Dr. Andrew Simone: giant of radical generosity

In the first and, hopefully, last time I admit it editorially, I was as tense and nervous as a journalist could be walking into the office of Dr. Andrew Simone.   

I had never met the man. I knew only of the extraordinary outline of his life, one that sounded almost too grand to be true. A Harvard-trained dermatologist perhaps best known for surrendering his wealth, a father to 14 children and who fostered dozens more, and, with his late wife, founder of Canadian Food for Children after an encounter with Mother Teresa in the 1980s. I knew the numbers, too. Nearly six decades of medical practice, countless containers of food and aid shipped almost every day for 40 years to some of the poorest corners of the globe, his awards in the Order of Canada and St. Michael’s Award respectively, and his one identity as a quiet giant of radical generosity — how do you begin to summarize someone like that?

As I sat just outside of the modest waiting area of his clinic in Etobicoke’s affluent Kingsway community, I realized it was also his home — I was surrounded by family photos and paintings of Christ and Mother Mary as I waited at a simple kitchen table where he would have eaten. The weight of those past achievements pressed in as my nerves grew.

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Around the corner came a short man, soft-spoken and unmistakably humble. Around his neck and over his scrub top hung a large wooden crucifix. There was no grandeur in his manner, no air of living legend. Only a quiet presence, attentive eyes and the sense that the person standing in front of me had long ago decided that the only measure of what mattered was how completely he could give himself to anyone who needed him. 

For the next hour, I was that person. 

When it comes to the idea of a call to service, Simone’s life is something of an anomaly. A man so synonymous with the idea of service, love for the poor and rooted in strong faith, few have a list of accomplishments equal to his. 

The anomaly is that his work has no beginning, and certainly no end in sight, and that Simone, as a man, is as comparable to the very meaning of service itself.

“What do you want to know?” the 88-year-old asked me, physically tired after finishing a full day of serving patients. “Everything, really,” I said, taken aback and struggling to recall where to even start. 

“I’ll tell you this: when I was a student at St. Basil's, I read a story of St. Guy, and I knew I wanted to become a saint. I met this beautiful Catholic girl who was from St. Joseph's, and she got me back to church where I found out about the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. What she did, really, was make me realize that Jesus loved me,” he said. 

That beautiful Catholic girl would go on to become Joan Simone, his partner of 62 years before her death in 2022. Together, and as the two grew back into the faith, unashamedly so, they became far more than financially comfortable. 

“We became rich, and we said to each other, ‘This is horrible,’ ” he recalled. “We sat in front of a crucifix and said we were going to dedicate our lives to the poor. We did things like pay the mortgage of families in danger of losing their homes, even dividing my earnings among charities like ShareLife and the Salvation Army.” 

Their local work would catch the attention of Jesuit priest Fr. Francis West, treasurer of the Co-workers of Mother Teresa in Canada, who asked them to become assistant treasurers.

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It was then in 1981 that Mother Teresa penned her first letter to the couple, requesting they send food to Ethiopia and Tanzania, which they did for four years. 

When large-scale international aid arrived and lessened the immediate need, the two founded Canadian Food for Children, modelling their lives on Mother Teresa’s poverty and commitment to serving the poor. Today, CFFC remains almost entirely volunteer-operated, with shipping containers of upwards of 15 tons each still filled every single day with food, clothing, hygiene products and other basic living necessities and sent to those in need across South America, Africa and the Caribbean.

Throughout each year of the charity’s existence, the Simones continued to strip their lives of anything that was not deemed essential. He spoke about giving away cars, cancelling insurance policies and emptying retirement savings. The two limited their grocery budget to $40 a week, relying instead on whatever food arrived unused from religious communities who had noticed the unusual family living in the heart of the affluent neighbourhood.  

Their own extended family struggled to understand, with Simone’s Sicilian grandparents, who had come to Canada unable to read or write, having dreamed of a classic immigrant success. What they saw instead left them bewildered, at times, openly disappointed, yet Simone never looked back. 

“I have never regretted it,” he said simply. “I’ve seen the poor, I know the poor.” 

That same spirit of total availability shaped the way he practised medicine. Sixteen years ago, after hearing prominent colleagues admit that patients with malignant melanoma had waited too long for a diagnosis, he and his wife decided to open a true walk-in practice to catch skin cancer early and save lives. Each patient who walks in is seen the same day, and those not covered by OHIP are asked to leave a small fee, which is, of course, given away.  

I sat across from a man who had every excuse, whether his age, his hearing loss, the death of his wife or even simply having put in the countless hours already, to slow down. The question of “When will your call to service wind down?” might as well have been an insult. 

“I’ll stop when I die, or when they tell me that I can’t practise any more. If I stop working, I’ll sell this house and give the money away, but as long as I can keep working, I can earn money for the poor,” he told me. 

Puzzled, I kept probing as any good journalist would. How can a man give so much professionally to clients, charitably to the impoverished, personally to his family, both immediate and extended, faithfully to his wife and her legacy, and spiritually to his sturdy faith? 

Then, Simone made it glaringly clear, giving credence to exactly how I could describe him. 

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“My whole motivation is Jesus,” he said. 

“I don't want to be (known as) a philanthropist or a charity worker or even a dermatologist. I want to be known as a Catholic Christian, because I believe the greatest gift that God gave me, even though I didn't realize it right away, is our Catholic faith.” 

A version of this article appeared in the October 18, 2026 issue of The Catholic Register with the headline "Dr. Andrew Simone: giant of radical generosity".