Mississauga made: the trio bringing health care back home

Be the best that you can be.

It’s a line most students would forget somewhere between assemblies and report cards. But for first-year MD students Talia Hassan, Nyla Syed and Zaynashae Boreland, it stuck—long before medical school applications, interviews or acceptance rates ever entered the picture.

They first heard it at Erin Centre Middle School, a school in Mississauga whose motto wasn’t just recited, but reinforced—in classrooms, on teams and in the quiet expectations students set for themselves.

Years later, all three would land in the inaugural MD class at the Toronto Metropolitan University School of Medicine—a feat that, on paper, borders on improbable. More than 6,400 applicants competed for just 94 spots, an acceptance rate of 1.46 per cent.

And yet, three of those seats went to students who all passed through the same unlikely pipeline: Erin Centre Middle School.

A shared start, three different routes ahead

For Syed, the answer on how she found her way into medicine starts somewhere small—when she was put in a program for gifted students at just 11 years old.

Growing up in Mississauga’s Churchill Meadows neighbourhood, Syed was surrounded by classmates who, like her, were South Asian and Muslim, and who were hearing similar messages at home about pursuing careers like medicine. 

“I would say between Grade 6 and 7 was when I started going down the path of ‘Oh, maybe I could be a doctor,” she said. “I was very much the kind of kid where if you told me I was good at something, I would run with it. And I got that feedback from my teachers at Erin Centre a lot. It really encouraged me to be confident and to believe in myself.”
For Boreland, her experience was more complex. As one of two Black students in her class at Erin Centre, she often felt the need to work harder to stand out. Still, she points to the school’s structure—interdisciplinary projects, early lessons on learning styles, intentional teaching—as foundational.

One French teacher in particular, Mme. Nadjet Benabid, stands out for Boreland. Benabid’s warm but strict approach inspired her to pursue a psychology degree in French in Ottawa, a move which kicked off her long journey into medicine.

“She totally shaped my path,” Boreland said. “I talk about her all the time. She is the best teacher I’ve ever had.”

For Hassan, who attended the same middle school four years after Boreland, the warnings about the strict French teacher at Erin Centre were familiar. But when she joined Mme. Benabid’s class, she discovered the same sense of awe and inspiration that Boreland had experienced years earlier.

“This woman shaped our lives,” Hassan said. “She’s one of those teachers who is very passionate about what she does and strives to make her students better. She really imparts the importance of discipline as a learner. For me, it was knowing that this teacher is not going to make it easy for you. And I really respected her for that.”

A pipeline that leads back home

At TMU’s School of Medicine, roughly one in five students in the inaugural class—20 out of 94—call Mississauga home. It’s by design. The school is built around a simple premise: train healthcare professionals from the Peel Region, for the Peel Region.

Clinical training is anchored in local systems like Trillium Health Partners and supported by dozens of Mississauga-based faculty and primary care sites. Throughout their MD studies, students team up with organizations across the Peel Region to work on projects that tackle real-world issues—like social or environmental hurdles—to make healthcare easier to reach for everyone.

At the School of Medicine, the theory is straightforward: train locally, and graduates are more likely to stay. For Hassan, Syed and Boreland, that’s already the plan.

“I was born and raised in Mississauga,” said Hassan. “I would absolutely want to practice in this community. There's such a big Muslim and South Asian community in Mississauga and I think it's so important that we have healthcare workers who look like the people that we're serving. So I really want to  provide that for this community.”

All three speak about returning to serve the communities that shaped them—places where cultural understanding, language and representation in healthcare still matter deeply.

“Erin Centre’s motto, be the best you can be, still resonates with me to this day,” said Hassan. “I think it really did push me to want to be better and try to be the best that I could be. And I can’t wait to bring that message back home as a physician.”