VITALITY DENTISTRY PROVIDING STATE OF THE ART ORAL HEALTH CARE

In 1978, when Raj Singh was just fifteen years old, his entire immediate family
immigrated to Canada from Guyana to settle in Toronto. Raj was immediately
enrolled at Overlea High and remained there for his secondary school
education until eventually graduating from Grade 13. During his Overlea High
School attendance Raj helped to form one of the city’s earliest school cricket
teams.
From Overlea High, Raj went on to the University of Toronto (UofT) attending
science courses for two years before he applied to the UofT’s School of Dentistry.
His application was successful which was at the time somewhat unique, as
the required norm for successful entry was for four years of pre-study.
Having duly completed his four years at the University of Toronto’s School of
Dentistry, graduating in 1985 at the age of twenty-three, Raj opened his own
practice at Denison & Kennedy Clinic and was there for almost ten years, from
1985 to early 1995. In 1995 Raj, proudly opened the doors to Vitality Dentistry at
the 4792 Highway 7 East location that has served as its business home since
them. At the time of their purchase, there was on old house located on the property that had to be demolished to
make way for Raj’s vision of a facility that was custom built for dentistry. The facility was featured in the Toronto Sun &
Toronto Star as “the future of health care” .
In the now twenty-five years since Vitality Dentistry was first
constructed, the facility has again been re-equipped with
state-of-the art technology and upgraded to support the
ever changing technology and needs of our New Normal.
It is Wholly Guyanese owned and serves as an immense
and justifiable source of pride for all members of Toronto’s
immigrant communities.
Not unlike others who had made a similar journey Raj’s
background as an immigrant from Guyana, a cricket
playing country, provided a platform for his pursuit of
opportunities for participation in the sport in Canada as
his new homeland. His involvement with the Overlea High
school team was extended to participation in recreational
matches during the summers as an active member of
the Cosmos Cricket Club, where he benefited from the
mentorship of many senior members.
After a few years at Cosmos, Raj and some of the Club’s
younger members who were interested in playing
cricket at a more competitive level decided to form
their own team to participate in the Toronto & District
Cricket League (T&DCA). The Pegasus Cricket Club, ,
was thereby formed in 1988, competing in its maiden
Season as a T&DCA Fourth Division Team.
Success in subsequent Seasons allowed Pegasus
to progress through the T&DCA Divisional ranks to
eventually reach the pinnacle as a Premier Division
team. Raj, his brother and a few of the Pegasus
Club’s founding members provided the administrative
backbone of its noteworthy progression in a relatively
short period of time.
By the late nineties, however Raj’s Vitality Dentistry
Clinic had started blooming, requiring much more of
his time than ever before. This along with his evolving
responsibilities as a husband and father within the
family unit he and his wife were building, eventually
resulted in the natural reduction of his direct
involvement in cricket. From being an active hardball
player, his involvement was initially transformed into
participation in the much less arduous Softball Cricket
League, before he eventually retired from playing
altogether. Since the conclusion of his playing days,
Raj has however always maintained his interest in
the sport, frequently attending major international
matches both here in Canada and back home in
The connections Raj made during the years of his active
involvement in Canadian cricket have thankfully resulted in
many of his former Club mates and fellow cricketers from
other clubs becoming Vitality Dentistry patients., That also
extended to family members of his cricket fraternity by virtue
of the word-of-mouth referrals.
Raj’s first ten years of practicing, at his initial Denison and
Kennedy Clinic, had allowed him to experience first hand
some of the standard practices of the industry which he felt
could be improved upon. Those early practice years also
allowed him the time to create a crystal clear vision of what
his perceived future Clinic should look like and what an ideal
Dentistry practice should be. Rough sketches on pieces of
paper led to an active search for adequate and affordable
land space that would accommodate the size of building
that could house the type of services Raj wanted to offer in
an ideal physical setting.
The 4792 Highway 7 East location that now houses Vitality
Dentistry was actually purchased in 1993. It then took Raj
another two years to fully acquire all the required building
permits before he could physically open its doors to
welcome members of the general public as clients. The
building’s proximity to the Rouge River created its own set
of Conservation related permit acquisition headaches. For
a young thirty-year-old, relatively newly established Dentist
and his supporting family, acquiring the required financing
was no cakewalk either.
Thankfully, all of the required pieces eventually fell into place
and the doors to Vitality Dentistry were finally opened in
1995, as the realization of Raj’s vision which he had been
harboring for well over ten years.
The concept was simple… “High Tech – High Touch”
– a patient-centered practice providing state-of-the-art
treatment combined with good old fashioned personal care.
Picturing himself in their shoes, Raj wondered as to how
a satisfied Client would want an ideal clinic to look and
feel. Vitality Dentistry’s spacious minimally staffed foyer, with
its refreshingly soothing tropical rainforest with its radiant
tropical flowers, a natural throwback to Raj’s childhood
exposure to Guyana’s Amazon jungle, successfully creates the
desired first impression of a very sterile, clean environment.
Even though the treatment rooms were by necessity clean
and sterile, Raj wanted his treatment rooms to feel warm
and friendly, which Vitality accomplished through the use of
numerous skylights and huge picture frame windows.
As an industry, Dentistry has evolved significantly over the
years. When Raj first started practice, some thirty-five years
ago, dental implants were for example, just at an experimental
stage. Today, dental implants are the core of Raj’s thriving
practice with Vitality Dentistry capable of providing any
and every type available, from Simple Implants, to
Immediate to those that are computer guided. Vitality
is now one of a very few practices in the world offering
Computer Guided Implant procedures, with all of the
necessary technology & staff in-house. Vitality Dentistry
also has its own in-house laboratory, which allows for
complete control of all related process from diagnosis
to successful implant placement & restoration.
Raj & Vitality Dentistry was again featured in a
front page article of The Toronto Star in 2007 when
he completed the Transformation of Jason Jones, a
remarkable story of a life-changing dental implant
treatment for Jason.
In addition to its now bread and butter state of the
art dental implants, Vitality Dentistry also offers the
full range of dental services, from kids initial checkups
to adult “teeth-in-a-day” entire reconstructions for
anyone who has lost all of their teeth. Furthermore,
Vitality Dentistry’s services are also offered at fees that
are no different from those of far less sophisticated
facilities.
Raj and his staff have taken great pride in always
being on the leading edge of the industry’s practices,
in offering state of the art oral health care to the benefit
of Vitality Dentistry’s clients. Raj’s message to members
of the Canadian cricket community is that maintaining
good oral health is essential to good overall health
and will contribute to the longevity of yourselves and
your loved ones. Towards that end, he and his staff of
25 are available to service all of your needs from the
welcoming atmosphere of their Vitality Dentistry 4792
Highway 7 location. A facility that is so unique that it
literally has to be experienced firsthand in order to be
believed!