The Civic’s Loeb Institute officially opened September 26, 1988, with then-prime minister Brian Mulroney doing the ribbon cutting.
The new ultra-modern research facility was led by Dr. David Grimes, scientific director and senior vice president of research and academic affairs at the Civic. In assuming his leadership position, Dr. Grimes brought with him an international reputation for his clinical research work in Parkinson’s disease.
Ottawa businessman and philanthropist Bertram Loeb of Canadian grocery store giant Loeb voluntarily led the Civic’s first private fundraising campaign to raise more than $14 million for the new research institute. His father, Moses Loeb, had immigrated to Canada from Russia, via the United States, to start a small wholesale confectionary business in Ottawa in 1912, and he decided to name the institute after his father and his mother, Rose.
In 1996 the Institute’s name was changed to the Loeb Health Research Institute (LHRI), and the LHRI was incorporated as a non-profit charity.
The original building was 38,000 square feet, but the building continued to expand to accommodate growing research advancements. By 2001, the LHRI had around 300 researchers focused on four programs: Hormones, Growth and Development; Neurosciences; Clinical Epidemiology; and Diseases of Aging.
