Lifeline on wheels: Manitoulin Transport honoured for decades of Eye Van Support

Mantoulin Transport was honoured for its 40-year partnership with Vision Loss Rehabilitation Canada's mobile Eye Van.

Vision Loss Rehabilitation Canada has formally thanked Manitoulin Transport for its vital role in supporting the organization’s Eye Van – a partnership that has spanned decades and proven essential to delivering eye care across northern Ontario.

Woven into the company’s DNA

Jeff Smith of Manitoulin Transport reflected on the long-standing nature of the collaboration, describing it as something deeply ingrained in the company’s identity.

“It was just kind of in our DNA to keep working with the Eye Van for how many years, like 40 years? And supporting wherever they are in the province, whatever the awful weather that they bump into, whatever kind of breakdowns they might have, we’re kind of their little lifeline,” he said.

Smith told CTV News there is a contrast between how the company views the service and how it is perceived by those who depend on it.

“For us, it’s just for us it’s just another tractor-trailer on the road,” he said.

“For them, it’s vital. But for us, it’s just they almost become like part of our fleet and we’d support them the way we’d help any one of our drivers that are stuck in between a rock and a hard place.”

Serving northern communities

Penny Hartin, Vision Loss Rehabilitation’s board chair, spoke about the company’s broader philosophy and its connection to the region it serves.

“They also believe very strongly in how they can contribute what they have, what their expertise is to support programs that make a difference to people in northern Ontario,” he said.

“Because they’re based in northern Ontario … they really believe in ensuring that people in northern Ontario have access to the best services and programs possible for them."

Decades of reaching remote communities

The Eye Van is a mobile eye clinic that has been in operation for more than 50 years, bringing specialized ophthalmology services to remote northern Ontario communities that may not otherwise have access to local eye care.

Hartin said the van goes into communities where individuals simply wouldn’t have access to the specialized care they need without it.

“The distances are so great that, you know, for people to have to travel hundreds of miles to see an ophthalmologist, then, you know, they probably just wouldn’t be able to do it,” he explained.

Lisa Obonsawin, the van’s general manager, emphasized the collaborative nature of the program and the broad network of support that sustains it.

“The one phenomenal thing about this program is that it takes a community and a community of health care professionals, a community of volunteers, a community of people in the profession that recognize the importance of health care to all people,” she said.

Preventing vision loss

Each year, from April to October, the Eye Van serves about 4,000 residents, significantly reducing the need for them to travel to southern Ontario for eye care.

Dr. Steve Arshinoff, an ophthalmologist who worked for the Eye Van when he was a graduate student, told CTV News about the preventive nature of the service and why regular check-ups are so critical.

“The strange thing about eyes is once you damage the retina or the optic nerve, you really can’t fix it. You can perhaps stop it from getting worse,” he said.

“If we see patients who have glaucoma, for example, we can assess how far they’ve gone. But we can’t give them back the vision they’ve lost. So being able to see them every year and check them enables us to prevent people who would otherwise lose their vision.”

Manitoulin Transport representatives indicated that the partnership remains deeply important to them and that they intend to carry forward what their grandfathers began decades ago for years to come.

The Eye Van will soon be returning to northern communities, with its first stop scheduled in Hearst next Monday.