Casey House Toronto

We had a total absolute blast at Set Smash Rally this past weekend with our eight fantastic corporate teams 🏐. After a full day of thrilling volleyball, we raised more than $75,000 in support of Casey House’s compassionate care and services for people living with and at risk of HIV—and the number just keeps growing! You can still donate to players and teams all month long at setsmashrally.ca

As we continue to wrap up the event, we’d like to extend a huge thank you to all the players and teams involved, our tremendous elite athletes and Olympians who brought their generous hearts and leadership skills as coaches, our positively luminous honorary co-chairs Marnie McBean and Mark Tewksbury, event sponsors, and volunteers for making the day such a success!

More photos and fun to come!

On June 1st, we celebrate the start of both Pride month and national Indigenous history month. With the sunshine in full force, we look forward to honouring the diversity of these two month-long celebrations.

While we planning is underway with our Indigenous advisory committee, we’re excited to announce some of our pride-related activities this month:

❤️ June 1: 'We Rally for Pride' reception
🧡 Next week: staff breakfast Pride celebration
💛 June 13: Set Smash Rally
💚 June 27: Team Casey House takes on the Pride and Remembrance Run
💙 June 26-28: Pride parade festivities, including marching in the trans march, d**e march, and Sunday Pride parade.

We take this time to reflect on our longstanding history fundamentally rooted with the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. Year-round, we choose to honour-out-loud the unique identities of our staff, peers, volunteers, and clients. Yet, we cannot forget about those we have lost along the way. With that, we also encourage everyone to participate in AIDS vigil at Barbara Hall Park on Tuesday June 23rd to grieve, share stories, and remember. Casey House is proud to continue our legacy alongside the q***r community and recognize our shared history during Pride.

In honour of Dr. Gregory Robinson, volunteer, client, donor, friend, and ambassador. Greg contributed to Casey House in a multitude of ways, most recently as a member of the board of directors for the hospital and Casey House Foundation. His experience as a physician, researcher, and person who had lived with HIV for over 40 years made him wise and thoughtful.

His willingness to share his knowledge and experience over and over again was almost unmatched. Whether Greg was helping tour a Lieutenant Governor through the hospital or preparing a meal alongside other HIV+ chefs at June’s HIV+ Eatery he was gracious and positive, happy and gentle.

He was also generous. In 1992, his beloved Blair died at Casey House, and a few years ago Greg established an endowment fund in his honour, the Dr. Gregory Robinson Research Fund.

Our clinical team was honoured to provide Greg with the end-of-life care he championed and today, our thoughts go out to his friends, family, and life partner David, all of whom are having to learn to live without a one-of-a-kind human. May they know they are not alone in missing Greg.

“It will take more than a pill or injection to cure HIV; we must tackle stigma first.” Greg Robinson, physician who lived with HIV