Toronto’s beloved pediatrician Dr. Colin Geft sees big potential in the littlest patients

Photos: Chaya Kessler

Many years ago, there was young boy from Toronto who was convinced that his pediatrician liked Pepsi. And so he’d bring a can along to appointments and hand them to his doctor. “Thank you!” the doctor would say, smiling widely. “I’m going to put this into my refrigerator!” The child beamed. At the end of the appointment, the doctor would turn to the boy and say, “Since you gave me a can of Pepsi, I’m going to give you one as well.” He would retrieve a can from the fridge and hand it to his young patient, who would beam again.

Decades have passed since I figured out the gimmick, but the older I get, the more I realize how that simple story embodies the depth of what has made Dr. Colin Geft into the intensely beloved pediatrician that he is.

Dr. Geft’s account of the journey that led him to the pivotal role he currently occupies is one that I, and all Torontonians, was eager to hear.

For 43 years he has been the master at diagnosing something greater than illness and healing through something more powerful than medicine.

For 43 years, his office has been the desperate destination for broken hearts as much as fractured bones.

And after 43 years, Dr. Geft sees his patients as the adults he always encouraged them to become.

The can of Pepsi may no longer be in his refrigerator, but as Dr. Geft invites me inside his office, I can feel the love it represented as vibrant as ever.

Back in Time

If it weren’t medically inadvisable, I would have driven from my parents’ home to Dr. Geft’s office in my sleep. Even as Toronto skyrockets in commercial and residential development, these few blocks remain stubbornly stagnant. There’s the butcher, the baker, no candlestick maker but a shoemaker (which rhymes just the same) and then…. A traffic light declaring the end of the shtetl-like stretch of road. A left turn then shows a steep incline leading to a sprawling parking lot adjacent to a timeworn, sub-corporate medical building. A glass door opens to a very modest hallway marked by library-like quiet and the faint scent of rubbing alcohol.

Directly to the right is an equally modest door which displays a simple plaque: “Dr. Colin Geft.”

I turn the doorknob that I’d watched my mother turn a hundred times, and I’m instantly transported from the silent sterile to the warm, the welcoming, and the so, so familiar.

Practically nothing has changed since I last walked in complaining of a sore throat. The same chairs line the waiting room, the same pictures and puzzles adorn the walls. There were never computers in Dr. Geft’s office, and that continues to hold true.

It was the photographer who spotted the box of stickers that greets you immediately upon entering the office. The box looks slightly modernized and the note now says, “take three small ones” — significant inflation since our days when it was one per customer. “Business is booming,” Dr. Geft says, smiling.

The one thing that most certainly has not changed is the South African accent, smooth as melted chocolate and laced with penetrating intellect.

Rooms one, two, and three are all blasts from the past, but now I’m led into forbidden territory — Dr. Geft’s own office, simply designed with understated dignity.

I eye the phone placed on his desk; if it could speak, oh the stories it would tell. How many hundreds of thousands of phone calls it has intermediated, how many anxious questions it has heard and soothing responses it has delivered.

Now might be the first time that the questions are turned around. It’s not us asking about ourselves — we’re here to ask Dr. Geft about Dr. Geft. The four decades of standing as a loyal servant to Toronto’s Jewish community, with broad shoulders stooping just low enough to cry upon, have left us with some lingering questions.

How did he achieve such soaring popularity?

How does he manage to see so many patients and field so many phone calls in a single day?

Why is it that no patient would ever forget to invite him to a bar mitzvah, vort, wedding, or, at times, even to speak at a sheva brachos?

Dr. Geft lets us in on the secret.