91社区

Balfour Mount Lecture

Date: January 29, 2025

Speaker: Dr. Michael Kearney

Venue: 91社区 Health Centre

Michael Kearney, MD has over 40 years of experience in palliative care and has worked closely with two pioneers in the field, Dame Cicely Saunders and Professor Balfour Mount. He has published four books: Mortally Wounded: Stories of Soul Pain, Death, and Healing, A Place of Healing: Working with Nature and Soul at the End of Life, The Nest in the Stream, and his most recent book, Becoming Forest- A Story of Deep Belonging, a fable of a young Irish woman who finds an antidote for her burnout and climate despair in the wisdom of trees, published by All Night Books. He was lead author on an article about burnout and resilience published in JAMA in 2009 entitled, 鈥淪elf-care of physicians working at the end-of-life.鈥� He teaches nationally and internationally.

Michael is now semi-retired, still working part-time in palliative care and offering mentoring and training in deep resilience through an initiative he founded, 鈥淭he Becoming Forest Project.鈥� He is married to psychologist, meditation teacher, and author Radhule Weininger PhD. Together they co-founded a non-profit, Mindful Heart Programs, which offers free, daily meditations. They teach and write together and share six adult children between them.

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February 2025 Lecture

Date: February 19, 2025

Speaker: Dr. Johanne De Montigny

Venue: TBD

After surviving a plane crash in which 17 people died (Quebec, 1979), Johanne de Montigny turned her attention to the future. She undertook studies in psychology and was the first clinical psychologist to work in a palliative care hospital unit in Canada. In collaboration with Dr. Balfour M. Mount of Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital, she set up psychological services to accompany patients and support bereaved families. Using a humanistic approach, she worked for nearly thirty years in this interdisciplinary environment, where she trained and supervised over twenty psychologists practicing in Quebec and France (1988-2015). At the same time, she supervised psychologists in private practice until 2024.

Johanne de Montigny has collaborated with Quebec's health and social services network, giving training sessions to caregivers and volunteers involved in support, the helping relationship and the psychology of mourning and dying. She has trained over 1,500 volunteers in the helping professions in a dozen Quebec cities.

Johanne de Montigny has helped organize numerous international congresses - for the 91社区 Health Centre - and provincial ones - for the Association qu茅b茅coise de soins palliatifs. In the 1990s, she took part in the first working group of the federal initiative to combat HIV/AIDS led by Dr. Bernard J. Lapointe, and co-authored the report 鈥淧utting an end to the isolation鈥� of people affected by HIV and AIDS.

A lecturer at the Universit茅 de Montr茅al, Johanne de Montigny taught at the Certificat de g茅rontologie sur les approches palliatives (2009-2015) and, at the Universit茅 du Qu茅bec 脿 Montr茅al, at the Centre d'茅tudes sur la mort (1996-2006). She has given a series of multidisciplinary training courses on attachment, separation and bereavement at the H么pital de Beauvais in France (2007-2009). She has given hundreds of lectures on the dying process, bereavement, survival, the meaning of suffering and resilience. A consultant to the management of Le repos Saint-Fran莽ois d'Assise cemetery in Montreal, she has instituted monthly evening meetings on bereavement, as well as an annual colloquium designed for people who have lost a loved one.

She has published four books and numerous texts on end-of-life and bereavement for the general public and healthcare professionals alike. Johanne de Montigny's honors include the Prix professionnel from the Ordre des psychologues du Qu茅bec (2018) and the Prix de reconnaissance from the Association qu茅b茅coise de soins palliatifs (2019).