In November 2011 the Gerald Bronfman Centre (GBC) celebrated its 20th anniversary and to mark the occasion the Department of Oncology, with the support of the Faculty of Medicine, held its inaugural Gerald Bronfman Centre Symposium and Awards Ceremony in honour of our benefactors, Marjorie and Gerald Bronfman. The theme of this first symposium was Cancer Control. Subsequently, the themes of the second (2012), third (2013), fourth (2014) and fifth (2015) symposia were Basic Cancer Research, Psychosocial Oncology, Advances in Cancer Therapy and Advances in the Genetics of Cancer, respectively.Â
In June 2016, Ï㽶ÊÓƵ’s Department of Oncology was re-named the Gerald Bronfman Department of Oncology. In February 2017, the Department’s headquarters moved from its original home on Pine Avenue to 5100 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West, Suite 720. In light of these changes, the annual Gerald Bronfman Centre Symposium and Awards Ceremony (2011-2015) was discontinued and replaced with the Gerald Bronfman Department of Oncology Distinguished Lecture and Awards Ceremony, the first one taking place in 2017. Topics of the distinguished lecture have been new cancer therapeutics (2017), history of the field of medical oncology (2018),  history of breast cancer treatment (2019), history of palliative care at McGill and in Quebec (2020), the role of exosomes in intercellular communication (2021), challenges of making biomedical research more reproducible and useful (2022), and the value of building large-scale multi-institutional collaborative research initiatives (2023).
Following the Symposium/Distinguished Lecture there is an awards ceremony to announce winners of Department awards in the following categories: (i) Academic, Clinical or Research Support; (ii) Teaching & Mentorship; (iii) Research or Clinical Service; (iv) Lifetime Achievement.Â