 11 rooms which they rented for $320 a year. During that first year, 44 patients were admitted and 67 others were treated in outpatient clinics. Under the direction of John Ross Robertson, publisher of the Evening Telegram and chairman of the Hospital's Board of Trustees, the Hospital opened its first brand new building on College Street at Elizabeth in 1892.

Several years later, in 1908, the Hospital installed the first milk pasteurization plant in Canada, with staff leading the fight in Canada for compulsory pasteurization. Pablum, a pre-cooked baby cereal, was developed at Sick Kids, as the Hospital became affectionately known, in 1930. In 1953 the Research Institute was established. Advances in genetics that made worldwide headlines led to the identification and cloning of a number of genes including those responsible for causing hereditary diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis. Today, more than 800 staff, including senior scientists, physicians, and students, are engaged in excess of 400 research projects in 75 fields.

Hospital physicians also pioneered renowned surgical developments, such as the Salter operation to repair dislocation of the hip and the Mustard operation to correct an often fatal heart defect. In the 1960s, the Hospital opened one of the first intensive care units in North America devoted exclusively to the care of premature and critically ill newborn babies.

By the early 1980s, it was evident that Hospital staff needed new facilities to support family-centred care and to offer state-of-the-art therapy to critically ill and injured children. After more than 10 years of planning, five years of construction, and a move schedule that spanned three months, the process was complete by early 1993.

The Hospital's new home, an eight-storey tower described as one of the most complex buildings in Toronto, also includes new outpatient clinics, laboratories and offices in the old building. The two structures, old and new, are linked and fully integrated on a number of levels. The Atrium, at the heart of the new facility, vibrates with natural light, fountains, full-size trees, whimsical papier-mâché sculptures, and a multi-panel mural of children at play.

The 817,000-square-foot facility features many improvements and innovations, such as single bed patient rooms with private washrooms and accommodation for one parent to remain overnight; a paediatric Intensive Care Unit with the capacity to care for almost twice as many patients as before; a trauma-orthopaedic neurosurgical unit -- the first of its kind in Canada -- designed to meet the needs of children admitted with profound injuries; a suite of state-of-the-art operating rooms; a much-needed Magnetic Resonance Imaging unit; a bone marrow transplant centre; an expanded gastro-enterological procedure suite; and a large, multi-windowed playroom on each nursing unit. The new facility has allowed the Hospital to continue its important commitment and encompassing mission: to continue to provide leadership in the paediatric health care field, joining with families as partners in care, while striving to be sensitive to the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of the multicultural community it serves.

Today, in all of its many roles, as a teaching hospital for the University of Toronto, as a research institute, and as a treatment hospital for children from Toronto and from around the world, The Hospital for Sick Children continues with the same spirit and historic compassion that first led Elizabeth McMaster to establish a hospital dedicated entirely to the care of children.