Message from the President

Hello,

I am very pleased to be returning to the position of president of Autism Canada during a time when both scientific research and political support for autism are progressing quicker then ever before.

Back in 2000, my son was diagnosed with autism. My family looked for as much information as we could (thank you, world wide web) to determine how to deal with his diagnosis the best we could. We came to the conclusion that combining different types of treatments such as diet, biomedical and behavioural together would help our son progress much further than if we simply picked one type of treatment. This approach seemed like common sense to my husband and me.

The greatest difficulty in implementing our son’s treatment plan was finding service providers and physicians in Canada who could help us. We were forced to travel to the United States to pursue reliable information and assistance. We felt fortunate to be able to do that but sad that some people did not have the resources to do the same.

As it turned out, we met a few other Canadian parents in our travels who were also interested in the successful treatments other parents had found. We joined forces to organize Autism Canada Foundation so we could bring this knowledge back to Canadian parents and support service providers who also want to help.

We have made great alliances in the past few years that have helped strengthen Autism Canada into an organization recognized as a leader to those affected by autism. Today, more Canadian families are able to get the information they need through our website and the conferences we organize.

Thank you for supporting our organization in finding a cause and cure for autism.

Cynthia Zahoruk