{"slug": "gathering-place-now-open", "title": "Gathering Place Now Open", "summary": "**Meta Title:** Gathering Place for Indigenous Health & Well-Being Opens at Women’s College Hospital  \n**Meta Description:** A new culturally safe Gathering Place for Indigenous health learners and faculty has opened at Women’s College Hospital, offering smudging, traditional medicines, and ceremonial practices to support Indigenous perspectives of healing and decolonize institutional spaces.", "body_md": "A new Gathering Place for health professions learners, faculty and staff to learn about and honour Indigenous perspectives of well-being and healing is now officially open at Women’s College Hospital (WCH). A virtual tour and welcoming ceremony was held on Tuesday, November 17th.\nThe Gathering Place is a partnership between the Temerty Faculty of Medicine’s Office of Indigenous Health and the Centre for Wise Practices in Indigenous Health (CWP-IH) at WCH.\nAs part of the celebration, professors Lisa Richardson, Vice-Chair, Culture and Inclusion, for the Department of Medicine and Chase McMurren, Indigenous Medical Education Theme Lead for the MD Program were joined by Temerty Faculty of Medicine Dean Trevor Young and WCH President and CEO Heather McPherson.\n“This is not just a physical space. The idea of having smudging, smelling sweetgrass and sage and hearing the drum song that represents the heartbeats of our mothers is an act of decolonizing a space and an institution. It’s also about creating figurative space in these institutions, which have been so unwelcoming,” said Richardson, who is also the Strategic Lead in Indigenous Health for Temerty Faculty of Medicine and Women’s College Hospital. “It is about a place where Indigenous people can come and feel safe and at peace, valued, loved and respected and where Indigeneity is uplifted and celebrated.”\n“Let’s consider how we can all create more safety for Indigenous People to come forward and be welcome to share their gifts and Sacred Medicines with one another and with all of us,” said McMurren. “In order to have safety, we all need to have humility and bring as much humble presence as possible, acknowledging that we all have work and healing to do.”\nKawennanoron (Cindy White), Rosary Spence and Kateri Gauthier performed the opening and closing drum and songs as well as the invocation.\nThe Gathering Place will help improve the experience for Indigenous learners by providing a culturally safe space to come together, socialize and study.\nElders, Knowledge Keepers, educators and community supports will be available to engage ceremonial practices, provide access to traditional medicines and facilitate educational and community-centred activities such as healing, counselling, workshops and symposiums.\nThe Gathering Place will also host learner and faculty meetings, talking circles and academic activities.\nThe creation of the Gathering Place one of the actions Temerty Medicine is taking to respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action as well as University of Toronto’s TRC Steering Committee, Answering the Call Wecheehetowin.\nThe official opening was celebrated during University of Toronto’s Indigenous Education week, which runs from November 16 to 20th.\nOptimize this page for search engines by customizing the Meta Title and Meta Description fields.\nUse the Google Search Result Preview Tool to test different content ideas.\nSelect a Meta Image to tell a social media platform what image to use when sharing.\nIf blank, different social platforms like LinkedIn will randomly select an image on the page to appear on shared posts.\nPosts with images generally perform better on social media so it is worth selecting an engaging image.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gathering-place-now-open", "canonical_source": "https://temertymedicine.utoronto.ca/news/gathering-place-now-open", "published_at": "2020-11-18 20:02:32+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-05-23 00:06:45.633502+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": [], "entities": ["Women's College Hospital", "Temerty Faculty of Medicine", "Office of Indigenous Health", "Centre for Wise Practices in Indigenous Health", "Lisa Richardson", "Chase McMurren", "Trevor Young", "Heather McPherson"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gathering-place-now-open", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gathering-place-now-open.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gathering-place-now-open.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/gathering-place-now-open.jsonld"}}