For artist Bill Irish that meant emptying the walls of his studio. 
 

“The people at KGH have pulled me back from the edge about a dozen times over the years,” says the 73 –year-old painter.

“I had spent so much time there I knew all the walls. Because as soon as I could, I was up walking the hallways,” he says.

What he saw on those walls were a lot of faded prints. So when he and his wife Kate started thinking about what they could do to say thank-you, it was an easy decision.

Bill has painted about 70 large oil landscapes over his lifetime. He decided to give almost 50 of those paintings to KGH. They represent 11,000 hours of work.  Each painting tells a story about a person or a place in Canadian history. 

 “The stories are about wisdom and heroic acts,”  Irish says. “I hope they will inspire people and give them a lift. It’s a joy to have them seen.”

 “ The people who walk those walls every day are working their hearts out for other people, for their community.  When they walk by one of my paintings, I hope they will be reminded that someone thinks they are doing a pretty darn good job.”

The artist donates his art. Retired biology professor Gerry Morris donates his time and the benefit of his own experience.

Thirteen years ago, Morris’s heart gave out.  He needed open heart surgery to save his life. During his time at KGH, he found it was the volunteers who really helped him recover; volunteers who themselves had gone through cardiac surgery.

 “Patients can relate to volunteers more than doctors or nurses. They’ve been there. They have an advantage,” says Morris.

Now Morris is one of those Helping Hearts volunteers on the cardiac care unit; visiting patients, comforting them, giving them the benefit of his experience and inspiring them to get better. 

At 71, he’s happier and healthier than he’s ever been thanks to bypass surgery; living proof that a full recovery is possible.

Morris gives his time a couple of mornings every week to KGH. He’s one of 850 volunteers at the hospital.

People find many ways to be generous and give back to the hospital.

 
“The care at KGH is A-1 but I want to help them do better. If throwing a few dollars will help, well why not? I’m happy to do it and everybody should do it,” he says.

Phipps and his wife each committed five hundred dollars every month for five years to the University Hospitals Kingston Foundation.  And KGH is named as a beneficiary in their wills.

“You can’t take all the time. You gotta pay back,” he says.

The Phipps admit that like most people, for many years charity was at the bottom of the list. 

“But now it’s a priority. “That’s where my money goes,” he says. “We have everything we want.  When we go to the shopping mall now it’s more out of curiosity than to buy something.  I want to give where it does the most good.”

“It’s my hospital.”

That’s how Sylvia Burkinshaw feels about Kingston General.  She came to KGH as a nurse in 1961.  25 years later, she retired as Chief Nursing Officer. Retirement didn’t last long.  She ended up back at work as the assistant to the CEO. And at 91, still doesn’t consider her self retired.

It seems you can take the nurse out of the hospital but you can’t take the hospital out of the nurse. And Burkinshaw has been generous to the institution she worked so hard for.

“KGH gave me a lot in my career and then I gave back,” she says. “During my time at KGH I saved money all the time. Every paycheck.  And that money I collected, some of it is going back to KGH.”

In her first four-year pledge, Sylvia donated  $100,000 to the hospital. Over the course of the next four years, she gave another $40,000.

She paid her pledge by selling publicly traded shares and getting some tax relief in return.  Burkinshaw wants people to be aware of the different cost-effective ways you can give to charity.  And average people can make a difference.

“I’m not rich by any stretch of the imagination,” says Burkinshaw. “But by saving my money since I graduated in 1940, I have a nest egg.  And I’m able to give some money back.”

It would be hard for KGH to survive let alone thrive without the generosity of individual donors.

Jim Boltin says he recognized a long time ago that he didn’t have copious amounts of money.  But what the former CFL football star for the Montreal Allouettes did have was lots of friends; athletes and celebrities.  The energetic “lowly salesman” has the ability to pick up the phone and get people to give freely of their time.

His way of giving back? Countless hours spent over two decades organizing celebrity golf tournaments for charity. Boltin and Canadian hockey star Jayna Hefford hope to hand over $40,000 to the cancer and palliative care programs this summer from the Jayna Hefford Links 4 Life Golf Classic tournament.

Kingstonians will recognize Hefford. She was assistant captain on the Canadian women’s Olympic gold medal hockey team. Her father Larry was treated for cancer at KGH before he passed away.  She wants to raise money for the hospital in his name.

Her organizing partner Jim Boltin says it’s important that we support our hospitals, because we’re all going to need care some day.

“I’m trying to do my part,” says Boltin. “If people see celebrities coming out and giving their time for free, it might inspire the average guy out there to pull fifty or a hundred bucks out of their pocket.”

Boltin says people shouldn’t focus on the amount.

“The trick is raise hundreds of dollars and the millions of dollars will follow.”