2008 FACT news archive

Check out our upcoming FACT events and other events sponsored by our members and others in the CAM community.

                     2008: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

December 2008

December 13, 2008

Our CAM news collection continue to grow. This month's blog post discusses the latest findings on CAM usage among US adults and children.

As an organisation, we are gearing up for our annual general meeting (AGM), which you are invited to attend on Sunday, February 1, 2009. As in previous years, a speaker will discuss a CAM topic (TBA) before the meeting. This talk is open to the public. The AGM is for members only, however. You can join or renew your membership at the meeting. (location and tentative schedule)

November 2008

The annual FACT banquet was a great success. Please check the banquet page for a description of the event, a description of the menu, contact information for our suppliers, and how to contact our sponsors. A big thank you to all our sponsors for this event!

We have been adding a lot of CAM news to that section of our website. Please send us anything of note that you come across!

October 2008

October 13

FACT would like to wish members a happy Thanksgiving.

At this time of the year, our thoughts often turn to food, so it seems a perfect time to annouce the big news for this month: we have SOLD OUT the banquet! Our annual Flavours of Harmony banquet, held Sunday, November 9, is our major fund-raising endeavour. This year, we will be taking the time to enjoy a feast of Mediterranean healing cuisine. (flyer) (newsletter)

An article published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine concludes that "Mediterranean and low-carbohydrate diets may be effective alternatives to low-fat diets. The more favorable effects on lipids (with the low-carbohydrate diet) and on glycemic control (with the Mediterranean diet) suggest that personal preferences and metabolic considerations might inform individualized tailoring of dietary interventions." (source)

To become a banquet sponsor or for more information, phone Diane at 416-299-5113 or end us an e-mail.

September 2008

September 8

Calling all members!

Do you have an opinion about anything in the CAM world? Consider contributing an article to our FACT blog, a forum where we hope our community can interact and discuss issues of importance to them and to all of us. Our community is what you make it, consider participating soon!

If you are a member of FACT and would like to launch a discussion on a particular topic, please send an e-mail to our editor, who will give you more details and assist you with any technical issues that may arise.

What would make a good blog topic? A good blog topic generates discussion about anything that affects:

  • the CAM community in general (for example, Bill C-51)
  • the Canadian community at large (for example, Listeriosis and Salmonella outbreaks, the potential effects certain potential governments may have on CAM practice, etc.)
  • new developments in specific disciplines or areas within the CAM or Integrative Medicine world

We look forward to hearing from you! The more articles you submit and comment on, the more useful this forum will be to you and to our community.

September 3

The FACT Board is busily gearing up for our annual Flavours of Harmony Banquet. Sunday, November 9, we host our much-anticipated banquet, taking the time to enjoy a feast of Mediterranean healing cuisine. Join us from noon to 3 p.m. at the St. Lawrence Hall in Toronto (157 King Street East, Toronto, ON M5C 1G9). (flyer) (newsletter)

To register or for more information, phone Diane at 416-299-5113 or end us an e-mail.

August 2008

August 15

The Friends of Alternative and Complementary Therapies Society (FACT) is celebrating its 10th anniversary and the launch of this new website. Join the celebration at this fall's Flavours of Harmony Banquet, which will be based on the Mediterranean healing cuisine. For more information, please contact us by e-mail or phone Diane at 416-299-5113.

Check out this website to learn more about FACT and to get involved as a volunteer, member or sponsor! FACT is a charitable organisation dedicated to the promotion of credible information in the area of complementary and alternative healing practices and integration with mainstream healthcare.

The focus of our work in the coming year is to create a virtual community of support, knowledge and integration of healing therapies and practices.

August 1

The big news for this month is the launch of the Community section of our website. This section uses wiki technology to allow FACT members to contribute their expertise to the knowledge-base. It is our hope that this section will become an important repository of CAM and IM knowledge and that you, as members of FACT, will help build it.

The Community section (aka "database") contains the following sections:

  • CAM articles: to allow you to recommend published articles
  • CAM glossary: to allow you to look up or defne key concepts and modalities
  • Consumers' experience: to allow consumers to describe their personal experiences with various CAM modalities. (Note: Do not name your practitioner. All practitioner names will be removed.)
  • Practitioners' experience: to allow practitioners to describe their personal experiences with various CAM modalities. Only practitioners can contribute to this section.
  • Research findings: to allow practitioners, students and others to identify and evaluate research into CAM and IM.

To add or edit an entry, you must be a member of FACT, have applied and been approved (this prevents spam and malicious content). Registration cuts down on malicious content, while allowing only members to edit the content means that our community accepts responsibility for the quality and accuracy of the information it contains.

July 2008

July 1

We have rescheduled events in the Living Well and Collecting Wisdom series and have also postponed the Integrated Medicine conference. Please watch the events page for details, which we will post as soon as they become available.

FACT has elected to focus energies on online content for the next little while.

June 2008

June 23

The FACT Board is pleased to announce that Bob Dunn has agreed to assume the position of Acting President for the Friends of Alternative and Complimentary Therapies Society, effective immediately.

June 14

The FACT Board would like to thank Sandy Wise, of Sandy Wise & Associates Inc., for facilitating the FACT retreat session on June 14th 2008. The FACT Board is pleased to announce that Bob Dunn has agreed to assume the position of Acting Chair for the Board, effective immediately.

June 1

June is a big month for FACT: The official launch of our re-developed website is scheduled to coincide with the much-anticipated FACT Film night (Friday, June 13). Many people have worked very hard to bring you the new site, and we hope you find it useful. The lovely design is brought to you by Ivy and William at Splash Interactive.

Because our goal is to improve communication with and between our members, we opted to bring the new site online before all of the functionality was in place. Notably,

  • the Community section of our website is not yet working.
    This section will allow FACT members and practitioners to contribute to a collaborative repository of knowledge in complementary and alternative therapies and integrative medicine.
  • the e-Newsletter component is not yet working.
    Once we have implemented the Community (wiki-based) section of the site, we will begin producing a regular e-mail newsletter. You can add your e-mail address to our distribution list now, but the first issue may not appear until late autumn.

Most of the other pages are either completed or in progress — please be patient while we dot our Is and cross our Ts!  If you see any information that need to be corrected or to suggest additions, please e-mail editor@thefacts.org.

Finally, practitioners and corporate members please check your directory listings to make sure the information is up-to-date. Please send your changes to editor@thefacts.org. Please note that we update the site on the first and third Mondays of the month so, although we will do our best, your changes may not appear immediately.

In other news, the next FACT Board meeting is scheduled for Saturday, June 14th. The following Sunday sees the next installment in our ongoing Collecting Wisdom series. On Sunday, June 22, help us with our Collecting Wisdom—Psoriasis and eczema,  at 2:30 p.m. See you there!

May 2008

May Day dawned bright and clear and surprisingly warm (even if that changed by mid-afternoon). Spring is officially upon us!

We have a real treat planned this month: Friday, May 23rd, Qi gong master and FACT advisor Dr. Stephen Aung is offering a Qi gong workshop at the Scadding Court community centre.

And don't forget the latest in our ongoing series Living Well—Menopause and andropause, which will be held Sunday afternoon, May 25th, at the Northern District library.

Finally, save the date for our annual FACT Film Night, which will be held at the Workman Theatre (1001 Queen Street West, at Ossington) on Friday, June 13, 2008 at 7 pm. To register, please call Diane at 416-299-5113 before Friday, June 6, 2008.

April 2008

Join us for our practitioner's meet and greet on Tuesday, April 8th. As usual, it kicks off at 7:30 p.m.

We also invite you to join us at our Collecting Wisdom event on addiction on Sunday, April 13th at 2:30 p.m. Upcoming events in this series will discuss psoriasis, eczema and infertility. If your practitioner has helped you in this area, we would love to know about it! Consider suggesting your practitioner as a panelist for one of our upcoming events in this series. For more information, see the Collecting Wisdom page.

On the technology front, the redevelopment of the website is pushing forward in leaps and bounds! We are currently beta testing the online repository, which uses wiki technology. We are also working on a blog-based online newsletter, which we hope will encourage lively discussions among the members of our community. Stay tuned for more exciting developments!

March 2008

This month we hold our annual general meeting (AGM), which will be preceded by the latest instalment of our Living Well series: Nutrition in children. Both events will be at the Northern District public library and will begin at 2:30 p.m. We hope to see you there!

Work continues on the website, where we are currently looking at incorporating the newest Web 2.0 technology to make communication easier and more effective. Look for dynamic content and interactivity as keystones of the new FACT website.

February 2008

This month we have two events planned: our Collecting Wisdom series examines cardiovascular disease (on the 17th), and a practitioner's meet and greet (on the 20th). Check out our FACT events page for more information.

Nominate your practitioner to participate in our Collecting Wisdom series! If your practitioner has successfully treated you for one of the conditions discussed in our series, nominate them to speak at one of our Collecting Wisdom events. Upcoming series will discuss addiction (April 13), psoriasis and eczema (June 22), and infertility (August 17). To nominate your practitioner, e-mail their name, contact information and how they helped you to messages@thefacts.org. Our screening committee will review the nominations and invite appropriate clinicians to speak at the forum.

Mark your calendars for our annual general meeting (AGM), which will be held on Sunday, March 16, 2008. More details coming soon.

January 2008

As you may know, FACT has been busily re-building and re-designing our website with the help of one of our members at Splash Interactive and our new website co-ordinator. In January, we moved to a new server, which has the functionality we require to offer new and improved website services to our members.

Prior years: 2008  2007 2006  2005 2004 2003 2002 2001  2000 1999 1998

Please note: Links to older documents refer to the older versions of the FACT website, before the website redesign by Splash Interactive in 2008.

For more information call 416-299-5113 or e-mail messages@thefacts.org.