Entrepreneur's Faith in Baycrest Benefits Dementia Care and Research

When Andrew Duckman and Lauraurence Goldsldstein approached the Soupcoff family last year about supporting a tennis fundraiser for Alzheimer’s care and research at Baycrest, the family loved the idea.

“We had been thinking of doing something to honour our late father, Harold Soupcoff, like a tennis tournament,” says Rochelle Zubcov. “Our father had been very committed to Baycrest, so it made sense.”

The Aces for Alzheimer’s tournament is co-chaired by Duckman and Goldstein. Both are avid tennis players as well as dedicated Baycrest volunteers who serve on the Baycrest Foundation Board of Directors. Mayfair Clubs, owned by the Soupcoff family, is the title sponsor and provides the tennis courts, refreshments and dinner.

Aces for Alzheimer’s

Last year’s inaugural tournament raised $220,000. The top fundraiser was awarded the Harold Soupcoff Memorial Trophy and a trip for two to the 2009 U.S. Open Tennis Championships in New York. This year’s top fundraiser will also have their name inscribed on the trophy and win a trip for two to the 2010 U.S. Open.

Harold Soupcoff was an entrepreneur and philanthropist who died in 2006 at age 86. He had many business interests and traveled the world with his wife, Mynne. Today, his four daughters are not only involved in the company he helped to create, Mayfair Clubs, but are continuing their father’s support of worthy causes such as Baycrest. Karen and Rochelle live in Toronto, Yvonne in Israel and Fern in British Columbia.

“Our father really believed in science. He had great faith in medicine, and in Baycrest,” says Rochelle.

With his wife, Harold established the Mynne & Harold Soupcoff Studentship with Hebrew University endowment fund in 1998, which brings a scholar from Israel to study at Baycrest every two years. One recent post-doctoral candidate investigated how motivation can dramatically improve simple memory tasks in older adults, while another studied how the brain works to recognize and understand facial expressions.

“ There’s a real difference between how a normal person draws a clock and how a person with certain cognitive problems will draw a clock.”

“Our father was very fond of Baycrest because there was a vulnerable population, the elderly, benefiting directly in a focused, tangible, visible way,” recalls Rochelle. “He had great compassion for people who didn’t have the good health that he had, or the financial resources that he had developed. Today, there are so many people being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and it affects all families.”

Given sobering statistics that predict one new case of Alzheimer’s will be diagnosed every two minutes in Canada within 30 years*, there is an urgent need to step up research. Dr. Morris Freedman, head of neurology and director of the Sam and Ida Ross Memory Clinic at Baycrest, divides his busy schedule between research projects on Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders and treating patients suffering from memory loss and other cognitive problems.

Baycrest supporter Rochelle Zubcov (back row, centre) with neurologist Dr. Morris Freedman (right), his patient Fernando Afan (seated) and Mr. Afan’s wife, Lou (left).

He and his colleagues have developed clinical tests for physicians to help diagnose Alzheimer’s earlier. One such test features a series of questions designed to determine whether a patient’s cognitive function is normal or impaired. The test is currently being translated into Spanish, Russian, Thai, Hebrew and Portuguese.

Another test requires patients to draw a clock. “There’s a real difference between how a normal person draws a clock, and how a person with certain cognitive problems will draw a clock,” Dr. Freedman explains.

When a family doctor can readily determine whether a patient who complains of cognitive problems has a dementia like Alzheimer’s, it saves time and resources. “The person gets treated sooner, which is important,” stresses Dr. Freedman. “The earlier we can make a diagnosis, the quicker we can start treating the disease with drug therapy or other interventions.”

Dr. Freedman says the future of Alzheimer’s research needs to be multi-pronged in order to develop more effective drugs to treat the symptoms, develop drugs that might slow the progression, and identify interventions that might help prevent or delay the onset. That’s the kind of effort supported by the Aces for Alzheimer’s fundraiser. “There is hope, because there’s so much research going on, but our resources are limited and we need funding,” he says.

The Soupcoff sisters all agree that the tennis tournament’s support of Alzheimer’s care and research is a good thing. “In addition to his business acumen, our dad was a visionary who would enthusiastically back a winner,” says Rochelle. “He recognized Baycrest as an organization that can provide for the aging community into the future. That’s why we’re putting Mayfair resources into helping Baycrest now.”