The photo above was taken at the Ontario Community Support Association conference in 2025, at Bedford’s booth. It is the newest entry in a record that now runs more than a decade: since a first table at the North York Seniors Centre in 2016, Bedford Medical Alert® has sponsored a fundraising gala in Etobicoke, funded education awards for geriatric clinicians in Toronto, exhibited at hospital fall-prevention events, and answered a lot of questions over lunch. This page keeps that record in one place.
A note on independence before the list: Bedford is a member of the Ontario Community Support Association, and we have paid for the sponsorships described below. Beyond that, the hospitals, health networks, and community organizations named here do not endorse Bedford Medical Alert or its products. They appear because the events were real, and we think the record is worth keeping.
Bedford is a longtime OCSA member and a conference regular; the booth photo at the top of this page is ours, from the association’s 2025 conference. The association speaks for Ontario’s home and community support sector: the not-for-profit agencies that help seniors and people with disabilities stay in their own homes.
At the OCSA annual conference in Toronto in 2016, the speakers kept returning to a single problem: the number of people who need care in this province is growing faster than the number of people available to provide it. Our takeaway from that room still holds. A monitored medical alert helps most when it works alongside community care, and we wrote as much in our conference notes at the time.
We went back two years later and wrote that visit up too: Bedford attends the OCSA Conference 2018.
In 2018, Bedford was the presenting sponsor of the 10th anniversary Dine for Dignity gala in support of ESS Support Services, a community support agency in Etobicoke. Jerry Howarth, the longtime radio voice of the Blue Jays, was master of ceremonies, with music from Michael Vanhevel and Stu Harrison. The evening honoured Dolores Ellerker, the agency’s CEO, for her years of work, and Bedford’s president Robert Yelavich was in the room for it.
Bedford is trusted by clinicians across Canada, and we have supported hospital education programs and research initiatives from UHN Toronto Rehab to Trillium Health. Some of that work has its own write-up on this site:
In 2021, the St. Joe’s Seniors’ Series ran free virtual sessions for seniors and caregivers in Toronto’s west end, covering osteoporosis, fall prevention, mental health, staying connected, and sleep and memory. Bedford invited clients and healthcare contacts to every session, part of a standing commitment to education for the people we serve and the professionals who care for them.
Wondering how monitoring would fit your family? Bedford’s Canadian care team is happy to talk it through in plain language, with no obligation. Call 1-888-755-3055 any time.
In December 2024, Bedford answered questions at the Senior’s Active Living Winter Health Fair, hosted by The Neighbourhood Group Community Services. And at the OACAO’s 2018 Aging Well conference, run by the Older Adult Centres’ Association of Ontario, we spent the day with people who share our interest in seniors’ well-being.
Our first seniors’ centre table, at the North York Seniors Centre in 2016, had a simple format: a presentation at 11:00 am, questions over lunch, RSVP by phone. We were back at the same address that spring for Family Caregiver Day, a free morning for family caregivers where Bedford sponsored breakfast and presented alongside the Ontario Caregiver Coalition.
In 2016, Bedford Medical Alert was added to the Toronto Central Behavioural Supports Ontario services directory, a provincial resource for older adults living with dementia, complex mental health, substance use, or other neurological conditions. Families searching a directory like that are usually dealing with hard questions at home; our guide to living alone with dementia covers the home-safety side of them.
Most of Bedford’s work happens quietly: a 3 a.m. call answered in our Canadian monitoring centre, an installation visit, a follow-up call to a daughter in another city. The community calendar is the visible part. And once a year, in the middle of February, we put it more simply than any conference talk ever has: a Bedford device is a way to say “I love you” all year round. That was the entire text of a Valentine’s post we ran in 2019. It still covers it. Bedford brings three generations of experience to that promise, and the trust it rests on was built the same way we keep it: in person, year after year.
Prefer to start with the details? See the Home Freedom in-home system, or compare all Bedford systems side by side. Questions? Call 1-888-755-3055, day or night.
